Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Can God Heal Your Gut? After His Father Died Unexpectedly, Dr. B Shares the Paternal Messages he Received from the Beyond that Propelled His Own Spirituality. Learn How Belief, Safety, and Trust Shape the Body’s Ability to Heal. | Dr Will Bulsiewicz

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

What if every health issue is actually part of the same underlying problem? In this powerful episode of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz — world-renowned gastroenterologist, gut health expert, and author of Plant Powered Plus — explains why your gut health is a story of your brain-gut connection. He shares why filling the ‘God-shaped hole’ is a biological requirement to reduce inflammation and start to heal. Skin issues, bloating, autoimmune disease, chronic pain, fatigue, brain fog, and even bloating may all be hidden symptoms of inflammation, driven by modern life, chronic stress, poor sleep, trauma, disconnection, and most importantly, a lack of spiritual connection. Dr. B shares a startling personal story of his own spiritual awakening that he had previously been too self-conscious to share. Dr. Bulsiewicz also breaks down: - Why modern convenience keeps us stuck in fight-or-flight instead of rest & digest - Practical, science-backed ways to reduce inflammation - Why health protocols help, but are never one-size-fits-all - Why the colon is your first line of defense against inflammation - Top 3 ways we’re destroying our gut microbiome - How GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy) are changing gut health, and their potential long-term risks - Importance of fiber, protein quality, diet variety, and why the Western diet fuels inflammation We also explore the powerful link between science, faith, and healing — why spirituality, purpose, and human connection measurably improve physical health, and how loneliness, trauma, and individualism damage the gut and immune system. Backed by science, we unpack how trauma causes digestive disease and why forgiveness can literally heal the body. Dr. Bulsiewicz shares his personal journey into spirituality, his emotional reconciliation with his father, and the remarkable experiences that followed his passing. If you’ve been struggling with unexplained symptoms, chronic inflammation, gut issues, fatigue, or are searching for a more whole-person approach to health, this episode may completely change how you think about healing. Try Notion, now with Notion Agent, at https://notion.com/break Dr. Will Bulsiewicz’ new book, Plant Powered Plus: https://theguthealthmd.com/plantpoweredplus/ Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When my dad passed away and my friend Mark says, I want to warn you, your dad is going to reach out to you. What? He goes, I guarantee you, your dad is going to reach out to you. I want to get back to this question of faith versus science. It's an inward choice to open up your heart and contemplate the possibility of something bigger. Dr. B is here to explain how our mental, physical, immunological, and even spiritual health are all intimately connected and connected to the gut.

You could go to five different doctors for five different health issues. What they're not going to tell you is it's all part of the same story. Inflammation. This is our mood, our cognitive health, our metabolic health, difficulty with concentration, headaches, bloating, constipation, acid reflux, acne, eczema, psoriasis. So everyone wants to know how do I become less inflamed? Here's how your brain influences your gut.

What if everything that was wrong with you is actually because of one thing? 70% of our immune systems in the lining of our gut, the gut microbiome is connected to the brain, is connected to the kidneys, is connected to the heart, is connected to the immune system. We're potentially in the middle of a revolution. I'm going to shine a light on this. I want to create the solutions. As a medical doctor, when you find something that changes your own life, how can you deny that to your patients? Hi, I'm I am Bielic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown.

Today we are merging emotional health, physical health, and spiritual health. This is the culmination of science meets spirituality. In your gut and your entire body. We're speaking to a celebrated gastroenterologist and gut health expert who has decided to write a book not just about gut health, because he has written a book about gut health, not just about how to live with your gut in mind, because he's already done that too. The book we're going to be talking about covers what it looks like to actually be healthy, not just with what you eat, but with when you eat it, how you eat it, why you eat it,

and does it matter how you feel about yourself, the universe, and God in order for you to be able to metabolize correctly? It's so powerful to hear a medical doctor talk about having a relationship with something greater than ourselves. the nature of the soul and how that doesn't actually take away from science, that science helps him feel more spiritual and connected. The person we're talking to is Dr. Will Bulsowitz. People know him as Dr. B. And he is, as we said, a fantastic gastroenterologist. And his previous books, Fiber Fueled and the Fiber Fueled Cookbook are fantastic.

We've had Dr. B on before. But his new book is called Plant Powered Plus. and it is not just a book about plant-based diets. It is not just a book of recipes. It really is an exploration of how the template that we have creates ultimately not only our gut health, but our mental health, our physical health, our immunological health, and even our spiritual health. He talks about the gut-brain connection that 95% of Americans are deficient in something

that they could be eating to help fuel their microbiome and help their, immune system. He debunks the carnivore diet. The fact that some people think you should only eat sardines, he gives the best description about ketosis that I've ever heard and why it may not be the be all and end all of health, like so many people say. In addition, he talks about the dangers of GLP ones, how big pharma is actually influencing doctors to make recommendations that could go against their patient's best interest. This episode is full of mic drops, and we are so excited to have Dr. B in person.

Dr. B, welcome back to the breakdown. Break it down. Oh, thank you so much. Great to be back. First time in person. Thank you so much for being here in person. We really love an in-person conversation, and especially given Plant Power Plus,

it feels like something that really needs to be kind of spoken about in person. So the first thing I wanted to ask about was, you know, you've written other books. you've had success with other books. You obviously are known as, for many of us, the expert, right, on all things gut, gut health and gut and immune health. But with this book, you did something different and you approached it differently. The easy question is, why did you write this book? The more complicated question is, what did you feel needed to be included in this phase of your career as a clinician? I see these books as being tools for healing. Like I sincerely believe that. Within each book for a specific person, you have what you need to be successful

in your health. And the first book was like, it's almost like a rock band and you just like have this organic first album that comes together, right? And so this was the story of the gut microbiome because I was seeing this in my clinic completely convinced as a gastroenterologist

that these people who are walking through these doors, this is their problem. Right? I understand that I make a diagnosis code. You're a bowel syndrome, constipation, acid reflux, whatever. But like to me, the root of the problem is in the gut microbiome. So that was fiber fuel. That was my first book. And after that book was so successful, there were so many people that were good people, like wonderful people who read the book, were inspired and followed the four-week protocol in the back and then go, okay, I don't feel well.

And so they come to me, like, you know, through social media and whatnot. And I'm thinking to myself, well, you know what? I want to create for you the resource that is like literally what I would do if we were working together in the clinic. Right. So that's the fiberfield cookbook. That was my second book. If you're going to address food intolerances, which is what we're talking about,

these people who like rev up their fiber intake, not feeling so hot, what's going on here, it's a food intolerance. if you're going to do that, you actually need to eat and you need to be smart and strategic about it. And so kind of the cool thing from my perspective was that there were protocols built into a cookbook. It's a very atypical thing for a cookbook. So that was 2022.

The first book was 2020. The second the cookbook was 22. Here I am and I have the opportunity. I'm blessed. I get to write books and they can change people's lives. That is an opportunity that I take for granted every single moment that I'm working on these projects. And so what can I turn,

what should I turn my attention to? To me, there's this one problem that is like a far and above the number one health related challenge of our time. That's that dot dot. One word, inflammation and ties together. You can go to five different doctors for five different health issues. They're going to give you all these different diagnoses, but what they're not going to tell you is it's all part of the same story.

which is inflammation. It's driving these, driving these health conditions. And so, and like, this is just autoimmune disease, although it is allergic disease, but there's also so much more. This is our mood. This is our cognitive health. This is both men's and women's hormonal balance hormonal health. This is our metabolic health, which we know we got a problem with that in America. Right. And most importantly, this is our immune health. So, um, So I basically made the decision. I'm going to take this issue, inflammation, which I see as the root of the problem. And I'm going to shine a light on this.

I want to show you the story of like what this is all about. And I want to create the solutions because that's what people are ultimately yearning for. And that becomes the book that ultimately like builds towards the protocol in the back. You know, there have been so many moments, especially when we talk about gut health and health in general. There have been so many moments where we realized, oh, we should have been. paying attention to this. Oh, we should have been paying attention to that. And we've kind of like made our way through it, right? Don't need processed foods, right? Don't need ultra-processed foods. Too much meat is not good, but like do we need that like there's all these decisions to make.

It seems like when we talk about inflammation, we're potentially in the middle of a revolution in the way that we approach health in general and not just gut health. One of the core, like ideas in this book is that there was a pattern to life as humans that we basically like lived a certain way with minor variations on that concept for millions years and then very quickly in the last 100 years we upended all of it and we call this new pattern of life normal and it's not it never was it's unlike anything that our grandparents experienced. So I would imagine that your grandparents were probably similar age. My grandparents were born 1918, like, around World War I time.

And it's like, there were no cars. They were walking or riding their bike to school. They were outdoors every single day. There was no television at that point. Like you had to go to a movie theater, which was a rare event. If you wanted a Coke, you had to save your money up to get that Coke. That was a special thing. right it did exist but like you had to save your money to get access to that special thing right um so

there is so much about the way in which they live their lives so electricity was like a brand new thing right and now here we are in seven hours a day on tablets and devices for the average adult in the United States that like didn't exist in the 1990s seven hours a day I mean you could also say you know when my grandparents and when our grandparents were young like people were we're also dying of routine things that maybe they didn't need to. And they didn't have education at their fingertips and they didn't have all of the possibility that technology allows. I mean,

I'm just sort of like playing devil's advocate here. I certainly am not arguing that it's like a total regression, right, of life. Like there's clearly been progress on many different levels. But what we're also talking about are diseases of affluence, right? Which is that as we've become richer, we've become actually more disconnected from what our natural biology is designed to do. And so all of those things, you know, access to food is, like, it's wonderful that we have greater access to food. And it's wonderful that we have comfortable air-conditioned homes and all these things. But at some point, you cross a line

where these things are the comforts of our life, the ease of our life, has actually created problems. Well, and Gabon-Mate talks about, I mean, he literally wrote a book called The Myth of normal, right? All of these things that we've been told, like, oh, it's normal for most people in the United States to be on three medications, right? By the time you're whatever it is, 45, there's like some astounding statistic. Can you tell us a little bit, in particular as a, you know, as a clinician, what ails us? What are you seeing that we are bearing the brunt of physically that has changed in the last hundred years? Let's take this core concept of inflammation and let's just kind of like go down the line and think about some of the symptoms. And, you know,

we can all sort of like listen to this list and ask the question, how does it affect me? Right. And just to be clear, before we start this, like, these can be subtle symptoms that aren't necessarily something that you have gone to your health care provider for. There are things that you just think, oh, that's how my body works. That's how I am. That's my normal, right? That's my normal.

So, so starting from the top, going all the way down. This is a fun game. Yeah. You could have difficulty with concentration, right? or like be distracted, you could have brain fog, you could have headaches, you could have congestion in your nose. That might be like a more severe thing like seasonal allergies, but it also could be like, hey, I get congested at night, I can't breathe, right? You could have skin outbreaks. That's my favorite time to not breathe. At night? Well, we could talk about this. There's actually

there's a reason why. Yeah. Skin like outbreaks, many different, actually many different skin conditions. So acne, you know, of course, that's common. That's inflammation. Uh, exosom. psoriasis, these are inflammatory skin conditions. The things that when you go to your standard dermatologist, they're like, put cortisone on it, and you're like, it goes away and I'm fine, and we don't need to talk about it. That's skin. Well, yeah, cortisone is a steroid. You're basically suppressing the immune system, and then magically everything gets better.

In terms of our gut, you could have bloating as a classic symptom, constipation, diarrhea, you could have acid reflux. So increased urinary frequency, other urinary symptoms. In men, erectile dysfunction, in women, we have to talk about, you know, fertility and perimenopause and menopause, these things, these things are having a moment right now. And it's not just women having a voice. It's more than that. It's also that these things are becoming a bigger problem. Well, I mean, chronic pain, you know, autoimmune conditions, right? I was also thinking, like, systemic, like my body doesn't work. I mean, the number of women I know who are, you know,

either having thyroid issues or about to have thyroid issues, combining that with perimenopause and menopause and then a variety of other autoimmune conditions. Right, or joints, right? So joints and it could be like, hey, I just have arthritis, right? It could be body aches, muscle aches. It could be recovery after exercise. Could be the ability to perform exercise. What if everything that was wrong with you is actually because of one thing? To be clear that, you know, I'm not making the claim that the only thing that causes these particular symptoms is inflammation, but it could be. For an individual person, right? You could be going to five different doctors and being like, what's wrong with my stomach and what's wrong with this and what's wrong with that and I need this

to suppress this. The number one symptom of inflammation, like with clarity is fatigue. It's fatigue. Like basically like you feel exhausted. Like I don't wake up feeling rested. Well, insomnia is another one as well. Right. But even still, like that's a thing that they often ask you on questionnaires. Do you feel rested when you? I'm like, oh, are you supposed to? Difficulty losing weight, blood sugar out of control, high blood pressure, blood lipids out of control. These are all inflammatory health conditions. So our mood, our mood being affected, we could just keep going forever. Yeah. Miami-Belix breakdown is supported by superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful.

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Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention Miami-Mialix break. down to help support the show. So everyone wants to know, of course, like, how do I become less inflamed? And it seems as though there are many different directions to get there, but what strikes us with your book is that it's one of a growing body, a growing voice amongst, quote-unquote, traditional medical practitioners. And I don't mean traditional as in the same. I mean that you've been trained. You operate in a Western medical system, but you're expanding what it means to be healthy.

And one of those things that you include is the idea of the emotional components of being well. You talk about a core self. You talk about the soul in your book. Can you describe the mission of this book as it relates to the entire person and what that means to you? I think that Jonathan, I think the healing comes in many forms, right? And ultimately healing for the individual person. So one of the things that I wrote in the very front of the book, which is the author's note, is I said,

listen, it's impossible for me to write a different book for every single person. So it's going to be one book. But what I hope is that you will hear it differently and uniquely to you. So for that person who's reading my book, I hope that they come to these moments

where there's an aha moment, where they're like, hey, this is the thing that's missing for me. And as I look out across our country, across the globe, honestly, right now, I see a lot of pain. And I see a lot of loneliness. And if we could address those issues, that is, in fact, healing. And we can get into, it's not a woo-woo thing. It's not disconnected from what our physiology is. In fact, like I describe with total clarity, here's the way that it works.

Here's how your brain influences your gut, right? So these things, our emotions, ultimately are captured by our body and they can be manifested in our health. So it's important for people to understand that. Can you talk a little bit about some of these emotional patterns that you see? You know, this is something that Gabur Mante talks about in his book and even, you know, Vandercoop talks about what are some of the profiles that you see in terms of disease and emotional processing? One of the things that I discuss is my mentor who was at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Douglas Strassman, who was a pioneer in the space. And he was very interesting because he merged psychiatry with medicine, right? Medicine meaning like internal medicine gastro neurology.

Brought those two things together. And now there's these ideas that are accepted. but like he was the one that made them acceptable because he was published in the papers in the 90s about the impact of trauma on the manifestation of irritable bowel syndrome. Oh, and nobody wanted to hear about that, meaning nobody wanted to think, oh, what your parents did to you is causing your health problems. Get over it. You're fine. It must be something else. It's the food you're eating.

Well, even the food that you're eating is typically not what a doctor says. I mean, look, it's the healthcare system. It's hard for doctors. A lot of them are burning out because they're not allowed to actually work the way they want to work. So, but that being said, you know, because of the training and because of the time constraints, it's actually quite common for people to be dismissed and told like, you're just stressed out, right? Stop stressing out so much. I mean, I've had a bazillion people who have come to me and told me this is what my doctor said.

And no, there's a lot more to your story. It's not just that. A lot of people have heard trauma as it relates to the functioning of their, bodies and but like you do an amazing job at talking about the mechanisms which I think we need to unpack to have it be more understandable and accessible but there's something even almost more spiritual in this book which again is something that we both relate to and I think our audience really relates to you know since we first spoke to the podcast has gone into really the intersection of science and spirituality where there isn't enough data like there's a lot emerging but

there isn't a clarity necessarily to be like, this causes affect this, and oh, there's an afterlife, and oh, we need to, our soul is guiding. Yeah, God is real. And we're guiding us in some way. So I want to take a little bit of time to sort of unpack this area because people, they're collecting protocols like crazy, right? There are a lot of four-hour podcasts on the internet, and there's note systems, and they're digesting these notes, and AI is creating protocol systems.

And people need that, right? They need a protocol system, but you've said you've seen people do everything right and it not work. I think that actually what we're talking about here, there is no protocol for, right? Because it's actually where you're at and where your focus and intention is in a quiet moment. Right. And what's happening with your heart? Like are you closed off, right? And rejecting the possibility of something greater.

Or are you willing to open up your heart? heart. And this is not, by the way, this is not a call to organized religion or a specific religion, right? This is more to say, I mean, there's a conversation there. We could have, we could talk about that. That's a separate thing. But this is more so from my perspective, every single human that has lived on this planet grapples with the same questions. Who am I? Where did I come from? What does it all mean? What is my purpose? And what's going to happen when I'm gone? Right? Like we're grappling as adults with these questions. And what's fascinating to ponder

is that every single civilization in human history has come to the same conclusion. There must be something greater. There must be something greater. Well, that's not the rational decision, right? That's not the rational conclusion. The rational conclusion would be,

what I see is what exists. There's nothing more, and that's it. Right? So how did we land there? It's so interesting to think about that. And, you know, I think that there's Jonathan this natural tension that will always exist between science and faith. And I'm here to say that you will never be able to get, like, there will always be a requirement for faith because we're never going to figure it all out.

And in a way, the more that we figure out in terms of science, the more that I'd become, at least for me, convinced, it's too perfect. It all makes too much sense. There's no way that this is a chance. Science says that our source system was created with a big bang. I mean, you can absolutely accept that. And I wouldn't call you crazy for that. I feel pretty good about it. And that would be, and that would be fine. But you could also have a more biblical view that, no, something, some higher power created this for us, right? And I actually think that among those two theories, like, you could say they're both crazy or you could say neither of them are crazy. Well, they're also not mutually exclusive.

Like for me, my kind of concept is that, you know, whatever power there is created the Big Bang, created the ability for us to facilitate all this thing. And that, you know, the Torah or, you know, the Old Testament is not a science book per se, right? It's an explanation of an attempt to make people understand a concept that is so enormous that we will never fully understand it. To that end, when a child is young, right, their brain is only capable of processing certain things. So when the parent leaves the room, they don't have the ability to understand that their parent is going in the other room, right? And they're going to come back in two seconds. They think they just lost their parent. They're freaked out.

Right. Right. That's all of our existence as humans. Over existence. Like, what if there's something more that we as humans are just not capable of processing? But what I come back to and what I described in the book, and this to me was like probably my favorite moment was the very end of chapter eight. Chapter eight, first of all, is my favorite chapter I've ever written. It's very special. It's almost its own little book. Like it's its own little moment. It's a moment. I had things that I needed to get off my chest. Yeah. You could have started chapter one with that. I would have loved it too.

I think it's a great ending to the book, though. Right? Like you you come through. this whole thing, yes, we're talking science and nerdiness and all these things. And then you come to this place where, no, no, no, hold on. Let's like get more human. But fundamentally, like, let's just think about the principles of health for a second. If we started with eight and said, if everything's going great in your life, don't worry about it. But if it's not and you're looking at protocols and you're thinking about what to do, let's explore this part of your life. What does it mean to feel a connection to something greater? What does it mean to not feel isolated, even if you haven't managed to get the best social connections that you feel fueled by? I mean, you haven't built the perfect

family. There's strife. But like, what if we looked at these aspects of our life as the blinking red light to say, look at these areas because they may be influencing you biologically? It's not just this thing that would be nice to have. Well, that's, yeah. And if I can put it, you know, in an even simpler way, why should we care? And what I mean is why should we care what Dr. B thinks about our spiritual life? I mean, I think that's really the unique aspect of what you created with this book. It's not just why do you care, it's why should we care. I've got so many blood tests to take, and I've got so many doctors, and I have so many this, and I have to do this telehealth, and I got to learn a new portal to do it. How on earth could my health improve from

understanding chapter 8. I can walk you through the physiology of what's there, right? Which is that it's really a story of the brain gut connection. So where our brain is constantly influencing what's happening inside of our gut and vice versa. It's a two-way connection, constant communication. They're basically best friends. All right. But we are hardwired with this, what we describe is the autonomic nervous system, which is disease. designed to allow us to react to the context of our life and react in ways that like you don't have to think it your body just does it like it or not right so you get cut off your heart rate goes up right you have to go up on stage and give a talk you're you can feel hear your heart

pounding right so um you just got bad news right all of these different things are basically activations of this defense system that we developed to protect ourselves called the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is, if I were to describe it in one word, it's adrenaline, right? It's adrenaline. It's basically activation. Get up and go.

Right. So if in theory, we were living out in the wilderness. It's run. It's fight. You are basically given the energy source that you need in that moment to survive because you need like a burst of energy to pull through, right? So that's the sympathetic nervous.

system. Now the problem is that we live in a world where it's on sympathetic overdrive. So basically we wake up. We're getting hit with, like we flip open our phone, we're on Twitter or whatever it may be, and we're already getting hit with sympathetic stimulation, right, because we're upset or we're seeing things that are triggering us. We're making us mad. We're getting activated, right? And then you go to your job and like basically you're getting activated your job because you've got that friend of me who's trying to undermine. you even though they're smiling to your face. Or you're unhappy at your job because it's actually not speaking to what your soul needs.

100%. Right. Which is a big part of what chapter 8 is about. It's like those, the need for connections and purpose. You go through the course of your day and there's like all these moments where like we're being asked to run fast on this hamster wheel, basically. Like we're asked to go super hard. I at least, I'll speak for myself.

I wake up. I'm going from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. And the only way to disrupt that is to be intentional and to actually flip to the opposite side, which is the parasympathetic nervous system, which basically is rest and digest. So when we flip over to the parasympathetic nervous system, and there's a number of ways that we can do this. If sympathetic is adrenaline, this is like that nobody's chasing you, you have time. How do you feel safe? You feel safe.

Like safe would be the word for parasympathetic, right? so then you can get nice and comfortable. And within that context. Deep breaths. Breathing. Yeah. So diaphragmatic breathing is a classic way that you can basically teach your body to activate the parasympathic nervous system.

But then there's all these other things that we think of. Like there's like spa like stuff, right, where you go and you get a massage or you get acupuncture. But that's stressful for a lot of us. You've got to talk to people, go places, BC. That's actually, that can be an adrenaline-fueled situation. Right? You're like, I'm going to go have all the self-compluct.

care and it's going to be amazing, but you know, but you have trauma and actually don't like to be touched, right, by a stranger. So all these things. So you're not just talking about that kind of resting. Or it's expensive and you're like, oh my God, I just... Well, we're not talking about vacation resting. We're talking about like internal rest. But these things can potentially put you into a parasympathetic state or like a sauna, right? You get into a sauna, you get nice and relaxed, right? But there's also these other elements that are like more about manifestations of human connection to other people. Right?

So like holding hands, hugging, kissing, right? Like expressing how you feel about a person. Like actually these things will activate your parisysmal.

Connection. Human connection. And then there's the spiritual elements where like basically it's been shown that prayer or reading from whatever scripture you prefer or singing hymns, right?

That the, or like actually going to a church service, right? A religious service. That these different expressions of your spirituality actually can activate the parasympathetic nervous system. And here's where we are in terms of the data. Basically, like, we just talked about human connection.

Okay. Over 50% prior to the pandemic, over 50% of Americans reported feeling lonely. That's a lot of Americans before the pandemic. Before the pandemic. So we, I mean, it stands to reason that it got worse. Moneliness is not to be brushed off or dismissed because it's been shown that the sentiment of feeling lonely is on par with smoking 15 cigarettes per day.

So like in terms of the impact on your health and your mortality, that's what we're talking about. What's the mechanism? We are such, Jonathan, we are such social creatures and we can't shake that. Even the introverts, even the ones that are like, I get stressed around, I just want to be left alone in my house. They still would love to feel safe at home,

with other people that they care, right? They may not want to go out in public. Everybody wants to be understood. Everybody wants to feel they have their people, their person, their moment, their place. Think about where we came from, right? Which was that like basically, right, we came from tribes. And the tribe, the essential unit of a tribe was your family. And then the broader tribe was essentially like a conglomerate of several families.

Right. It was like a family of families. Right. That's where we came from. And within that context, survival was the most important thing. There was no house, there was no money. So the measure of wealth for the vast majority of human history was actually the size of your family and how connected you were to other people. Because if you had that, you were more likely to survive. Resources, support,

things like that. All of the things, right? You try comes under attack. You can support one other. you get sick, you have people to take care of you, right? They don't just leave you behind. So, right? So this is where we come from. Okay, so then like applied this idea to the modern world. And if you were to isolate a person, it's like basically you're inflicting, you're inflicting emotional harm on them.

Like I would argue that like to, to ostracize a person is emotional abuse. But all of society has been set up to isolate people more and more. Does that make it right? Absolutely, but it's like an alarm bell that should be going off. Everyone should be living in their little apartments, separated from one another with no common space. Like the Parks Department used to spend 3% of GDP. Now they spend like 0.2% on GDP on public spaces and in large cities. This is one of the ideas that I discuss in the book is that we've embraced two concepts that I actually think are a mistake.

Right. And don't get me wrong. I'm guilty. So I'm not casting stones here. I'm just saying like culturally. we've slipped up. And those two concepts are number one, individualism and number two, materialism. So individualism basically is the idea that we have to go and individually prove our self-worth.

So that means leaving the home, going off, and I think particularly men, like, we feel a pressure to do this. Not being dependent on other people, right? Being self-supporting. Right. Yeah. So, like, we, I mean, you could completely, like, insult to person. by being like, you're the guy who lives in your mom's basement, right? So, but that's a cultural thing.

Like we basically are saying it's unacceptable that you haven't broken off to do your own thing on an individual basis. So then that sets us off where now we're like going out. We're focused on basically like separating into our own space, proving our worth. Now I'm in my own home. I don't live with my parents anymore. My parents are not allowed to come and live with me because that would be a sign of weakness, right?

I'm doing my own thing. They're doing their own thing. Right. And then the materialism side is basically the pursuit of wealth to, to like outwardly demonstrate your value, right? I am worth something because of the car that I drive, because of the size of the home that I have, because of the clothes that I wear. What I can offer. What I can offer. And don't get me wrong. I want to look nice, right? I'm not like going to, I'm not going to like sacrifice that. But I also am like basically the product of this cultural phenomenon where we value individualism. We value materialism. But in this process, there are tradeoffs.

right, because at some point, the pursuit of those two things pushes you so far that basically you have made the decision that you're going to sacrifice relationships in the interest and it's getting harder, right? Value, like basically, wealth has gone down. So now for us to sustain the lifestyle of our parents, we have to work harder and the generation below us, it's even harder for them. So the mechanism, if we're oversimplifying, is that those signals of isolation then drive our body to be in a stress state and that stress is causing inflammation. Tell us. Because you never feel safe. You never feel safe. Even when you think, oh, I just locked my door at night and I have my gun in the safe and I'm protecting my castle and look how hard I've worked, I don't feel safe.

Can you give us a physiological explanation for what happens to a body when it is lonely? Well, so it's basically like going to set you into this sympathetic state. So, you know, whether it's loneliness or we could actually broaden this conversation to trauma. to say that they've actually done brain studies on people who were subjected to trauma. And what they find is that there's a specific part of the brain that lights up, which is the amygdala. And the amygdala is our fear center, which gets activated. You know much more about this than I do, my own.

But so you could absolutely teach this part. But basically this is the part of our brain that gets activated when we get scared, right? But like basically what we're saying is the person who's been subjected to trauma, they live in that fearful state, right? And so basically what we're, what we see is that in this context, it's like if sympathetic overdrive is basically like too often you're pushing your foot on the accelerator, right?

These people, it's a lead foot. And it's just like the accelerator is down and it's never letting up. Well, the other thing it leads to with, which Johan Hari talks about is that you're now predisposed to all these. ways in which to try and cope with that feeling. So I'm going to be more prone to scrolling online for seven hours a day. And I'm then going to be angry at all the content that I see,

which is only going to make me more stressed, or I'm going to shop, or I'm going to be addicted to gambling and sports betting, which is now proliferating. And also, you know, the dietary choices that you make from a place of loneliness are different, right? Meaning if you have less time, less motivation to cook, to be out, to be buying fresh produce, right? To be cooking for yourself, taking that time and effort. That's, to me, though, kind of a secondary, you know, set of effects. What's happening when you're in sympathetic overdrive is all the things that we know. It leads to inflammation, right? It leads to also the breakdown of kind of like the aspects of cellular repair that most of us rely on to sort of keep the body together, right?

So you're you're then more prone to these other kind of like diseases of loneliness, right? Well, to close the loop, and by the way, I kind of think you were both saying the same thing in different realms, right? So basically, you're both describing junk in the sense of like if you have a bad night's rest, what do you want for breakfast, right? You're not going to cook that like that healthy meal. You're going to go and find that donut, right? You want junk food, right? But then like Jonathan, what you were just describing to me was junk food for the soul. Right.

Like you're, that is a person who's starving for a purpose and an understanding and what they're there for and they're not aligned. And because they're not aligned, they're out there searching for that sadly, like desperately, right? So, um, so I kind of think we're talking about the same thing. And just to close the loop, because I want to make sure that I'm totally clear on, like, what are the effects on the gut? And how does this relate to the immune system?

So there's a core thesis in the book. which is that the gut microbiome, these 38 trillion microbes, mostly in our colon, that is actually our first line of defense. My colon is my first line of defense. Your microbes inside of your colon is your first line of defense. And we know this, myome, because if I were to give you antibiotics, your risk of developing an infection actually goes up dramatically. Right.

So when you destroy those microbes and you break down that first line of defense, you actually expose yourself to risk of other infections. And then the second layer of defense is the gut lining, so which we call the gut barrier, which when it breaks down, I might call it increased intestinal permeability. People commonly refer to this as weaky gut. I think that's completely fair game. So, and when you have leaky gut, then things can sneak across this gut barrier that's supposed to be, like there to basically protect us and keep the bad stuff out. Things can sneak across and they can get access to our bloodstream. But before it gets to our bloodstream, that's where our immune system lives. 70% of our immune systems in the lining of our gut. So then our third layer of defense is our immune system, which steps up to defend and protect. But when the immune system becomes activated, that's inflammation. Right. So inflammation is the activation of the immune system. So when we're in sympathetic overdrive, we actually sacrifice our gut health. We sacrifice our gut barrier because in that moment where survival is essential,

That's not the priority, right? That can wait till later. But unfortunately, when we're always in sympathetic overdrive, then basically we're just continuing to progressively sacrifice those things. And when you disrupt the gut microbiome, you're going to disrupt the gut barrier. And when you do that, you're going to basically activate inflammation. This is how you land in this place. What are the three most common ways that we are disrupting our gut microbiome?

Ultra-processed foods would be probably the first thing that I would say. The second thing that I would say is our stomachs, circadian rhythm is completely out of whack. We were designed to have a daily pattern, a daily rhythm, and we're not even doing the basics in terms of allowing our body to even know what time of day it is. So our body's totally confused and flailing. And then the third thing that I would say is getting back to this idea of like sympathetic overdrive, whether that be trauma or feeling lonely or not being aligned with your purpose, all of those things can basically put you into a sympathetic state. You say spiritual health and people who have a spiritual practice have significantly

less substance abuse, better coping with illness and adversity, less depression and anxiety, lower blood pressure, fewer strokes, fewer heart disease, less Alzheimer's, and they live longer. I am not proposing a hack. I am proposing an honest conversation with yourself. So I'm not even proposing an outward participation in religion. I'm proposing that it's an inward choice to in a quiet moment, open up your heart and contemplate the possibility of something bigger. I have a very personal connection to this because there were definitely times early in my career. I had a kid when I was 29. I was at that same time trying to start a career in Hollywood in a shrinking economy. And there was a reality, right? Like there was a financial reality of like,

I have a kid. I have a wife. I have bills to pay. And I'm like, I'm stressing the heck out. My mind is racing all the time. And it was the worst I'd ever felt. I was depressed. I was angry.

I couldn't really enjoy the just unbelievable blessing that was this young child in my life because I was just like constantly revving and I didn't know how to slow down. And so as pressures of the world increase, it's like kind of easy to say we have to find ways to slow ourselves and find ways to let access the parasympathetic systems, right? Because, and a lot of people are like, okay, I hear that. But then like, also my car is being towed and all these things are happening and like, how do I actually do it? But you're not suggesting a hack. You're suggesting that we need to actually find like a larger purpose for our lives because without that, like without some context, without being able to just even in a micro moment,

start to connect to something else, like it feels like a lot of people are lost. Completely agree that it feels like people are lost. And this is why I felt compelled to write this. And the other reason I felt compelled to write this, my own, because you kind of asked me like, why did you feel like you had to do this? Is that, you know, my personal story is like about healing myself and discovering things that like changed my life. And as a medical doctor, when you find something that changes your own life, how could

you deny that to your patient? right so and you know with with that in mind um i think that so first of all being an adult is hard too much paperwork it's it's just non-stop right and so and i feel like it has gotten harder and gotten more complicated as time has gone on there's more financial pressure than they used to be right um that being said if there is a priority in our life like i'm a true believer of this i just like let's keep it real for a minute if something really matters to you, let your actions show that, right? So whereas if you say that something it matters to you, but then that's not the way that you live your life, how could we believe

that that's actually true? Right. So if it matters to you to create space and time to spend with that child, you figure out a way. You're never going to be perfect. None of us are, but you're figuring out some sort of way to create the space and time that you need for that connection to mature and be special, right? And the same is true with this idea of spiritual purpose. I'm not asking for you to give three hours a day. I'm saying that if you take 10 minutes in the morning as a part of your morning routine, you will feel the difference.

It could be that small. I mean, the thing that happened for me was that I actually got connected to a spiritual center and they had one evening a week that was like a $25 drop in. And I would just start to go and I started to make connections and I started to have and be a part of conversations that were helping me see a different way of being. And it was not, you know, it was like instead of date nights, we started going there and that started to build a practice of, you know,

instantiating that into our lives instead of just like going, going, going, going. So like there are ways that people can find community, can take 10 minutes that you don't have to change your entire life, which I think people can feel overwhelmed by. To people who have never experienced this, it feels very distant and they're not sure if they even want to check it out, right? And I can only speak for my own experience, which is that I was raised Catholic, but it wasn't inspired. We went to church for an hour once a week. Check that box. You did what you were responsible. supposed to do as a Catholic. So my family's Polish. Yes. And when I graduated high school,

I went off to college and I didn't go. I didn't go to church. I didn't feel any real connection to God. Like it didn't actually mean anything. It was just the practice, the thing that we did every week. And so, and I went through this entire period of time where I was struggling and trying to figure out my life. And when I wrote fiber-fueled, my first book, it was very easy. It was very easy, for me to share the part that I'm not ashamed of, which is, hey, I changed my diet. I lost 50 pounds, right? Like, look at all these wonderful things that came from me replacing my junk food diet with a healthy plant-based diet. Look at all these wonderful things. And so I gave it to my patients, right? But, like, actually, that was not a completely honest conversation because there were things

that I was too ashamed to share. The things that you were afraid to share were those. things that you were conscious of but felt like it didn't have anything to do with the rest of your experience as a doctor? Or were you afraid to share those things? There's a few things, Ma'am. Number one, I think that we mature at a different rate within different parts of our life. So it's kind of like intelligence. I think that there's many forms of intelligence. It's not just like, are you book smart? And so, With that maturity, like my food maturity, like what I ate, my diet, it was easy. Like 2012 to 2015, 16, boom, I was in business.

Like, I was thriving, right? But what was lagging was specific relationships in my life, which I discussed in chapter eight and also my relationship with higher power with God. Like, that's what was lacking, right? And it needed to be dealt with. If we're going to go there, let me come out and be honest. Because my hope is that there's people out there that are going to read this and it inspires them to make choices. Right.

So I came from a broken home. When I was seven years old, my, and let me just say, my father is deceased. My mom is a wonderful person. I dedicated this book to her. And she went to night school to provide for me and my brother. So she's an incredible human. When I was seven years old, second grade, one day, out of the blue, my mom picks me up with the van packed. We leave Syracuse, New York, and we drive about seven hours away.

Without your dad. My dad was not there, right? So all I knew was we reconstituted our life. I was at a different school, completely different people. I'm just thinking about your sympathetic nervous system. Because also when you think of how children deal with this information, right, it's a whole different school. It's a whole different ballgame. So a little different ball game because kids...

You have to compartmentalize it. Kids lack the maturity or the life experience to be able... I mean, and the cognitive maturity, right? Like your brain is developing. Sure. Right. So, yeah, so we end up at this different place. And basically the court system says, you have to come back to Syracuse, New York.

So we go back to Syracuse and the way that the court dealt with this. This is the 1980s. Yeah. It was new. Was basically to say, hey, there's three boys. Will is the oldest. Let's like, let's basically assign counselors,

psychologists, you know, let's put him in a room with them, have them spend time with him. And hear what he says or what comes from him and then use that information to figure out this custody battle that's happening, right? So,

well, the problem was like, so I'm like doing these weird exercises where they got me drawing pictures and, right and I'm seven years old but I'm smart enough to understand what's going on here which is that my parents are having a fight and the court is going to figure out and what I say ultimately ends up in that place and I'm not going to hear it myself but the words that I use are going to ultimately affect what happens in that place a lot of pressure responsibility I went through this and you know let me say like because I haven't made this clear yet that actually like

my dad, I didn't understand, like, that he was a great dad. And he was trying so hard. And I couldn't see that. And when I think there's something psychologically, many of us are products of divorce, many of us. I hope for as many people as possible that it was amicable. In this case, it was not. I'd be curious if other people can relate to this psychologically that in that contact,

you feel pressure to choose a side. Like you're going to choose the winner because then you're going to psychologically rationalize that this is the person who is good and the other one is not. And that's why I spoke the way I did and make the choices that I did. So you choose a team. So this created a rift between me and my dad. And I held him accountable for the things that was happening to us as a family, which is that we were poor.

You crafted a story, right, that made sense. Right. We were going through a hard time as a family, right? This was like really sad what we were going through, right? And this is your fault, dad, right? You weren't man enough. You weren't man enough to step up. You should have handled this, right, as the leader of this house.

You should have made sure that we were all okay, that mom was okay. So that was in my mind what was going on. And that led to a rift between me and my dad. And as I grew older, my parents, so my parents were divorced. My mom, she went back to school. My mom, by the way, Miami would love her. She had a chemistry degree in the 1970s, a master's degree in chemistry in the 1970s as a woman. And she went back to law school.

And she went to nighttime school, right, to provide for our family. Because when the divorce happened, all of our money went into the divorce. She went to night school on loans, got a law degree, and became a patent attorney. and ultimately ends up becoming a vice president of General Electric. That's crazy. Unbelievable. So, and she just, she's grinding it, right? Like, my work ethic is pure from my mom.

And so, anyway, but in order for that to happen, we moved two and a half hours away. So then I started to, like, basically, hey, dad, I can't hang out with my friends because I have to come to your house. Hey, dad, I want to play basketball. I want to be good at basketball and thrive on this team, but I can't do that because I have to, every other weekend to come to your house, right? So basically it creates this rift between me and my dad. And there were things that sort of happened. But again, a lot of this was just me with a narrative in my mind.

Because what I want the listeners at home to understand is like, this is the dad that on the weekend by himself was taking three boys camping in the Adirondack Mountains all weekend. I didn't understand how hard that could be until I had four kids. All right, I'm not taking my kids camping on the weekends by myself. That sounds insane. I would not do that. This is the dad that every single vacation that we had from school, he votes up the car. You're driving either north into Canada, you're driving south down to Virginia.

You're basically up and down the seaboard, right? He was trying so hard to make this work. So I go away to college and ultimately I make the decision, I don't want that guy in my life. I made the decision I'm cunning out. And so I cut off communication. I would not accept his call. And this carried on from the time that I was in college, through medical school, through residency. I was a chief resident.

And now I'm getting into my 30s. Okay. And I'm like training as a gastroenterologist. And I meet my wife. And she is an angel. And she comes in my life. She is exactly the person that I needed in my life. And she comes in and yes, I wrote in fiber fueled in 2020 about how I changed my diet and I was

inspired by her, right? I'd worry about that. But the other thing that she did is she, she had a hard conversation with me that no one else had ever had with me. Hey, you need your dad. You need to forgive your dad. You need to call your dad. And so,

one day I picked up the phone and I call my dad and out of the blue it's been more than 10 years and he was in shock he welcomed me back instantly instantly he did not hold any the smallest thing he just wanted me back and the first time I saw him after 10 years was at my wedding wow so and we had a series of great years together from that point going forward, where we reconstituted our relationship, I just wish we could have had more. To this day, have regrets about the whole thing because it's my fault. And then in September of 2019, I don't know, tell me if I'm crazy, but like sometimes I feel like when something big is about to happen, people can feel it ahead of time. The two examples that I have is one, I have an aunt who we were talking about

before we started the show. She passed away young. And it was completely unexpected. She was a nurse. She left the hospital. She had a cerebral aneurysm. She collapsed and passed away. She was, you know, in her 50s.

But if you looked at her last like six months, it was like she was on a tour. Like she was calling up all the friends that she hadn't talked to in 10 years. She was going to all the places that she wanted to check off, that she wanted to go to. It was wild. Right. And then with my dad, summer of 2019,

I felt this compulsion. You got to go see your dad. He's in upstate New York by himself. He's 70 years old. You don't know how much longer he's going to be around. You got to get up there and see him. So I fly up in September of 2019, and we had this weekend where basically he was a diehard Syracuse sports fan.

I was too. This is how we manifested like a lot of the positives in our relationship. So we went to the Carrier Dome to see Syracuse played the number one football team and we almost beat them. Then we popped into the mountains. I told you, we used to go camping every weekend. We went up into the Adirondacks. We went to all of our favorite places. And then as we're coming down from the mountains and he's about to take me to the airport, he diverts us to Rome, New York, which is about an hour outside of Syracuse. And this is actually where his family was from. And he takes me for the first time at, you know, 40 years or

old, takes me to the street or my great-grandparents who were Polish immigrants. Here's these like 600 square foot homes. This is where they lived. He shows me literally these places. And I hop on the plane and that was the last time I saw my dad because he passed away unexpectedly in January of 2020. Anyway, this story ultimately comes together around the birth of my daughter who's now 11 because this child is born and you're holding this child and I want to get back to this question of faith versus science because you're holding this child and you know with total clarity that a breath of life came into this body and that soul the way that we have a soul it's undeniable you know because you have your own that soul it came from somewhere and science will

never be able to explain that ever no matter how far advanced we get i don't care you'll never be able to tell me where that came from so it's to me there's a belief that there's something greater there right but then having that child helped me to process and understand my relationship with my dad because the love that i felt for her in that moment, I realized it's the same love that he had for me. I was the confused one. He always had the love. I rejected that love. That's really, really powerful.

I mean, I want to think about that moment where, you know, it is often our partners who can see the thing that we're holding that's causing us pain. What was it like for you to make that first phone call? What changed afterwards? It was a release because I, I think that this, there was, if you look at my life in my 20s into my early 30s, up to this point, there was a lot of sadness. And, um, uh, and I would manifest that in different ways.

One is I'm going to prove, I'm going to prove my worth through my accomplishments. Right. So I like accomplished all of my goals. Yet I didn't actually ever feel satisfied. Because it's almost like your anger accomplishing. I'm anger. I'm angry. I'm going to prove.

I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you, dad, that I can do the things that you couldn't do. That's revenge, drinking the poison that you think will hurt someone else. Yeah, yeah.

So you're doing it through, like you're basically manifesting these big accomplishments. I had all the, I mean, basically every single thing that I wanted to fulfill, I was doing it,

right? But I wasn't happy. I was never satisfied. And I had extremely low self-esteem. And then, like, I'm in the hospital, hospital system.

It's intense, no? Competitive? I mean, it's as, not only is it, intense. I think it's like abusive. I think it's a little psychotic. It's a little psychotic. Like let's see what happens if you stay up for four days. Can you still save someone's life? What?

That's how we trained doctors. I mean, they have some, they have some rules around that. And, and there are some, there is a counterpoint to which I understand, which is that you have to have have time with patients, right, to learn. That's where learning happens. But at the same time, like, when you are walking and you're not safe to drive home from 30 hours of working nonstop, you have to mean? What are we testing? Do you know what I mean? Right. So it's not, that's not healthy.

But then what I would do is like, okay, so you just did this 30 hour shift. So then you're going to like basically go home, pick up $20 worth of Taco Bell on the way home, smash that, fall asleep with the belly full of junk, right? Wake up, drink alcohol and then go back to work the next day. Right. Like you're just like flogging your body, right? But you wouldn't actually do a lot of those things. I mean, the hospital has requirements. be wrong. But if you were in a happy place, you wouldn't be so insane about it all. You wouldn't

have gone to med school. You know, I can only speak to the male experience. How many people are holding on to resentment, to anger. It's like a very young boy response to be like, I'm going to reject you because I feel rejected. And holding that, which is really just a deep sadness, you know, when you were talking, I felt anger, but what's more true is sadness and how bad we are often at processing that sadness and how we try to solve it through these external accomplishments. The sadness was the the brute issue and the rest was the manifestation of like oldest boy, big brother who's like, you know what I mean? Firstborn, oldest brother of three who's going to basically like step up and show the world. And so, but not in a healthy way. So when you said that

it shifted, talk to us about that shift. Was it lighter? Was it softer? Was it more at peace? What happened when you actually made the connection and let go a little bit? Part of what had to happen was I had to go back to and revisit the seven-year-old boy. And I had had to, really tried to avoid that my entire life. Not calling your dad was almost locking that part of you away. And you reach a certain point, Jonathan, where it's like you're committed, so it's hard to walk it back because then you have to accept that you were wrong. So it's a lot easier to sort of uphold this position of he's a scumbag, which he was not, right?

But it was easy to just kind of dismiss the guy like that. And so, but really what I needed to do was I ultimately needed to process my childhood. and reconsider it through the eyes of an adult, particularly an adult with children, to be able to understand the things that were happening that I couldn't understand because I was so young. What does that look like? What's that revisiting?

Like is that talk therapy? Did you go do ayahuasca in South America? Like what was your particular journey for, you know, because I think a lot of people would be like, well, how do I do that? You just think about it? Like, how did it work? In general, Mayam,

I think each of us needs to find our own path towards healing. And so like what I personally did isn't necessarily what I would recommend. Sure. Right. It's just what I did without any professional training in this space. I'm not, I'm also not claiming to be a psychologist, right? I, but, you know, for me, it was just kind of like conversations with my wife and processing stuff quiet times where you're sort of processing stuff, thinking about stuff.

going back to, you know, sort of, okay, hold on, let me think about this a different way. Yeah, you opened your heart is what you're describing, right? My parents went through this thing. They went through a really hard time. And I, to this day, don't really understand it because, like, we never opened up that conversation. I don't even know that I want to, to be honest with you. Because I don't know that I wanted those kinds of intimate details. They're adults, right?

They made adult decisions. But the other thing that I came back to was that, I never actually heard my dad say a bad thing about my mom. And there were a few times that his parents, like his mom, started to go there and he shut it down. And as a kid, I didn't really connect to that or see that. And then as an adult, as I started to process all these things, I went back to, gosh, that says a lot. It says an enormous amount. I haven't gone through a divorce, we both have like the protecting,

of the way in which the other parent has spoken about is really important. It's kind of like the comeback story of the century, at least in my own life, which is to imagine a person that you actually thought was a bad person. And to actually come full circle to the realization, actually he was a great dad. He always was there for us. We were the center of his world. He gave everything that he had for us. Well, I think that's sort of also the place that maybe you can broaden out, you know,

kind of your experience a little bit and help people. You know, how do you generalize this if the story that you have does not have that kind of ending, right? And what is that like, you know, in a nervous system, right, that does not have the ability to resolve? And there's a lot of conversation. There has been a lot of conversation over the past months over, should you, speak to your parents, who decides what is toxic, right? What's the story that you have? What's the story you inherited? What story do you continue to tell that can perpetuate either destructive relationships or ones that facilitate health and growing? And I wonder if you can talk a little bit

about what does it look like if you don't have that support waiting for you on the other side of reconciliation. What does it do to the nervous system? And are we then in a conversation about trauma, right? I think that we are. I think that trauma. So first of all, not everything is trauma. Not everything that's bad is trauma. We, I think, overuse the term at times. But at the same time, trauma can be broad. I mean, basically the definition from my perspective of what is trauma is something that occurs that overwhelms your ability to cope. It basically leaves a wound it leaves an imprint on your soul right and so and it comes in many forms it's not just abuse it's not just physical or sexual or whatever it might be those are classic things and it's also not

just childhood it's but there are life events and one life event for one person may not be traumatic and for another person the way in which it touches them it is and trauma also stacks we know this from the way sort of like the physiology of this system works is that if you have a traumatic event, it kind of raises the baseline of what will further potentially cause trauma, which is why, you know, when you have a significant loss, it brings up every other loss you've ever had and you start thinking about things you didn't know. All of these things stack. So depending on what you experienced as a child, you might be more likely then to be impacted more significantly later. And this is getting back to what Jonathan sort of led us into in this conversation of the concept

of like the conscious mind versus the non-conscious mind, right? And, and, you know, and, you know, those parts that they're there, but you're not actually able to access them. But clearly, they're there. And they manifest, right? This entire idea of the body keeps the score. Like, that's the perfect title for that book. Because it's so true. There was a study, by the way, Maam, where they took a group of kids that were adopted before the age of two. And they compared them to controls from a normal family, and they identified that these kids who were adopted before the age of two years later were far more likely to suffer with digestive health problems. They had a different gut microbiome pattern. And actually, when they did functional MRI studies,

they showed that there was basically increased activity in specific parts of their brain associated with the injury of the trauma. But like a two-year-old doesn't remember. Like, this has clearly affected them, even though they can't remember. member did ever occurring. So for me, so the question that you're asking me is like, how did I deal with this? And basically what I'm saying is that my relationship with my father was traumatic and was continuing to haunt me. But I didn't want to deal with it. Right. Right. It was the part of my life that I basically pushed into the corner. Well, and it was by your own hand in that the key to the prison, right, was with the prisoner inside. A hundred percent. I could have. Right. And I think,

And I think what's important to mention, you know, for people who, let's say, do come from a situation where a parent wasn't there for them, right? The parent wasn't trying their best. Maybe the parent hurt them. The notion is still the same. And we talk about this with some of the guests we have on who discuss, you know, mystical components, transcendental, you know, aspects of our existence and even kind of altered states of consciousness. The love that you have, right, which many believe is God-given, right? love that you have, it contains the capacity to forgive so that you can heal. That's right. So basically, I had to forgive my dad in order to actually heal myself. Right. And that, because people might say like, well, his dad was great and really trying and my dad didn't try for shit. Guess what? You have the same capacity to move through that and not be married to the story, right, that got you here. And for many people, religion, spirituality, that is a source of something was always taking care of me. I've survived everything up until now, right? Everything that we feel is so impossible and we can't do it. We're here. We found a way to get

through it, right? The process of forgiveness is an opportunity for healing regardless of what the nature of your relationship with that person is on the other side. Say that again. The process of forgiveness is an opportunity for healing regardless of what the nature of your relationship with that person is on the other side. So, Even if it's not possible to heal that relationship on the other side, you can still forgive that person. Right, because that's the gift you give yourself. And you can build that tribe, right? Because ultimately we do need our tribe.

So it does come back to on some level that implicit need for human connection, the safety that we get from knowing that these people are in our lives and they care and love us. Well, and also, if someone, speaking of the other side, if someone has died, that's... doesn't mean that it's over. You can call it faith in God or you can just talk about God as the intelligence that exists in the universe. Earlier, you were kind of talking about how science is showing you just how magical and unbelievable the process of life is. Yeah. So I don't see them as separate. So I don't want people to get hung up on the word, but it says through faith in God, we recognize that our lives are not random. We are part of something eternal placed here with intention and meaning and that a relationship with God offers.

an unwavering source of love, strength, and self-acceptance. Yeah. Which speaks so powerfully to this notion of it's not random. Like, yes, there may have been this horrible thing or very painful thing, but when we detach from the narrative of it, how amazingly our lives can change. Well, and I think that's where the ideas of a human connection and spiritual connection, they're complementary pieces, right? Because we do need the human connection, but at the same time that spiritual connection

is what pulls us through and gives us a framework for processing a lot of these challenging things that happen in our lives. And if you wholeheartedly believe with every bone in your body, right, that you are a child of God and that you are loved and that you were born exactly the way that you were supposed to be and everything about your life as it is, flaws, warts, and all is blessed. If you believe that, if you sincerely believe that, it gives you a great, um, sense of safety when you are going through these challenging times, which ultimately this word safety is like what we keep coming back to. And you will digest better. And your immune system is going to be better. Because you have to be your parasympathetic nervous system. Right. And you're you're approaching the world with optimism. You're approaching the world with, you know, what we talk about with Bruce Lipton, right? With Joe Dispenza, you know, we've talked about it

with Tony Robbins. Like when you are manifesting, right? Like that's what the hipsters call it. When you're manifesting that. It means that you're creating an opening. You're creating the possibility to believe that there's a purpose, right? That there's a reason that nothing happens, you know, by chance, that there's something larger than us that we can't see that cares for us, whatever that means. Once again, we come back to this idea of like we're all ultimately coming to the same conclusion. We're pointing to the sky and saying there's something there. there's something bigger, we're a part of it. And again, I come back to holding my daughter for the

first time, feeling that love for her, knowing the way that my own father felt about me, but also knowing that that's the way that God feels about children. Right. And that's why we also anthropomorphize God. And that's why so many traditions do that is because that's the best way that we as humans can try and approximate it. Because if we were that child who's not like capable of understanding yet, that's maybe what we are even as fully mature adults. I'd be very curious how you. I'd be very curious how you all feel about this. So tell me if I'm crazy. When my dad passed away in January of 2020, we already like this story. Okay. We, we, we, we didn't know what happened. And, you know, I'm a, I'm a medical doctor. Like I, you know, I'm board certified internal medicine, gastrology,

despite that. We didn't know what happened. We had an autopsy done. He died suddenly. The only information that we had is that he called my aunt and said on a Friday night, I'm, I'm not feeling well and I'm having diarrhea. And then it was actually MLK, it was January, it was MLK weekend. So on Tuesday, he didn't show up to work. And so then I get a phone call. I'm at work as a gastrologist and I get a phone call from the police. And they say, we're breaking into your dad's house.

So, because he didn't show up to work. And they found him while I was on the phone. He had an autopsy. And the only thing that the autopsy showed was a little bit of fluid in the lungs. That's it. Nothing else. Heart was fine. No heart attack, no stroke, no aneurysm or something crazy. No substances in the blood. No substances. He was in great health. He took no medications. You know, this was not, there was no good, clear answer to what happened here with my dad, January of 2020. So my friend Mark, who I went to high school with, he told me, because he lost

his dad in his 50s. His dad was in his 50s. He died of cancer. Mark was helping me to process. And he says, I want to warn you. He goes, you got to be ready for it. Your dad is going to reach out to you. What? Yeah. He goes, I guarantee you. It's going to happen. Your dad is going to reach out to you. Okay. Does Mark believe this about all dads? Well, I think that he thinks that in early death, Okay. That is unexplained, right? Not resolved. I'm just trying to check what Mark's point of references.

Not resolved at the time of death. That like the person from the other side will want to help you to resolve. Put some things in order. You can't just leave unexpectedly. Exactly. So there were two things that happened. This is only a story that I've told my friends. All right.

Call me crazy. Yeah, you are my friends. Call me crazy if you will. I'm just going to present the facts. We've heard weird. We've heard worse. Okay. Okay, here we go.

Welcome to the show. All right. So in March, two months later, okay, my friend invites me to come on television in Raleigh, North Carolina, like remotely, right? And I'm going to talk about this new study, right? So, and this is my friend. She knows me really well. She's called me Will a bazillion times.

I come on the show. They put my name on the screen. It says Bill Bolsulitz. I'm a junior. I've always been Will. My dad was Bill. So I was like, this is weird. Why did she put Bill Bolso-Witts on the screen?

So, and I have this conversation where the entire segment... Your dad was also William? My dad was William Sr. Okay, great. So your dad was William but went by Bill? He went by Bill. Bill Bolshewitz. It's got a ring to it.

Right, right. And you're William, but you go by Will. I go by Will. And then I have a son, and he's not the third because I refuse to do the third thing. Yeah. But my son is William, but we call him Liam. So the name that comes on is literally, it's the name. Only your dad went by.

Only my dad went by. And does she call you Bill or does she call you Will? I don't remember, but like the name's flashing. But she knows that your name's will. She knows I'm Will, right? Right. So this name flashes on the screen. So we have this conversation about this new study.

So let me tell you what the study was about. Basically, they had identified for the first time, you have to contextualize. We're figuring things out in the pandemic. They figured out for the first time. that COVID can present with GI manifestations. Oh, yeah. So they figured out that like basically some people who get severe COVID, the first symptom they get is diarrhea.

That's the study. And then so I call up my friend Mark. I'm like, dude, this is what happened on the show. Maybe this is what you were telling me about. So he goes to the website, right, where they posted it. They changed it back to Will. They corrected themselves. I didn't even ask them to.

They corrected themselves. They knew I was well. So and it helped me to process for what this is worth the only information that I had, which was that my dad had diarrhea and then he passed away. I think that my dad had severe COVID. Ooh. And got an abnormal heart rhythm, which is why he had the fluid in the lungs. This is, this is, so this helped me to process my father's death. Your dad is an excellent communicator even after he has died.

He made it pretty clear. So that was the first time. Now here's the, here's, here's to me, my favorite one. Okay. All right. All right. So again, I grew up a diehard Syracuse sports fan. And one night in April of 2020, I'm sitting at home, and it's like 10 o'clock at night,

and I don't know why. But I felt compelled to turn on this game from 1984. What? Where do you get the game? YouTube. YouTube. YouTube. Okay.

So it's Syracuse. versus number one Georgetown. And for any basketball fans who are listening, Georgetown has Patrick Ewing. Okay. Okay. Good game. And so, and they're playing in the carrier dome.

And I'm watching this game. Their shorts are super short. They're wearing Pornstar socks. Like, the game is very different from modern basketball. It's honestly hard to watch, right? So for two hours I'm watching, I'm like, why am I here? Two hours you're watching this game. It's a two hour game, right?

Okay. But like, you didn't even skip through. You're like start to finish. Start to finish because I felt compelled. I got to watch this game, right? So I'm soon there. Do you often watch games? I mean, I love basketball.

No, but sometimes you'll pull up a game. I, this is unlike me to pull up a random game, especially from 1980s, right? Yeah. Like if I were to do anything, I would pull up a Jordan game or something like this. But even now, I'll just watch the documentary. Right, right. Okay. Yeah.

So anyways, okay, so I watched this game and the whole time I'm confused. Why am I even watching this? What am I doing here? And then it comes down to the very last play of the game where, a Syracuse legend, a legendary Syracuse player, Pearl Washington, he's a guard, gets the ball, takes two dribbles, and he launches a half court shot and nails it to beat the number one team

with Patrick Ewing and everyone storms the court and loses their mind. Everyone goes bonkers, okay? So I'm like, oh my gosh, that was so cool. I waited two hours for it, but it was worth it. That was so cool. So the next day, I call up my brain, brother, my brother Tim. So he's two years younger than me. And my brother was nice enough to, because it was hard for me. I was working. I had kids. My brother was nice enough to resolve my father's estate. And so I called my brother Tim and I said, Tim, I don't know why, but last night,

I flipped on this game and I described the whole thing of what happened as, like I just did. He says to me, Will, you are not going to believe this. He goes, I'm in dad's kitchen right now. And three feet away from me on the refrigerator is a picture of the shot that you just described. Shut up. I mean, is that a nothing burger or like, come on? Whoa, that's intense. That, like, we need to get your brother calling in.

Like, this is, that's a huge, like, that's crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's not crazy because I think the world works like this. I mean, look, if you think it's just like a synchronous, or whatever it might be. Okay, so be it. But like for me, and what I come back to this.

Yeah, I mean, look, do you want me to play the, should I play the materialist game? Oh, he doesn't like when I play this game. Oh, she's so good at playing. Are you going to shred me? Are you going to shred me? No, she's just,

she likes to be a downer sometimes. I'm going to put this out there, and it could not be true. That picture may have been something you had seen. I hadn't been to my dad's house. I don't even know how long. But he wouldn't have registered. Well, this could all be unconscious.

I mean, I can believe in the unconscious. That's fair. No, no, that's fair. So it could be. I'm just saying that someone... It could be planted in my non-conscious mind. You wouldn't take this to nature neuroscience and be like, I've discovered that there's after-death communication.

No, because that's not science. Correct. This is faith. We're talking about faith. Correct. So this is a... What's really funny about this podcast is that she'll play both sides of the coin. What I was throwing out there was, it is possible in the world.

realm of the universe that this image had been for you somehow associated with your dad, even in a way that you didn't realize, right? For, like, for any way that could exist. And it's still amazing, though. It's still amazing that you would draw on that and be drawn to it. That's still incredible. Within the context of processing my following stuff, unexpectedly. Totally.

Yes, and it could be that that is true and that you were drawn by something outside of yourself that encouraged you and pushed you to watch that game that you had a connection with. Not mutually exclusive. Unless we had the ability to go somehow and actually see what's in the non-conscious mind, right, on a person, you'll never be able to know which of these things it is.

No, it's a lot of zeros and ones of what it is. So then ultimately we come back to is this question of like faith versus science where, like for me, like having belief, having belief in something greater, having belief that actually the best is yet to come, it helps me in this moment to process this, to understand that this conversation with my dad, these things that I'm saying here on a podcast, but I never actually got to say to his face, he deserves to hear those things.

And my belief system allows me to know, like to truly believe that I will have the chance to do that. Or that you're doing it right now, that the things that you're, you're sharing are resonating and have some sort of frequency and they are not limited by this time and space and that he may be experiencing some of this. That may be your belief system, Jonathan. Oh, my. Well, no, what I'm saying is, if that's the way that you process it, then that's true for you. And whereas for me, I see it as there's some sort of way that he's able to communicate. I don't know if he can hear me. I don't know if he can right now. Right. But what I do, whole, Part of we believe is that when my time on this world is over, I will be with him again, right?

And one day my children will be with me again. And there's a beautiful, wonderful place that will be together. Jonathan's also, you know, referring to this notion that, you know, we're all in some sort of quantum consciousness field, that everything we're experiencing, it's data, right? It's data, it's information. And if you zoom in on this microphone, this table, your, you know, eyeball and, you know, the curtain, it's all the same, like we're all made of the same things. So in that sort of quantum field, right, the notion is that like time, the notion of like time is linear also exists

as a construct, right? That as people describe it, who have, you know, had incredible near-death experiences, you know, you can cut through time like a seven-layer cake, right? And all of these things are kind of stacked and in this sort of like beautiful quantum field. So in that sense, I think that's what Jonathan was also referring to is the notion that like, was is and will be, which is also, you know, kind of a biblical reference to like the existence of divinity, that all happens at the same time. We're going to hit pause here on our conversation with Dr. B. There is so much more coming in part two, including what has changed in the health landscape since the first books that he wrote in terms of GLP ones, fasting, veganism versus

a carnivore diet, and how much protein do we actually need? He's going to talk about some of the dangers of GLP-1s, as well as give us the truth about fasting why sardine diets are not what they claim. He's going to explain ketosis to us in a way that I had never heard before. He's going to explain how our bodies actually make something in ketosis, but there is another way that we could be generating it that is even more beneficial for us. Also, did you know that our immune system is nocturnal? All that and a lot more in part two of our conversation with Dr. B. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.