Dhru Purohit Show - #257: End Anxiety, Beat Burnout, and Supercharge Your Energy with Dr. Robin Berzin

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and InsideTracker.  Feeling like crap has become pervasive. In fact, in 2018, the World Health Organization added “burnout” as a diagnosable medical condition. Today, more than 90 percent of US workers say they feel it’s difficult to wake up and they don’t have the will or a way to try. On top of that, one in five Americans has clinical anxiety. One in twelve has major depression. Ten percent of all kids are diagnosed with ADHD, a condition that doesn’t magically disappear on someone’s 18th birthday.  This week on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sat down with Dr. Robin Berzin to talk about why we are all anxious, tired, burned out, and depressed, and what we can do about it.  Dr. Berzin is the Founder and CEO of Parsley Health, America's leading holistic medical practice designed to help women overcome chronic conditions. She founded Parsley to address the rising tide of chronic disease in America through personalized holistic medicine that puts food, lifestyle, and proactive diagnostic testing on the prescription pad next to medications. Parsley is available online nationwide.  In this episode, we dive into:   -The top three things that are zapping our energy (6:50)  -What is a “state change” and how can someone establish a new normal for how they feel on a daily basis (12:01)  -Dr. Berzin’s first state change, and how it led to a major shift that ultimately changed her life (17:03)  -The most common drivers of anxiety (28:18) -The core actions that have the biggest effect on our mood (32:33) -Common beliefs about sleep that are not true (39:58) -How Dr. Berzin supports her physical, emotional, and mental health (45:18)  -How to reboot our relationship with technology (49:57)  -How to personalize intermittent fasting (57:38)  -Promising research around psychedelics and how they are capable of reversing mood disorders (1:01:51)  For more on Dr. Robin Berzin, follow her on Instagram @robinberzinmd and through her website http://robinberzinmd.com. Get her book State Change at https://www.parsleyhealth.com/state-change/. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and InsideTracker.  Rupa Health is a place for Functional Medicine practitioners to access more than 2,000 specialty lab tests from over 20 labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, Great Plains, and more. You can check out a free live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com. InsideTracker looks at everything from metabolic and inflammatory markers to nutrients and hormones. Traditional lab tests can be hard to read on your own, but InsideTracker makes their results easy to understand and provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 25% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sugar is depleting us. It's causing brain inflammation, which is making it harder for us to focus, harder for us to concentrate. It's also causing depression and anxiety. Hi, everyone, Drew Prote here. Today's podcast is with Dr. Robin Burzin. She's here to talk about creating energy. Do you ever feel like you don't have enough energy?

Well, today's episode is on how to get more. Stay tuned. I've done a lot of digging into my health over the years, and I'm sure most of you could say the same. I know many of you are even practitioners who help people go through this process using the framework of integrative, precision medicine, or even functional medicine. What I've learned through my experience in pursuing better health and from the guidance of people like my business partner, Dr. Mark Hyman, and other experts on the podcast, is that a big part of understanding what kind of support each individual body needs is testing. That's why I'm excited to tell you about

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That's rupa health.com. Have you ever gone to your doctor for your normal annual physical? And after sitting with them for 10 minutes, they quickly look at your labs and tell you, hey, everything looks normal. Keep it up and I'll see you again next year. Maybe even give you a nice little pat on the back. I can't tell you how many listeners of the podcast, have told me that they've had this exact experience and how honestly how frustrating it can be.

Now, we all know that normal isn't always optimal. Just because something's not wrong doesn't mean that we feel great. So traditional medicine is great at finding out when something is blatantly wrong. But they don't always do the best job when we need to highlight how we can do better. So what if you could get detailed nutritional and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs? That's what Inside Tracker does. Inside Tracker was founded in 2009 by top scientists from acclaimed universities in the field of aging, genetics, and biometrics. Its mission is to help people live long, healthy, productive lives by optimizing their bodies from the inside out.

Inside Tracker is cutting edge technology, and it looks at your blood, DNA, lifestyle, and it has fitness tracker data, and they give you science-backed recommendations for positive changes to your daily habits. It's all about the daily habits. With their app, you can track your progress every day, and they have an amazing support team to help you with any questions you might have. Inside Tracker looks at everything from metabolic and inflammatory markers to top nutrient and hormones. It even tests your cholesterol levels to help you better manage stress,

and you have the option to see how your inner age compares to your chronological age. Traditional lab tests can be hard to read on your own, but Inside Tracker makes their results easy to understand and even provides tips on how to use food first for optimal nutrition. Right now, InsideTracker is offering my podcast community 25% off their side. system, just go to inside tracker.com slash drew. That's D-H-R-U to get your discount code and try it out for yourself. That's inside tracker, I-N-S-I-D-E, tracker, T-R-A-C-K-E-R-com, backslash Drew, D-H-R-U for your 25% off. Welcome to the Drew Perrault podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of

the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Dr. Robin Berzen. Dr. Berzin is the founder and CEO of Parsley Health, America's leading holistic medical practice designed to help women overcome chronic conditions. On today's podcast episode, she's going to be talking about how to create a state change from the inside out. If you feel you're overburdened with anxiety, burnout, or you simply cannot create enough energy in your life, today's episode is for you.

We're going to be covering all of Robin's tips included in her new book, State Change, end anxiety, beat burnout, and ignite a new baseline of energy and flow. A little bit about Dr. Robin Berzin. She attended medical school at Columbia University and trained in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She's been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a tech pioneer and named as one of the 100 most innovative women in business by Inc. Magazine. She's been praised by Fast Company for founding one of the world's most innovative companies.

She's been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a tech pioneer, named as one of the most 100 most innovative women in business by Inc. Magazine and praised her. by Fast Company for founding one of the world's most innovative companies. Dr. Robin Burson, welcome back to the podcast. It's an honor to have you here last time. We had a great show. Today we have a whole bunch of new things we're going to talk about. And before we get into the background of your new book and all the great stuff that you're

working on, I want to start off with some immediate value. A big part of what you're writing about in the new book, link in the show notes, by the way, audience, is you're talking about how to get our energy back. That makes me think, what are, I'm going to make you kind of focus in for a second. If there were three things, three things that you feel present to right now, they could be the top things or just three things that you want to share that are consistently zapping the energy out of the folks who might be listening today, what would those three things be? And why are they on your list?

Oh, my goodness. You know, there's a number of them, but I would say the top three are sugar, sitting, and screens. So three S's. And I can talk about why. But sugar, sitting, and screens. Let's do it. Let's give a little bit of background of why.

Sugar, we've talked a lot about it on the podcast. Give us your lens from it. As somebody who is integrative, functional medicine, expert, you and your team have worked at Parsley Health with thousands and thousands of patients. Why is sugar one of the first ones you mentioned? Sugar is depleting us. It's causing brain inflammation, which is making it harder for. for us to focus, harder for us to concentrate. It's also causing depression and anxiety. People

don't realize that even the healthy among us, and I'm sure everyone listening to this, because they're listening to you is health conscious, health aware, health curious. But everyone is eating about 70% of their diet is processed or ultra processed. And so we are inhaling every day a level of refined sugar and refined carbohydrates that are not only messing with our gut microbes, which impact our neurotransmitters in our brains, causing system-wide inflammation, and making it really difficult for us to sustain our energy throughout the day. And just by changing that, just by eating protein, fat, and fiber, especially in your morning and your lunch, when you change that, people feel so much better and they are shocked at the degree to which

their foods, which I call a core action, right? It's not a habit. What we eat every day is not a habit. It's like literally what you eat every single day of your life. your food can be determining your state day in and day out, hour in and hour out. And you can make such a difference by cutting out the level of sugar and refined carbs that you're eating. Awesome. We'll do more of a deep dive on all these later on, but love the top level conversation on each.

Okay, sitting. You know, there's so much talked about sitting. You have articles that say sitting is the new smoking. There's other places that are like, I actually have a really hard time like doing a lot of work without sitting. So I want to hear from your perspective. Talk to us about sitting. Is it really that bad? And how do we make it work for us? Listen, we sit on average 11 hours a day and sitting is fine if you counteract it with moving. And we're not moving our bodies and that's the problem. And especially as we, you know, enter into the

metaverse and whatnot. And we can't be like Shrek and disappear and have our bodies atrophy. We have to actually invest in these bodies because it's not just our physical health that's at stake. It's our mental health. So you can get 20, 30 minutes of movement. in every day. You're going to feel happier, more energized, sleep better, have better digestion, and be able to focus when you're sitting so much. But a lot of people aren't doing that. And 11 hours a day is causing a complete disarray, not only, again, in our physical body, but in our mental health. And a lot of people don't make that connection. So we go into that quite a bit. Beautiful. I have like 10 questions on that that we'll get into later on.

And the last one that you mentioned is screens. As a tech CEO founder, entrepreneur, and someone who probably does a lot of telehealth visits as well. And we're very lucky and thankful for technology that it's allowing this conversation to take place. Talk to us about screens and a little bit of a component of how you balance it out in your life with computers and screens being such an integral part of everything that you've accomplished and are continuing to accomplish. technology is the future and it's also the present and we need it but it is depleting our mental health and causing a lot more anxiety, depression, insomnia than a lot of people realize. And so what I have seen every day in practice and see with, you know, so many of our patients and it's born out in the research is that our relationship to a relationship to technology needs to change

in order for us to have healthy mental health. And so that doesn't mean you have to like throw your laptop and your phone in the nearest pond. You keep those things, but you have to set limits on it. And so things like having an hour before bed where you're not looking at screens so that you're maintaining your sleep integrity and getting the full set of sleep cycles that you need to feel actually rested in the morning is one way. Having a morning or an afternoon or a couple hours on the weekends where you don't bring your phone with you or don't have it right by you, these moments of breaking the cycle train us to relearn what we used to all know, which is how to do something else with our time that doesn't involve screens.

And some of those things can also be additive to our mental health. So taking back the power, as it were, on screens is super important and powerful. And I think with all these categories, it's really about education and awareness because when you can take your power back, that actually is the vehicle that leads to the state change. And that's the new book. Let's talk about the framework. What is actually a state change? And how do these three things fit into the framework of what you're presenting out to the public now? So a state change is moving from a place where you feel

either anxious, depressed, low, tired, burnout, brain fog, meh, right? We all use these different words. And we, I don't know a single person who has an experience one, if not all of those things, especially in the past couple of years we've been living through, but takes you from there to feeling calm, energized, and clear, right? And what I've learned in my practices and what I've seen is that we all owe it to ourselves and have the capacity to create better mental health and emotional well-being every day, no matter where you sit on the mental health spectrum or whether you have a diagnosis or not. We can all feel a little bit better every day, but we often don't realize that there are physical barriers, things going on in our bodies that we're not aware of, that our doctors aren't

aware of that are keeping us from experiencing peak mental health. And so this book is a framework and a roadmap for how to address those things really simply, really clearly, concretely, so that everyone feels empowered around mental health. Because when you think it's all in your head, that can feel like a really daunting place to approach mental health and emotional well-being. When there's concrete things you can do on the physical level that can generate a state change into better and sustainable mental health, that's a really powerful place to be. It really makes me think of like a proper distinction with that, is that often when it comes to the category of mental health, first of all, I mean, it's well-intentioned, but most

of the national conversation on this topic is more access, more access, more access. And of course, access is a part of it. But access is also missing a little bit of the boat because sometimes the focus on access is that our primary entry point to improving our mental health and reducing burnout and reducing anxiety and all these things you write about in the book is through thoughts. And thoughts are one part of it, right? But it's also thoughts that are facilitated by an expert in that area. And I think the world that you have been presenting, both through parsley and the book, is that actually there's plenty of things that we can do. And they're not just thoughts. They're on the physical realm

and moving our body or influencing our body is a direct impact on those thoughts, those feelings of anxiousness. And I don't think that everybody knows that. So I just want to highlight that distinction that one gateway and pathway, not that working on our thoughts is not important. It's that one of the ways to do it is through these physical things that we can take a hold of that severely influence our thoughts for the better. Yep.

It's so true. And I'll give you a really concrete example. a patient in her 40s who had been experiencing depression, weight gain, dry skin, headaches, wasn't sleeping great. I was tired all the time. And her regular doctor told her, you know, you're depressed. I'm going to recommend an antidepressant. Didn't do any testing.

And when she came to Parsley and when I worked with her, we did testing for her thyroid because we do that for everybody because thyroid problems are so common. And like one in eight women in this country who will have low thyroid function or be diagnosed with that, she just had an autoimmune thyroid condition that just no one had bothered to test for. And not all the antidepressants in the world were going to help her. And so in that case, we treated her thyroid and her depression, her weight gain, her digestive issues, her dry skin, her headaches, her sleep problems all went away. And it's like not a miracle. This is modern

medicine. But the missing link there is that we tend to treat the body and the mind is completely separate. And in modern medicine, we have divorced these two camps. We say psych is over here, medicine is over there, and we don't look at them together. And as a result, for a lot of people, we're missing the boat. So whether you're someone who has a family history of a mood disorder like depression, you have a history of trauma, there's a reason for a condition like depression and anxiety, or you're somewhere in the other spectrum where you're experiencing the very extremely common, anxiety, depression, insomnia, burnout, fatigue that like we've all experienced in this time period especially, there are things that you can do and there are things you must

do and assess to understand where this is all coming from that start in the body. And we've forgotten that in medicine. And we have to remember because to your point, access is critical. We need more access to therapy. We need more access to medication. We do. But if that is the only answer, we're going to be leaving a lot of people out. And for no matter who you are, even if you have access to those things, if you're not addressing what's happening in your body, it's like trying to climb Everest without getting to base camp. And so we have to start here. Let's go a little bit into the hero's journey portion of it. Talk about how this has played out in your life. And maybe the first time that you really got a sense of how important it was to be in the driver's seat or

remember that we are in the driver's seat or that you are in the driver's seat of being able to influence your state. So when I was in my early 20s and I read about this in the book, I was kind of one of those people that was all head, nothing, you know, like more head than heart, right? I was just like kind of all wrapped up in my mind. I was pretty good student. I was kind of a nerd. I had no idea where I was going in life after college. I was like one of those like reasonably smart people with like zero direction. And I think I was living with Angerner. And I think I was living with anxiety, but I didn't really understand that. I just thought that was like the natural way to live. And I was channeling that into work and sort of running around and really not paying attention to

myself, what I wanted. I didn't even know what like calm, clear, present really felt like. And so for me, I tell the story of the book. I randomly went to this yoga class in the financial district. This is like not long after 9-11. That part of New York City was just coming back. I was working in a job that made no sense for me. I was dating a guy who made no sense for me. Like everything was sort of lost in the sauce, as I like to say. And I experienced my first state change, doing a form of exercise that, like, I hadn't grown up with in Baltimore where everyone plays like team sports.

And I didn't know anything about yoga. I thought it was sort of weird and hippied out. But in that experience, I suddenly found that I was breathing slower. I was present. I was aware of my body in space and time. I wasn't catapulting between the future and the past. And I was able to actually register this moment on a different level, on a visceral level, on a body level, as opposed to just a brain level.

And that moment for me changed my life. It changed the trajectory of my career. I suddenly got really interested in the mind and body and in health and ultimately went to medical school. I broke up with a terrible boyfriend, all the things. things, right? And I credit that moment as helping me understand that there was a way to experience a different state of mental well-being access through the body and that I think sent me off on a really important journey. It's almost like I think it's called Satori. It's like a little, term of like an awakening. You had a little moment of awakening that gave you in the Hindu and the

Vedic tradition, which is my background, there's a term called Maya and often many women mostly have the name Maya. And the word Maya means like piercing through the veil of illusion. Like you can see a little bit behind the scenes of what's truly there. So that was your moment. You got a little bit of a glimpse. And think back to that time because sometimes when we talk about this, it's again, it's like a fish describing water to another fish.

And they're like, what are you talking about? What is water? Where can you see it? How did that? I mean, that's such a profound experience. but how did that fundamentally shift in big ways and little ways, kind of how you looked at the world moving forward from there. What did you notice in your body?

What did you notice in your breathing? What are a couple of things that you could highlight that having that glimpse of awareness, that moment of Satori shifted for you? Great, great word. I'm going to steal that from you or from the tradition, Satory. And that's exactly what it was, right? And it was something that I achieved in like an hour in a yoga class. which is a practice again at the time it literally knew nothing about.

And I started waking up to a lot of things. First of all, my relationship to my body changed. For me, working out was always either like sports related or about being fit and how I looked, not at all about how I felt. And so I started to be more present with my body, more loving towards my body, started looking at what I was eating. So there was a snowball effect. I was like one of those people that lived on like Diet Coke and Tasty Delight and like

apples and bowels and. and bodega food. I was just like not a healthy eater. I figured if I fit into my jeans, cool, I'm good. And that's not what health is. And so it made me start to pay attention to what I was fueling myself with and how those things made me feel. And then it also made me say when I went back to work and I wasn't super happy in my job,

well, what do I want to do with my life? I was a paralegal at the time at the U.S. Attorney's Office and we were prosecuting like securities fraud. And I'm deeply grateful that. someone prosecute securities fraud because someone should absolutely do that in our country. But I am not that person. And so, you know, through this moment, I started asking, well, where do I want to put my life's work and my time and my energy?

What do I want to be around? And it catapulted me to leaving my sort of nascent, never got off the ground career in the law and to go work in psych research and in medical research and then ultimately to medical school because I said, hey, I'm really interested in this health thing. And I want to know something about it. want to have the foundation of the highest form of academic medicine that I can possibly have so that I really understand what I'm talking about when it comes to this stuff. And so it changed my life and it also awakened me to the fact that sometimes our emotions are coming through our

bodies. And the body is a way to channel those emotions. And yet we aren't taught that in school. We learn how to tie our shoes, brush our teeth, how to read, how to add. Maybe we get as far as calculus. No one teaches us about the physical form that we live in, how it works, how to keep it well, how to generate health, let alone how what's happening physically is impacting your mental health. And now here we are collectively living through this mental health crisis that is very real. And you're seeing a lot of attention paid to mental health finally, which is awesome. But I'm not seeing the conversation include this very fundamental learning around how the physical impacts your mind. So one follow-up question off of that and all these changes you make, how long did it take before you broke up with a boyfriend that was there at the time that wasn't the right fit?

God. I mean, you know, these things are just joking. I'm just joking because you mentioned earlier. But if you want to answer it, go for it. He's a great person, but we were not meant for each other. But no, it was just like a funny, you know, you're in your early 20s. You're kind of lost in general, but I was extra lost. Just mostly teasing.

And obviously for everybody listening, you know, Robin and I are friends. And, you know, I felt like I could slide that one in. You absolutely can. You know, the other thing that that brings up is that we often think that our head is leading the way. But some of the latest research in this category has shown that our body first figures out how it feels. and then our mind is catching up and trying to interpret how that feeling goes. But because we are, most of us, are very cerebral people, we think that our thoughts are leading the way and that our body's catching up,

which is why we tend to underestimate the value of slowing down and doing these things like noticing our breath. A lot of us weren't trained that in school. We didn't have a lot of examples around us of people using exercise and movement to feel better or even saying like I'm so overwhelmed. I have so much to do. But maybe tonight I'm just going to go to sleep early and use this as an opportunity to give my body a little bit of a break or maybe take a nap in this moment, reset,

and then I can do all the things that I need to do. So I think that's a we're strengthening the connection between how we operate within this machinery and actually the influence that it plays. But we thought it was thoughts first and then the body. But it's really the body is knowing where we stand first. and then the thoughts are getting a chance to catch up. Yeah, the wisdom of the body is infinite. The body is incredible organism.

It's the most complex organism, smarter and more complicated than any computer that we humans have built to date. And that may change, but that is still true today. And so a lot of times of things that we feel are alarm bells. It's like a fire alarm ringing that there's a fire in your basement. And it'll get louder and louder and louder until you listen. And we're used, I think, a little bit to thinking about that if you have a joint that hurts or your stomach hurts, right? These symptoms are not there to bug you or to be in the way or to be suppressed with necessarily medication.

And medication might help you with that experience. But these are symptoms that are indicating to you, hey, you have to do something different. There is a problem here. And we are not taught that our anxiety, our fatigue, our inability to concentrate, our inability to sleep, that these are also symptoms of the body telling us that something is wrong. Either the things that we're doing every day and the way that we're living, our lives is wrong, and that's the core actions that I go through in the book, or that maybe we have an underlying illness.

We have a blood sugar disorder. We have an autoimmune or inflammatory condition. We have an issue with the microbes in our gut. And that these mental and emotional symptoms are actually, again, an alarm bell for something deeper happening that's actually physical. And we haven't made that connection, but yet in our patients, we see it over and over and over again. So, you know, I had a patient with SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth who also had a long-term history of anxiety. And when I asked her about the past for her, she said, well, both of these things kind of happened around the same time. And it was a little bit of that chicken or the egg.

I've had all this gut issues for a long time. I took a bunch of antibiotics for sinus infections in my early 30, she said. And then around that time, I developed anxiety. I also developed these gut issues, constant bloating and, you know, digestive distress and ran a test on her gut that looked at the overgrowth of bacteria in her gut. And in treating that, we made a massive impact on her anxiety and her brain fog. And it was all because her gut microbes were spewing out some of these neurotransmitters and metabolites that were causing her to have lower cognitive function, more brain fog, and even anxiety. And when we cleared up her gut,

her mind healed too. And so it was just that for me was such a woe moment because this is earlier in my practice. And it just was like, gosh, if we could tell people more about this, we would be able to help a lot of people who aren't getting the help that they need if they're getting help at all. You know, a big part of the world of precision medicine, functional medicine, and this targeted medicine that, you know, you guys practice and many of the people on the podcast that we had on practice as well is that the understanding that the body has only so many ways that it can say ouch. And even if two people, their bodies are saying, ouch, in the same way, let's use this case of anxiety, there might be different root factors that are there. And so in this instance,

you highlighted a perfect case of a young woman that you worked with who in her category, you know, it was SIBO. And you know, you guys have your whole process and diagnostics and intake to figure that out. What are some other things? Just tease anxiety out. What are some other things that you've seen out there, just take a few different patients, a different cases where even though they were all saying, ouch, in the same way, they had a collection of different root causes that were the biggest contributors to anxiety manifesting for them. Yes. And this is exactly, by the way, why we need precision and personalized medicine, because your

anxiety is not my anxiety is not someone else's. Your migraines are not my migraines or not someone else's, right? We often have different lies. And this is the medicine of asking why. And so when it comes to anxiety, there's a few things that can drive it in the body. First of all, thyroid dysfunction, either too low or too high is one. So we test thyroid routinely. Inflammation in the body.

So we're doing tests to look at that, either coming from a food allergy, eating too much sugar, autoimmune disease. These are all things that cause inflammation in the body. But inflammation in the brain or brain inflammation has been linked to anxiety and depression and more mood in general. You might have adrenal fatigue or an adrenal dysfunction where you don't have a disease of the adrenals, but your functional ability to produce cortisol and the right patterns at the right times throughout your day

because you've been stressed for so long is deranged, and we need to rehabilitate that, and that's driving some of your energy or mood issues. The gut micro-issue that we talked about earlier, when we eat a lot of sugar, when we take too many antibiotics, we change the types of microbes that live in our guts. And that microbial composition that like soup in there, right, is really important because there's a huge gut-brain connection that we take for granted.

And so when we change the population of which microbes are living down there, we change the neurotransmitter balance and that can impact things. So we start in the book by doing two things. We first walk you through a symptom score that you can do by yourself, on paper in the book looks at nine aspects of the body, mental health, gut health, it looks at hormone health, it looks at musculoskeletal health, heart health. And it asks you a series of questions. It takes about two minutes. And it gives you a symptom score. It's something we developed at Parsley and that we've since published literature on and it's now a validated medical score

assessment. But it's really important to start there because a lot of people have a hard time connecting the dots to what's happening in their bodies to even know if, hey, maybe I do have a chronic condition going on under the surface, but I haven't gotten testing and I don't know about it. So we start with that. And by the way, if anyone listening wants to do the score online for free, you can go to parsleyhealth.com slash insights. And we have it all set up so you can get your own health score online and it takes a couple minutes. And it'll help you connect the dots between your body systems and what your level of symptoms are. Because as you said earlier, Drew, we tend to like ignore our bodies until the alarm bells get really, really loud, until that ouch gets really, really

loud. And then we take you through the book through some of the common chronic conditions that often get missed, that could be driving your mental health issue. And so, and we also walk you through the specific blood tests and other types of tests that you might get. And you can, for many of them, just ask your regular primary care doctor. You don't necessarily need a functional doctor for them. But chances are, a lot of people aren't getting these tests.

70% of people, younger people under 65, don't have a PCP, primary care doctor. So a lot of people don't even know that they have something going on under the surface. So in the beginning of the book, we really start with this assessment, a self-assessment of your symptoms or the symptom score I mentioned, and then walking you through some of these underlying chronic conditions. Because if you have one, that could be that aha that helps you figure out why do I have anxiety, depression, burnout, et cetera, or maybe it's just making those things worse. And by addressing those things, you would feel a lot better. So taking, you know, whether, whatever it is the condition that

people are working with, also inside the book, you highlighted and list out these core sections. I believe there's five of them from what I remember. I have the book in front of me. And great job. love it. There's five core sections that have the biggest effect on our mood, which can play out into anxiety. They can play out into, you know, again, two very different things, but depression. It can play an influence in depression. It could help us just make us feel sluggish or not excited about life. And even if you feel like your mood is really good, it could be the things that are starting to throw off your gut bacteria or your blood sugar or other stuff that later down the line are going to end up creating one of these, you know, chronic conditions that so many

people suffer with. So let's talk about these one by one. I'll toss them out. And some of them will relate back to some of the three opening things that we shared earlier, but you'll have your own unique spin on why you want to talk about them. So let's talk about nutrition. And what are you talked about sugar, but what are other key drivers of nutrition that you see that are underrated today in their connection to specifically influencing our mood and energy level? And so, you're not sugar and refined carbs big one. We already talked about it. Another big one is vegetable oils, omega-6 fats. Part of the problem with eating so many processed foods, which again, even the healthiest among us get due, and I get it. Like, I'm a mom, I'm working, I'm busy. Sometimes I

need something that's grab and go, right? But a lot of the grab-and-go foods, again, 70% of the American diet are filled with not only too much sugar, too many carbs, other types of chemicals, which we can talk about, they're filled with these vegetable oils. And these vegetable oils are predominantly omega-6 fatty acids that are causing inflammation in the body and depleting our cognitive function because our brains are mostly made of fat. A lot of people don't realize. And when you're building those brain cells out of omega-6 fats instead of healthy omega-3 fats,

you don't get the pliability or the resilience of your brain cells, your neurons that you need. And so when it comes to the what-to-take-out category, I really focus on sugar-refined carbs. I also focus on omega-6 fats. And then sometimes identifying food allergies, which, you know, on this podcast, I'm sure you've talked about food allergies like, I don't know, 20,000 times. I'm like looking at your face, right?

But when it comes to understanding, like, the cognitive or emotional impact of a food allergy, one of the things that we saw you all the time with gluten, for instance, which is a predominant protein in wheat, people's biggest. response to that is actually irritability and brain fog and not like a digestive or a skin issue. And so they say, I don't have a problem with gluten. I don't have a problem with meat. They cut it out for three weeks and they're like, oh my God, I feel so much clearer. And so these are some of the things that we outline that I think people are less aware of. And I also think people on the sugar front aren't aware of how much they're eating every day. There's a really simple solve to most of this.

and it's just make a couple of your meals a day. You don't have to be perfect. I love eating out, and you can still eat out and eat healthy. But if you're doing grab and go and you're eating a lot of processed foods or bars or powders or things that you cannot recognize from the ground or the earth or an animal, you've got to try to make a couple of your meals really simple, really easy, but things you make at home and then you're not eating the processed stuff. And then all of a sudden, you're feeling a lot better without even trying.

Yeah, I think the other thing that's there is that a lot of people who are listening probably to this podcast and follow your work, they generally think of themselves as, you know, healthy or individuals. And I think that this topic of nutrition is so big, even for them, I saw something a few years ago, right about like six, seven years ago, a bunch of my friends in my group were having kids. And a lot of the women that I knew that I was close with, that, that were eating really healthy, aware of a lot of the latest trends, shopping at, you know, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, all the stuff. They were all coming back and then, and one of my family members included, and when they

were pregnant and having kids and then you do your, you know, your glucose tests and they're checking to make sure you don't have gestational diabetes, a whole group of them started coming back as having, being in that, you know, concerning range when they were doing their glucose response test. And that had me zoom out and start to look at like, what is it that we're all eating that even a lot of healthy people? And I think with the explosion, you know, there's a lot of great healthier for you foods that are out there. But they're also made with a lot of refined carbs. Now, those refined carbs may not be things that we often think of in the same way that we think of ultra processed foods. But when the base of our diet is based around a lot of tapioca and cassava and other things that are there, we could be on a crazy, blood sugar roller coaster the same way that if we're drinking, you know, five or six sodas a day and our blood sugar goes up and down and up and down. So even if you think, like, I got this under control, I eat really healthy. I think that this is a good argument for really taking a look at it because

if there's some party that's not working or you don't feel your best or we often get a little bit of that belly fat that people start to build up, even if you're eating healthy, that's something to still pay attention to. Yeah, it's so true. And anything that comes out of a bag or a box or a thing that you pop open or a label with more than like two ingredients. Typically that thing is processed and it could be gluten-free and it could be organic and it could have been, you know, I don't know, harvested by golden gnomes in the Arctic like something beautiful, right? We see the marketing right now and it's like, it's crazy where people say this food comes

from. But it doesn't mean it's good for you. And I think a lot of people are eating a lot more sugar, a lot more omega-6 fats and a lot more processed foods and they realize we see it all the time at parsley because we certainly have people who come here feeling like, yeah, I got this health thing under control. I just got this one problem. They'll be shocked when we test their fasting, glucose, fasting insulin, Klemaglubin A1C, that their blood sugar is not as great as they thought, which brings us into the sitting point. If you are sitting 12 hours a day, you could have a relatively, quote unquote, healthy diet.

But even that smaller amount of refined carbs, refined sugar, these things don't always taste sweet, right? It's a lot of the chips. It's the crackers. It's the salty stuff too. That could be deranging your blood sugar if you're sitting all day because your muscles are not being stimulated to bring that sugar into the cells. And so your insulin is having to go up over and over and over again to manage that blood sugar. Whereas if you were highly active moving around using your muscles, blowing through your glycogen

stores and your muscles, your muscles would be taking care of. of that carbohydrate load. And I think that's where to your point around having kids, the other thing that happens I can attest to when you have a bunch of kids is that you lose your time to go exercise. And so now that sort of like baseline activity that managed your sugar for you without you thinking too much about it when you were a little bit younger is gone. And so those processed foods that used to get away with, you no longer do. And you're like, well, I'm not that old.

You're not that old. But you're living your life in a very different way. And that's why we cover exercise as a core action in the book, too. That's awesome. Let's talk about sleep. It's one of the most underrated categories. And I'd like to start off with what do you think are some beliefs that people have about sleep that may not be serving them? Ooh, that alcohol makes you sleep better, that you only need six or seven.

You're one of those magic people that only need six or seven hours a night. that you are the blessed one who can scroll your social media until the moment you drop into bed and it doesn't impact you at all, that you are also one of the magic people, and there are these people actually genetically, this one is science back. There are some people who can have a cup of coffee at 6 p.m. and sleep like a baby. But that is the minority of people, and most people don't metabolize caffeine terribly well. So an afternoon cup of coffee, even though you think it's, you know, hours before you're going to bed isn't disruptive to you. Those are a handful. I can keep going, but it's, there's a lot. I think people, it's a great point you make, because I think a lot of people

are in total denial about their sleep quality, how long they sleep, and their ability to kind of push their sleep with some of the core actions that they're taking every day. There's a podcast, I'm a big fan of Lex Friedman podcast. He's an AI scientist and other stuff. And he had a a guest on the topic of sleep. And, you know, one of the arguments that they were having, and I'd love to get your perspective as a mom of three, as also a founder, a CEO, as an advisor to other companies, you know, your hands are full. And now you're an author. So there's a lot of things that are moving in the mix? There's an argument of, are there times in our life where we just have to say, I'm going to accumulate this sleep debt because I'm just working on something

that is greater than me and I'm going to have to put that aside. And ultimately, you know, there wasn't one right or wrong. Both sides were talking about, you know, look, it can't not impact your body. And the other side is saying, I know, but I have to move this thing forward. How do you see that through your lens where I can't imagine your sleep quality is the best or maybe it is? And I'm sure it's changed over a period of time. But yeah, add those layers. CEO, founder, mom, wife, author, you know, doing all that stuff. Are there just genuine times you're like, look, right now, my sleep is fucked. I know it. And do you do? do things to help you combat that sleep debt that you are accumulating, I think people would

be interested in hearing that. You know, I kind of come on both sides of that equation because, yes, there are times in your life where you're not going to get as much sleep maybe and you can't control it. Like right now for me, we are up at least once a night. Usually you're on 3 a.m. sometimes lately it's 5 or 5.30 because the baby wakes up and you got to get up with the baby, right? you're not going to knock it up with the baby, you know, eventually you can sleep train or whatever, but we're not there yet.

So my sleep isn't great and I am accumulating sleep debt. But the way that I manage that is that I take my sleep seriously because I know that if I am really not well rested, that next day, I eat crap, right? I'm needing more caffeine, more sugar, more like bad foods or just food in general to keep going. I'm short-tempered. I'm irritable. I don't make as good decisions. I'm not as nice a person to be around.

right? So that stuff just can't be my norm because if I allow that to be my norm, then I'm not functioning at my highest. And so all the things that you listed and everyone listening has your own set of 10 things that you are and 10 hats that you wear, you can't actually do any of those things at your highest level or at the level that you'd like to if you feel that way. And so right now, I can't fully control my sleep. But what that means is I go to bed by 10. I take a bath like I did last night. I did a meditation in the bath. So double whammy, two birds with one stone. Like, you know, don't have a lot of time. That's my 15 minutes for mom time. I am trying to not look at screens before bed. I'm sleeping in a cold, dark room. I am wearing and I'm asking

earplugs. I am not eating a high sugar, high carb meal before bed because that also disrupts sleep quality. I'm not going to have that glass of wine with dinner because you know what, in a normal time when I am not waking up in the middle of the night, I might be able to get away with that. But right now I can't. It's too many things. So I know what great sleep looks like. I know how I feel when I've slept really well.

And I bring in all of those tools around a period of time so that the sleep I am getting is high quality, right? Because there's sleep quantity and their sleep quality. And we talk a little bit about this. You could be getting seven, eight hours of sleep and think that you're getting enough. A lot of people actually need eight to nine, by the way. But you, those might not be quality hours. And in fact, a lot of the prescription drug sleep aids put you into the sort of false sleep

where you actually don't go through your deep sleep cycles. And so, yes, you are asleep, but you aren't actually rested the next day. And so maybe you're only going to get three full sleep cycles tonight because you have on our deadline and you've got to get 10 more podcasts out today or whatever you're doing. But you want to make sure that the sleep that you're getting is quality. in those moments when you're not getting as much quantity. And that's how I'm managing it for me right now. And that's what we teach our patients.

What's an example? And I think everybody has this, you know, as in it often comes with age, which really means experience, right? You have more experiences in your life. What's an example of a boundary that now you have, whether it's you've communicated with your team, you know, employees, whether it's something you've communicated with your husband, that maybe the first go around with, you know, either first kid or when you were earlier in your stage of your company, that you knew this mattered to you, but you would

kind of sacrifice that boundary when it came to not just sleep, but relaxation, right? So can you think of something that now, after more experiences and just being like, fuck it, I literally do not have the room to not honor this boundary that that's there. I'm going to be a lot more firm with everybody else around me about why this is important. Can you think of anything? Oh, my God. Too many things. I mean, one was like right before this podcast. I was like, Drew, I'm going to need another, you know, 10 minutes because I haven't eaten since breakfast. I had a low-car breakfast of eggs at, you know, 9 a.m. It's 2 p.m. Eastern. And I'm feeling my blood sugar drop. I'm not feeling good. I don't feel like I can focus right now. And I want to have a great

conversation. So we wrote to your team and said, and I had my team was kind enough to order me like a healthy lunch. So to go, but not grab and go, like order and go. And I took a minute to eat, have some water, take a beat. And that sounds basic. But like, we've all been there running through our crazy days. And you've got work. You've got your social life. You've got your kids. You've got whatever's going on. And you like forget to eat or you're going to not eat the good thing and you're just going to eat like the, yes, there's some grab and go foods in like the pantry at the office. But I'm like, I'm not going to feel good if I eat that. So that's one. And then I think the other one that took me a long time as a mom is with our first child, one is much more manageable,

I will say. But like getting help felt like such a luxury, like whether it was the sitter at night so that I could go to a yoga class or doing something like getting a massage and having that downtime. I was like, oh my God, I cannot spend money on that. That's crazy because it was just kind of foreign to me to like invest in myself in that way. And now I'm at the point where like if I don't do those things, like I can't function. I need that occasional yoga class. I need that massage. I need to like have a time out for myself.

And like skipping over it will mean that I'm so at my energetic limit that I'm not able to sort of be the person I want to be. And I had to learn that through trial and error, by the way, that those investments or investments in myself to be able to achieve more, they're not sort of like taking away from something. It reminds me this quote by this coach who like works with a lot of like Silicon Valley founders. I believe his name is Jerry Colona or Jerry Corona. I'm messing that up, but we'll include it in the show notes. But one of the things that he brings up is that this quote is, how have I been. complicit in having the things in my life or at least giving energy to the things in my life that I say that I don't want. Doesn't mean that you're 100% responsible for them. It doesn't mean that you

created them. It doesn't mean that you, in every single case, are manifesting all the negative things that are there. But it's no, how have I been complicit? How have been a part of that? And part of changing our state seems to be remembering the power that we do have. And that awareness is realizing when we're breaking our own boundaries. One million percent. I just posted something that I'm going to butcher right now because I won't get out my phone. But on Instagram, that was a repost of a woman I follow named Jillian Treki who talks about relationships.

You should have her on the show. She's great. But she posted a quote about how taking care of our own mental health is an investment in our relationships with our partner and how it's important for us to do that as individuals. So when we think about whether your relationship is with your, your parent or a romantic partner, your life partner, your friend, your colleague. Investing in your mental health every day a little bit is an investment in that relationship because it is not that person's job to take care of your mental health for you.

And I think especially in a marriage sometime, you're newly married, so get ready. But as a marriage of mine, it's 10 years, you can forget that, right? So that was a good show. I reposted it. Sometimes I repost things like that because they were a reminder. that I need to hear, not because I'm, like, telling the world. Always, always. We're all learning along the way.

We talked a little about screen time in the beginning, but anything else you want to expand on in tech, and I'll add in the layer of, I often think that the worst of tech, because tech is often like a hammer, right? We can use it for good. And I think in this moment where there's a lot of poo-pooing on a lot of different technologies, I just want to go on record and just say, as I've shared before, I'm so thankful for, like, all the things that we have access to. If it wasn't for Facebook and Instagram,

I wouldn't have so many friends or be able to keep in touch with you and your life and other stuff. That doesn't mean we can have fair criticisms on how things can be improved. But I do feel like tech is getting a little bit of the short end of the stick from so much of the good that's been brought there.

But when it comes to the challenging stuff or the negativity, it tends to amplify fear. And tech and screens is also, not just to me, social media and the computer. To me, it's also television as well, right? It's like the news media. And the worst of it is fear and fomo. Anything that's going to put you in a place of fear or fomo that I'm not grateful for

where I am at or I'm not able to focus on where I'm at or what I'm working on, that to me is a side that is fair deserving of, you know, healthy criticism on how we can make it better and actually make it work for us. So add any layer on top of that that you want to, feel free to disagree with me, by the way. We don't have to agree. And how do you in your own personal life, again, on the theme of boundaries, set up boundaries so that these things don't consume you and you can use them for the tools that they are. Yeah, I mean, at this point, you know, technology is here to stay and it's a powerful tool and it's

not going anywhere. So my preview is that we have to learn to live with it, but we have to learn to live with it while not letting it destroy us. And so that means we have to sort of take our power back from it because the news feeds and the social feeds are designed to be addictive. they have been proven to deplete our self-esteem and our self-worth. And as women, that is especially, especially a massive, massive problem. The rates of teen suicide that have gone up in girls since these apps have come to be, I didn't grow up with them. And I am terrified, to be honest with you, for my daughter, for my kids, I have two boys and a girl,

but especially for her, for what that looks like for her mental health in that really vulnerable time of life. I think that we have to recognize that a lot of these platforms are designed to be addictive. They're designed to be consuming. And they're designed to give us a false sense of replacing the entertainment and the key relationships that we used to build out in the real world. And so it's not a one or the other. It's an and. But we need to remember how to go rebuild that muscle of building our core relationships,

of having fun, of interacting with the real world. of forgetting that you're more than just a floating head and a Zoom screen or a Zencaster screen or whatever it is. And so I think it's really important that we recognize that the way that technology has been constructed while with great intentions is having a negative impact. It is also keeping us sitting more hours of the day. Screens are exhausting. One of the things I talk about in the book is moving a percentage of your calls if you're like me and you're on a lot of video calls to audio only because it's been shown. that video calls are more exhausting for the brain than audio-only calls. The other thing I recommend is taking a few hours out of a weekend, could be a morning,

could be an afternoon, and reimagining or re-experiencing what it's like to have fun or do something or cultivate experience without your phone or your device being a part of that equation. And I think that when people do that, these things, we recultivate that balance that has gotten a little bit missing as sort of everything has gone online from our social lives to the way that we shop to the way that we consume information to the way that we work. It means that we have to get conscious about that and live in a slightly different way. I often think about it like sugar. You know, we all have as people that are in the world of health and think a lot about and talk a lot about

with people about diet, we all have different boundaries or things that we do to recognize like when have we gone too far. We also realize if we're traveling or we might be on vacation somewhere or something or holiday party or a kid's birthday party, we might get a little bit of exposure, sugar, sugar's not bad, it can be a part of our life, it's just don't overdo it. What are examples of when,

how do you know when you're overdoing tech? Like in your body, what are sensations or things that you feel? What are actions that you have towards others that you're like, oh, shoot, I think I need a little bit of a break, or I need to pull back a little bit. How do you catch yourself by noticing these things?

Like, what are these things that you're looking for? Yeah. Well, first I'll ask you now and anyone who's listening to this, you know, later on, from where you're sitting, reach out both arms, is your phone within arms reach? And if it's not, does that make you feel anxious? So I think that a simple thing that we can do to sort of understand our relationship with our devices is to understand the sort of back to phomo or fear or anxiety that we feel when we are not sort of clutching these things at all times. And so I think, I think that's just sort of like a cube that you can use. Now, this doesn't mean that tech is a problem for you, but it is revealing about how you feel about your closeness to it and your need for it and the role it plays in your life, right? I think from there, if you are, you know, avoiding seeing people in real life because you'd rather see them online or because you feel like you've seen them online because you've voyeuristically see them online. And you can't think to when the last per time you've actually seen that person is. I think when you can't bring yourself to put it down before bed, even though you know it's disrupting your sleep significantly. And it's not just the blue lights from the devices, everyone. It's actually been shown to be the stimulation that's coming from the content itself that you're kind of taking in and the rapidity or the pace at which you're taking in that content. And then for someone like, you know, I write about this patient in the book. It's she was having panic attack.

She had had a history of anxiety. Both I and her psychiatrist had tried different prescription medications to try to manage her anxiety. And this is not too many people, but there are some people for whom those medications just like don't work. They just don't do anything. And so she'd been sort of, we've been through the whole list. And I was kind of hitting a while with her. I was, we weren't sure what to do.

She was really not sleeping. And we were able to recognize just by a sort of like, well, what else is going on? How are you spending your time? Are you on like social media a lot? Are you looking at the news a lot? And this is during pandemic. So of course, everybody's like lewd. And she told me she's spending like many, many, many hours a day on these platforms. I was like, listen, this is kind of my hell Mary. But I was like, why don't you take a beat and take this week and just like delete all the apps for a week? News, social, all the things. And within a week, her panic attacks were dramatically better. She was sleeping again. So she decided to keep going for a month. And basically her anxiety. was completely erased. I mean, she'll always have a propensity to it. It'll always be something we need to look out for. But she was a woman in her 20s had no idea the degree to which her nervous system was sort of captured by these platforms and kind of hijacked by these platforms and really needed to set more extreme boundaries around with it. So another thing that you can do,

if you're really curious about it, it's just take a week's break from it and see what happens. On the topic of taking a break, I want to talk about, I want to shift to fasting. So give us your download on intermittent fasting and there's been a lot of great conversations about it because of the explosion of the literature that's out there there's also been some conversations about how especially different people can personalize it how women might need to personalize it for you know their lifestyle and and also adding the layer of you know how you practice it in your own life i'm not sure if you're doing it how much is is happening right now based on you know having just had a kid uh but yeah tell tell us about intermittent and fasting and what parts of you excite excite you about it

and what parts do you want people to personalize for themselves? Yeah. So I write about fasting in the book because it's a practice that can help you cultivate more clarity, more energy. And I know that pretty much everyone wants more of both of those things, right? So what are some eating practices beyond the foods of yourself, themselves that you're eating that you can do? And intermittent fasting for a lot of people works really well.

Now, it's not for everybody. I don't do it pregnant, trying to get pregnant. Breastfeeding. I'm currently breastfeeding. So there's no fasting for me right. now. I know that there's a lot of people for whom a history of an eating disorder, a negative relationship with food, there are certain people for whom fasting can be really triggering and it's not appropriate. There are some other health conditions where it cannot be so great.

You want to look into those and I'll talk about keto in a minute versus pure fasting. But for most people, most people, a 16-hour fast, which is you finish dinner by 8 p.m. we don't eat again until the next day at noon, it's totally doable. You're just missing breakfast. And some people like to add to that, like a coffee or a tea, blended with some fats like medium-train triglycerides, and that can give you even more of an energy and focus and clarity boost. And I think it's a really potentially helpful practice.

It's been shown to more prolonged types of fasting, like a week of a ketogenic diet where you would be in ketosis. You're not fasting in the sense that you're not eating, but you're fasting in the sense that 75% of your calories are more from fat, and that puts your body into a state of ketosis where you're burning fat for fuel instead of carbs for fuel, which is most of us are constantly a state where we're burning carbs for fuel. There's really interesting evidence there that this can clean up dead cells, that this can help your body kill off cancer cells, that it can lower inflammation in the body,

and people can also feel really good on it when it comes to clarity, energy focus. And so an intermittent fast that's 16 hour appropriate, not for everyone, but for a lot of people to try. And I personally, when I'm not pregnant or breastfeeding, which frankly has like not been that much in the past two years, but I'm 2022 is my year. I'm going to be back there and I will definitely be intermittent fasting in a couple days a week. When it comes to a more prolonged fast, I generally like a keto fast because I think that it's manageable, it's doable, it's doable. I'm eating. I'm not hungry. And you can do keto the right way or you can do keto maybe like not so much the right way. So you've had various people probably talk about this, but there's some great books out there on, how to do keto while not like eating bacon and cream cheese for five days or whatever, because that's just like

not good for your body, making sure you're incorporating vegetables, still getting 75% of your calories from fat. And what I'll recommend do myself periodically. For me, it's more like one. a year, but I find for some patients, depending what their goals are, maybe up to four times a year, doing what I call keto sprint. So five-day keto fast or keto experience is kind of a really nice pause, a really nice reset. And a lot of people experience benefit from that. And the research is really compelling. What I don't recommend, there are definitely folks out there. Maybe they're just like more overachievers or, you know, goal oriented than I am. But I'm not, There isn't enough research out there for me to feel good about somebody being on a ketogenic diet

as a lifestyle long, long term. I know people do it. I know there's biohackers who do it. As a medical doctor, I'm pretty conservative. And I think that, you know, we really don't know enough about that. Well, we have a few more minutes here because I literally could go in, you know, for another hour. And I have like a whole list of questions that I've drafted up based on the book. The book is out.

We have the link in the show notes here. State change, end anxiety, beat burnout, and ignite a new. baseline of energy and flow also features your 30-day plan inside of it. While we have a few more minutes, while I have you here before you go on to your next interview, what do you want to talk about? What is some part that you feel like is not getting attention, is a little bit underrated in our current climate, or you might have a new or an interesting hot take on it? You know, this was such a fun book to write because I got to go out there and research and sort of ask, like, what are the things that people need to know about that we don't know enough

about and I started writing the proposal right in the early phase of the pandemic. And you know, you might say like you crazy person writing a book in this time. But in a moment when we were all experiencing a mental health crisis, when I personally, you know, the only reason I had time for that was because like, well, my social life was gone and my travel was gone. And I was working from home. And I had then new baby two. Now I'm on to new baby three, which is crazy. But I was sort of losing it, stuck at home, unable to go anywhere. I wasn't exercising enough. And I felt claustrophobic to the point that, you know, it felt really scary. And I wanted to pull together all of the tools. And so to make sure that everybody could have a place to go to know what their

tools could be, whether they're having this feeling right now or whether they just want to optimize or whether this has been a lifelong journey. And so in that, one of the most fun chapters to write was the chapters where I talk about the new frontier. And I talk about meditation. I talk about acupuncture, energy healing, craniosacral therapy, and I talk about psychedelic medicines. Because I think that in conventional medicine, we are, we do so much well that we do well and we do it over and over again.

But we're sometimes not as open to some of the other modalities out there that have really good evidence behind them. And what psychedelics will put that aside for a moment. but what all of the energetic practices have, acupuncture, energy, healing, and even meditation, what they all have in common, what they all share, is the fact that they put your body into a healing state. That's that parasympathetic dominant state,

the side of the nervous system that allows your body to rest, digest, relax, and heal. And I talk about this as a lot, but it's because it's so important. When's the last time that you, if you're listening or you, Drew, spend an hour, well, you're amazing about this stuff, but you spend an hour of waking life in a totally relaxed state. I'll be honest with you for me. I mean, that's a big part of why I do the podcast is that all my notifications are off.

I get to sit. I get to be fully present with an incredible human being like yourself. And it's a deeply relaxing thing. And prior to that, I noticed that I was in a place like you. I have company, employees, other stuff that I get a lot of energy from being with people, being on the phone with people. And even though that gives me energy, I was not putting as much time for relaxation.

So I had to have a real conversation of how do I appropriate for my life? The same thing that everybody's asking. How do I fit in these moments that actually feel truly energizing to me? But just going back to your point, I was missing it for a big chunk. And that's why I started thinking about how do I get that? Again, this is just one of the vehicles, but I 100% agree with your point. Yeah, we have to find, I recommend an hour a day of waking life. It could be cooking.

It could be walking, right? It could be meditating. It could be a modality with another person like Reiki or acupuncture. But all of these practices work on the energetic systems of the body. And I think of it like our muscles and our bones are an organ system. And the energy system of the body is its own organ. We don't recognize it as much in Western medicine and other forms of medicine, Chinese medicine, that's how they do the body.

There's a set of meridians and their energy channels, and they're just as real as your bones and your muscles and your teeth and everything else. And so using some of these modalities that have been proven to assist us with burnout, with stress, with insomnia, with pain, with anxiety, has to become part of our medical lexicon, because there's evidence bases behind them. We can't be closed to them. And if we're facing a need of this proportion, we have to have, again, I'll talk about this all day, the tools in our tool basket.

I talk about psychedelics in the book because there's emerging research about psychedelic medicine. We're not talking recreational here. We're talking about psychedelic medicines used in a therapeutic setting, but coming out of Judd's Hopkins, NYU, and some of our most amazing preaminent research organizations, that these medicines can be game-changing for our mental health. And again, if there's evidence behind it, if it's safe and there's research, we as a medical community, I think, have a responsibility to our patients to offer them more, whether it's exercise, which, by the way, has been proven to improve mental health in 95% of the time, whereas antidepressants only make a dent about 50% of the time.

We owe it to our patients to employ these methods in the way that we treat this. And from your perspective, if you're listening, a lot of this you can just do on your own. and I think we should just know about it because I don't think that we're going to have the mental health that we want and deserve or the emotional state that we want and deserve unless some of these things become part of our lives. Absolutely. So well said. Robin, give the standard, you know, help people understand about the book. Of course, it's available everywhere and most people buy on Amazon. Of course, it's nice to support your local bookstore.

But I love Amazon. They've made our lives so much easier. Again, I think they get unfair negativity. criticism and yet 90% of Americans, you know, order from Amazon. So I love Amazon, but it's also nice to support your local bookstore. And any cool things that you're doing along with the book? Any sort of fun bonuses? Are you going to extend it further? A challenge? Is everyone going to do anything like that together? Yeah, we have all sorts of fun things. So if you're, if this is, if this is in the window as the book is coming out or just before, you know, we have some really

cool discounts and things that we give you and also an invitation to a live community event that I'm hosting. If you pre-order the book, so you'll all be invited to that. You can find the book at parsleyhealth.com slash state change. You can order it there and we're just really excited that it's coming out. And if you want to try to get your own score, your own health score, check out parsleyhealth.com slash insights, which is a place where you can get your own symptom score, understand your body a little bit better, maybe for yourself pinpoint some of the things underneath that might be going on that could be impacting your mental health on the physical level. And then follow us on all the platforms, Parsley Health, Robin Berz and MD. We share a lot of great content, a lot of it's free,

most of it's free. And I'm really excited. I've never written a book before. So it's kind of incredible to me that this has happened, but poured my heart and soul into it and poured all of the knowledge that I have from all these years of seeing patients into it. So I hope mainly that it just brings value to a lot of people out there. be number four that you've worked into the world. Exactly. And also, you know, I've shared before about parsley, recommended to people on the podcast, a lot of the people who listen have checked parsley out.

Some people have signed up for it. Just a little quick, little blurb on parsley. You know, we've talked about it a bunch, but if anybody's new, you know, what do you guys stand for and what do you want to be in the world for people who are looking for, you know, healthcare? We're the nation's largest holistic medical practice. We're available online nationwide. So you can see us from anywhere.

And we are here to help people treat and optimize their health and deal with the most common chronic conditions today, which are autoimmune, gastrointestinal issues, mental health, hormone imbalances, fertility, cardiometabolic, meaning heart health and blood sugar. Or if you're just looking to optimize your health, we're holistic medicine, available online, top doctors, top health coaches, incredible service. And it's all included in your annual membership. So, you know, my mission just briefly in creating parsley was just seeing how we really needed a service that blended the best of conventional primary care with the best of functional medicine

and blended those things together in a way that can make this medicine available out there for everyone. And that's what parsley has been about from the beginning. And I've known you for a long time. And since I first started the company and now it's sort of blows my mind. But we're nationwide. And I've seen tens of thousands of patients. And it's crazy.

So please check it out if you're looking to optimize your health, if you have a symptom that you haven't been able to figure out or know their doctor's been able to help you figure it out. If you have a chronic condition that you're looking for a home base for, that's what we do. Beautiful. Partially Health. State changed the book. Both the links in the show notes. Robin, thank you for coming on the podcast. Appreciate you and what you stand for in the world.

And excited to jam out together in the future again on the podcast. Who knows what topic will talk about. but if it could be in person, that'd be fantastic. That would be amazing. Such love to you. Thank you so much for having me today. Absolutely.