The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Jennifer Ashton M.D. – The New Normal: A Roadmap to Resilience in the Pandemic Era

Episode Date: March 13, 2021

The New Normal: A Roadmap to Resilience in the Pandemic Era by Jennifer Ashton M.D. From Dr. Jennifer Ashton—the Chief Medical Correspondent at ABC News covering breaking medical news for Good Morning America and GMA3: What You Need to Know—comes a doctor’s guide to finding resilience in the time of COVID, while staying safe and sane in a rapidly changing world. In March 2020, “normal” life changed, perhaps forever. In its place we were confronted with life and routines that were unusual and different: the new normal. As we’ve all learned since then, the new normal isn’t just about wearing masks and standing six feet apart—it’s about recognizing how to stay safe and sane in a world that is suddenly unfamiliar. And no one understands this evolving landscape better than Dr. Jennifer Ashton. As ABC’s Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Ashton has been reporting on the novel coronavirus daily, helping Americans comprehend the urgent medical updates that have shaped the nation’s continued response to this public health crisis. Now in The New Normal, Dr. Ashton offers the essential toolkit for life in this unfamiliar reality. Rooted in her reporting on COVID-19 and the understanding that the virus isn’t going anywhere overnight, The New Normal is built on a simple foundation: thriving in this evolving world demands accepting the new normal for what it is, not what we want it to be. No longer is wellness a buzzword, but an imperative for surviving this unprecedented time. Using her trademark practical, easy-to-follow advice, Dr. Ashton gives you all the necessary information to reclaim control of your life and live safely—from exercise, to diet, to general health—showing how to prepare your body and mind for challenges such as: - Taking proper medical precautions to protect yourself and your loved ones - Exercising during the pandemic, even if you no longer feel safe at the gym - Finding emotional balance through these uncertain times - Deciphering complicated medical news to learn what to trust and what to ignore With these straightforward and accessible strategies and many more, Dr. Ashton helps empower you to make the unexpectedly hard decisions about socializing, food-shopping, seeing doctors, and most of all, finding normalcy. At once reassuring and urgent, The New Normal is a holistic roadmap through the ongoing struggles of the pandemic, providing the guidance you need to navigate this unsettling time and take charge of your future wellbeing. About Jennifer Ashton Retiring stiff paper gowns and unrelatable medical advice, Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a Board-certified Ob-Gyn, author, and TV medical correspondent, breaks the barrier between doctor and patient. Affectionately referred to as your all-in-one 'BFF'/Ob-Gyn, Dr. Jennifer Ashton marries an unparalleled medical background with an accessible 'girl's-girl' attitude. Though Dr. Ashton can easily speak to the latest beauty and fashion trends, this Ivy League graduate means business when it comes to women's health. From the onset, you might wonder how Dr. Ashton does it. Hailing from a family of 6 physicians and 1 nurse, this wife and mother of two possess a uniquely well-rounded understanding of the human body. Leading by example, Dr. Ashton not only 'talks the talk,' but 'walks the walk.' When she's not in the office, she can be found training for triathlons or following her very own Five-Day/Two- Day Eating Plan. Dr. Ashton demonstrates first-hand how to embrace and feel empowered at every stage of womanhood. This relatable and modern approach is highlighted in her latest book Your Body Beautiful (Penguin), a coveted resource for the medical community and women at every stage of their lives. THE PRACTICE Dr. Ashton opened her private medical practice, Hygeia Gynecology, in Englewood, New Jersey in 2008. Physically and aesthetically unmatched, Hygeia Gynecology is aptly named after Hygeia the Greek goddess of health, healing, and cleanliness.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another podcast oh my gosh it's so wonderful another podcast We've got a most amazing guest. The guest we're going to be sharing with you today, she is the chief medical correspondent

at ABC News. You've probably seen her on GMA3. We're going to be interviewing today. To see the video version of this broadcast, you're going to want to go to youtube.com, Fortuna's Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification so you get all the wonderful notifications there. It gives you this glorious feeling of rush that comes over you when you press that notification button. It makes you feel like you're part of a family, something bigger than yourself.

And what's great about the Chris Voss Show podcast family, we don't judge you. We love you the way you are. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, and you can subscribe there and see all the wonderful books we're reviewing and reading, etc., etc. See all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and all that good stuff. So today we have an amazing, uplifting, beautiful book from a multifaceted author or multi-book author, I should say. It's The New Normal, A Roadmap to Resilience in the Pandemic Era, and it's written by Dr. Jennifer Ashton.

She is the chief medical correspondent for ABC News, including Good Morning America, World News Tonight with David Muir, Nightline, and GMA3, What You Need to Know. A graduate of Columbia University's medical school, Dr. Ashton is board certified in the OBGYN and obesity medicine and maintains a private clinical practice in New Jersey, New Jersey. She lives in New York City with her two children. Welcome to the show, Jen. How are you? Thanks, Chris. And I am doing well and I'm so excited to be on your show. Thanks a lot for having me. Thank you for coming. We enjoy you coming along, spending some time with us, sharing your research and knowledge. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs.

I am on all types of social media, but full disclosure, the only one I use is Instagram, which is at drjashvin because people are nicer on Instagram. But they can also see me every single day on GMA3, What You Need to Know, which is 12 Pacific and Central and 1 Eastern and all other ABC News platforms. There you go. There you go. So you've written many books. How many books have you written so far? Gosh, I think this is my sixth. Yeah, yeah.

That's pretty amazing. And so you wrote this book, I guess, during the pandemic. What motivated you want to write this book? First of all, I don't mean to be a downer on the process of writing books, but it's like pregnancy. It sounds like it's going to be really amazing until you get into it. And then it might not be, or it's just last longer than you want it to or whatever. But once it's done, once you birth the book, you're happy and you feel this sense of

accomplishment. So I really wasn't initially thinking of writing a book about this pandemic. But what I found about halfway in was that I was hearing from ABC viewers, my patients, my friends and family who all said, we want more than the television segment time slot allows. We need help understanding and processing all this information. And I started to think about it and realize that the story behind the story, I think, of this pandemic has been about communication of medical information and how to process it as an individual so that you can use that information to actually live your life and safeguard your health or just navigate these uncharted waters better. And so I found myself on national television kind of repeating the same premises or mottos or

philosophy over and over again. And I realized that there was a reason that I was repeating that because those themes were so important. So I decided that I wanted to put together in book form a lot of that philosophy and really help people learn how to think like a doctor. So the book is not about facts that we knew four months ago that now we've learned are wrong. The book is about how to think like a doctor so you can process any medical headline and navigate those waters and, you know, actually function in life. I started surgeries after I read your book.

I mean, that's how long you wrote this. It's very advanced. That's the fast track. actually function in life. I started surgeries after I read your book. It's very advanced. That's the fast track. And it's a great book. I love how you go through it. I really could have used this in March. You do have to write the book, but it was a tough time going through these times. And you speak in the book about a lot of what we've all been experiencing over the last year and who knows how much longer we have to experience this or if there's a future pandemic. What does the new normal mean for you? What is the title of the book that you have? What was the meaning for you? It's actually the title, the first part of the title, The New Normal, I think is really an oxymoron, Chris, because it's not new anymore. We've been dealing with this for a year plus, and it's not normal. There's

nothing about what's going on now that is normal. As the Saturday Night Live skit used to say, it's neither new nor normal. Disgust. I think when part of the reason I chose that title is because we kept hearing people use that word and that phrase. And I think what the new normal looks like is an appreciation for what we've all just been through, which is major and historic and unprecedented, and using that in an empowering kind of way to really unroof a resilience, not just as individuals, but as a community, even as a country that we didn't even know we needed to work on before. I think some things are here to stay and some things hopefully will go, not back, but normalize a little bit more. But we're not going backwards. That time travel does not exist

yet. So we're not going back to the way things were in 2019. So it's really about facing that reality and moving forward. And there's an aspect of innocent loss to it as well. I remember after 9-11, there was just an innocence that was lost where you just never lived in the same world the same way ever again. Absolutely correct. I couldn't agree more. And I think that when, if all your listeners for a second, stop and think, you know, what we were doing over the holidays, December, 2019. And if someone had said, listen, in two months, there's going to be a virus that sweeps the entire world. It's going to shut down air travel. People are going to be on stay at home, shelter in place, lockdown, whatever you want to refer to it. Everyone's going to be wearing masks. You would

have locked that person up. You would have said like, what? This is okay. You're hallucinating. You've lost it. But that is exactly what happened, right? Just like before 9-11, to your point, that was unfathomable. And so in medicine and the way I've covered this pandemic from day one in my role as ABC News is to really look at this as a practicing doctor, like the country is one big patient, right? And I think when the unexpected happens, you don't spend a lot of time looking back going, hmm, let me see, what was I doing before? You spend a little time doing that, that's important, but you have to deal in the present and then you have to try to safeguard the future and prevent that from happening again in the future. And I think really that's what we all are doing right now on some level.

Yeah. In fact, even with the vaccines coming, it looks like things are cleaning up. I'm still wondering, is there a next phase? When do we get hit with another one of these things? These new rampant variants that are coming out seem to be more aggressive. And we've still got people that are just like, I don't really care. I'll do whatever I want. Wow, you guys are really seeding a whole thing. So you sit down in your book and you really walk people through several different aspects of different things. And I'm just going to bang through the chapters here. Body, mind, health care, food, exercise, sleep, health fears, medical news, family, friends, public places, and silver linings. And so you really break down these different things to help people focus in on

each of the aspects of their thing. One of the things you talk about is pandemic-proofing your body. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I think that could have actually also wound up in the silver linings chapter because one of the things that became apparent pretty early as we started to see how this virus really did its damage in people and also how insidious and sneaky it was, how it was so transmissible, and how 50% of people who were infected had no symptoms. Then we started to see, okay, so what groups were being hit hardest, right? And after age, the number one biggest risk factor, for the most part, was obesity, right? Now in in medicine and part of the reason as from reading

my bio that I went back and got board certified in obesity medicine went back to school and got a degree in nutrition is because nutrition and weight management is just abysmally handled by traditional doctors and the media in this country. We kind of look at this like there's a quick fix, or it must be because of lack of commitment, or it's just normal now. None of those things are true. When we started to see the effects of COVID on people who were living with the chronic disease state of obesity, that to me was like, yet another wake up call, right? That we could say, all right, look, there's a lot of reasons to be aggressive about managing obesity and medicine. And it's not the answer is not to say

to the person, just eat some carrot sticks and move more problem will be. Yeah, like, no, okay, it is a chronic condition. So it needs medical management in a holistic way that's behavioral and nutritional, and sometimes also pharmacologic. But when I realized that we needed to pandemic prove our health, that's at the top of the list, right? Because if you take two people and one is of a normal weight and the other one is overweight or obese, the one who's overweight or obese is much more vulnerable to this pandemic and probably other pandemics as well. I thought of this was a good wake-up call. We've seen that a lot of this pandemic was out of our control, but this may be something that we can take charge of with help, of course. That was really what I meant by that. It's getting your body ready,

not just physically, but mentally to go to war, in this case, against the pathogen SARS-CoV-2, but it could be another one, as you said, down the road. Yeah. That's my biggest worry. And you speak to what we really should be thinking about. We've always been an obese nation. We've had lots of problems with diabetes, our diet. We've been really bad for a couple of years, at least. And proofing your body is really important. You gave me an epiphany too, when we were talking earlier about how, why it was really so hard for people to understand this is still is for some people to understand it is because it's so shocking, horrific and chaotic that I think people still have a hard time. I think there are a lot of people are just living

in denial because it's so overwhelming. They're having a hard time just dealing with it. Yeah. I think that one thing that I talk about in the book, and I've talked about this on the air many times, especially on GMA3, is you can't treat a patient by only dealing with their physical issues. You can't decapitate the person and not deal with the spirit, the psyche, the social issues, psychological issues. That's part of it. And so when you say denial, yes, PTSD, yes, fear, frustration, fatigue, all of those things, they're all really ubiquitous. And the first step in normalizing our day-to-day existence now is to acknowledge those things. how impacted I had been personally by this pandemic from a psychological standpoint and how impacted we all have been emotionally with this. This has been major and regardless of our age, because it has affected different age groups, I think very differently. Everyone has been

affected in some way. There you go. And you talk about this in chapter two about mental health. And you also talk about the weird dreams we were all having. I still am having some weird dreams. But during the first six months, just the weirdest freaking dreams. It was really hard to deal with. So if you want to talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I was one of those people. I tell some pretty jaw dropping dreams that I had had in the book. And I realized at that point, when I started to have these pandemic dreams, that that's when I started to appreciate the full impact that the pandemic was having on me personally. And then I started to research that phenomenon and actually interviewed a Harvard psychologist who,

this is what she's spent her whole career studying. And she said, it's documented after natural disasters, after 9-11, but this is different because of the, this is just relentless. The timeline of this trauma is ongoing for an unprecedented amount of time. And one of the things that happens when human beings are affected by something majorly is the subconscious and the brain has to download it somehow, some way. And when I started to see that happen myself, again, that's when I knew, wow, this is really, this is a big deal because it literally means my brain has so much in there to download that it's coming out in my dreams. And as you said, pretty vividly. Yeah. That's a really interesting point that you

make because nine 11 was, it was pretty, it was, it was over fairly quickly. I think if you lived in New York, you were definitely more scarred and probably had longer fears and PTSD than people who weren't. I suffered from, I don't know if you call it full PTSD, but I suffered for it for a long time until they killed Osama bin Laden. For some reason, I could not get closure on that thing until I knew he was dead. And it wasn't like a justice sort of thing. It was just knowing that he couldn't do it again. And I think somewhere I had this subconscious fear that he was still out there and God knows what can happen next sort of thing. And until he was dead, then I'm like, okay, I feel better about the whole situation.

I don't know why. It was really weird that I couldn't watch pictures. I couldn't watch videos that would trigger me. But I think a lot of us are in the same place with that. One of the other aspects you talk about in the book is the next time there's a pandemic, I'm getting a lobotomy. That's on the agenda next time. I got to put that in there. But you talk about grief and loss. And of course, there's a lot of families that, as Joe Biden likes to say, sitting at an empty table or sitting at a table now with an empty chair in it. Sometimes whole families have been eviscerated by this. So you talk about grief and loss. Do you want to address that a little bit? Yeah. First of all, I think that this is where, gosh, I have so much to say on this, Chris.

I literally don't know where to start. I'll start with a conversation that I describe in the book that I had with my therapist. And since for the last probably six, maybe seven years, six about years, I've really made a massive commitment to my mental health and wellness and have regular phone sessions or before the pandemic in-person sessions with my therapist. And it's really been invaluable in helping me navigate the big events of life, whatever they are. And some of them have been major traumas and losses and others have been good things. But I think that I decided about six years ago to make the same commitment to my mental health as I do to my physical health.

And so during the pandemic, obviously I was doing a lot of phone sessions with my therapist and there was one night, and I share this story in the book that I was on the phone with her about 630 because my the pandemic took my workday, which used to be around 12 hours or 11 hours and ramped it up to 14 or 15 hours a day. So I would start doing these phone sessions with her sometimes at 630 at night. And because it was by phone, it was pretty convenient logistically to do that. And I remember talking to her one night and I said, she asked how I was doing. And I said, I'm really stressed.

I'm really stressed. I have like a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders, personal, professional, medical. I have a practice where I'm responsible for people's lives. I had a lot of patients with COVID, a lot who were calling me as their primary doctor to help them navigate it. I had many patients who lost both parents to COVID, many. I knew four people personally who died of COVID, four of whom were Black,

four out of five were Black. I'm the only parent my children has. And it just, I was going down this list and I was telling her that it was really, really getting to me. And then I stopped and I said, but at the same time, I know that I'm so lucky because I have my health and I have a job and I have food on the table. And so many people don't have that.

And she said, I'm just going to stop you right there. That's a concept called multiple truths. And that means that both things can be true and one doesn't negate the other. But yes, it's true that you have your health. Yes, it's true that you have food and a job and whatever. And all of those other things are also true. So it's not a competition and one doesn't cancel the other one out. And if you qualify what you say with, but I realize I have so much to be thankful for, that's not a bad thing. But she said almost psychologically, it, it takes away from validating the stressful part. And so she basically said, so you shouldn't do that.

You know, that makes sense. part. And so she basically said, so you shouldn't do that. Yeah, it does make sense because it's like that the analogy actually that she gave, which is very, very extreme, but I think it's also so simplistic that it proves the point. It's if, if a parent loses a child, they have a child who dies and they have other children, you don't say you really shouldn't be upset because you've got three other kids. Like that's, that would be ridiculous. So she said it's, it's literally the same concept. So I think that the mental component of this and grief and loss is so significant because whether my son lost out on the opportunity to have a college graduation, that's a real loss, right? Now he's not grieving that loss every single day, but that's

a real loss for him. And then there are people who have lost loved ones, literally, and everything in between, lost jobs, lost their home, lost relationships, you name it. So all of that qualifies as a loss and all of that can really result in a grieving process. And I think that just needs to be acknowledged. And so I go through that pretty extensively in the book. That really makes sense because you're, I think we've all been guilty of doing that to where you're, where you're like, I'm not freaking out. I have my health. I'm not freaking out. I have my health. You're just like, no, you really are freaking out, man. So during this time you're on TV and you're trying to give medical advice. And of course,

this is no one's gone across this bridge before and everyone's trying to figure it out. There's mixed messages, mixed news. I think you were on the phone with Dr. Anthony Fauci. And then on top of that, like you say, you're running your practice and you're just not anymore dealing with patients and their health. You're dealing with the mental and their panic and PTSD and everything else. Tell us a little bit about that struggle. It was surreal for me, actually, Chris. First of all, I knew Dr. Fauci and had met him and worked with him before this pandemic. But now his personal cell phone is on my cell phone, and we text each other. It's surreal. And I think that when all of this kind of started to happen, it's just, I got so busy so quickly because the story exploded so quickly

that I didn't really have a full appreciation for the magnitude of what was going on until well into the spring of 2020. And then it was scary. It was physically exhausting. It was mentally exhausting. My brother got COVID. He's also a doctor in March of 2020, taking care of patients. And so it really, it really had a massive impact on me personally. And I can tell you, and I, again, I go into a little of this in the book, that any doctor is kind of trained, and depending on the specialty, trained to compartmentalize our emotions so that we can respond and think and act technically if you're a surgeon like I am, or we're just, we're trained to do that. The issue is, is that at some point that compartmentalization needs to be purged, right? And this whole year has just been like more and more and more and more going in there. And for me in covering this story, gosh, as these milestones, you just mentioned a few like passing 500,000 COVID related deaths in the country, the president getting COVID, various celebrities getting COVID, the stories that run on national news of COVID wiping out five out of eight family members, all of those things.

When you're in the news, you cannot get away from that. And so for me, it was surreal because here I have like text from Tony Fauci on my cell phone, and I'm hearing these horrible stories and having to analyze and provide insight on these headlines and then getting calls from real patients who have COVID. What do I do? What this, that my, my own brother has COVID. My like people that I know who died of COVID and all of this was happening around me. And that training that doctors go through again usually it's like maybe for a short-term period of time this was just yeah it just it just 9-11 never

stops and the thing for uh you as a doctor and people in your industry is if you're working on someone with cancer whether you're doing doing OR or doing some sort of, they're in your offices doing analysis and stuff, you don't have the risk of getting their cancer. You're not in the pool of everything that's going on. So you can be compartmentalized, but in this case, you're in the pool. You can get coronavirus from working on them. We're all part of the same sort of thing. was this it didn't leave anybody out there's no this certain people get an exception it it went after everybody i think the one question not to make light of any of this but just to just to put in a refreshing point i think the one question my audience wants to know though

about dr fauci is does he text with emojis or does he just do normal text wait let me look chris um actually i think i think he does text with emojis i'm so cute this is crazy because i don't know um he's almost 80 isn't he 78 he is 80 and so wait i'm seeing a lot of emojis that i've sent to him. Oh, there's an emoji. There you go. See that? There you go. This just in, Dr. Fauci is hip. Oh my God. I really idolize that man. I really, really do. He just went up a level in my book. He's already at 10 anyway. So you talk about staying sane as a parent. And then of course you had a healthcare ER experience, kind of emergency during COVID, where you thought maybe you had it. Talk a little bit about that.

And you talk in your book, one of the chapters, about what's appropriate for going to ER, healthcare, et cetera, et cetera. The first thing I don't want to, we'll leave that as a teaser of the story that I share in my book about when I almost had to go to the ER during the beginning of the pandemic. But I think that what's important in that chapter in the book is for people to understand at the end of the day, how to assess risk for themselves. And when I say I hope the book tries to teach people how to think like a doctor, I'm not suggesting by any means that people acquire the same knowledge base or training as a doctor, because you would need four to eight plus years

of formal education and training to do that. You don't need to have that knowledge to be able to assess risk and decide, do I need to go to the emergency room or not? And now, is it helpful if you can actually speak to a doctor or a nurse practitioner or some health professional to help you with this? Sure, that's ideal, but not everyone can. So what I go through in the book is not just during a pandemic, but even day to day, even after we come out of this into an entire new plateau of what we're going to be like, how people should decide, should I go to the emergency room for this? So one of the examples I go through is something that could, if you think what you have is life-threatening, life-threatening, and it's getting worse,

not better. Then you should go to an emergency room, whether we're in a pandemic or not. And by life-threatening, you're having difficulty breathing. You can't stand up. You've had a major trauma or accident. You're having chest pain, shortness of breath. There's a couple of things on that list. If you have a sore throat, that's probably not going to kill you.

And that's not an emergency. Emergency room visit is for true emergencies. So sore throat would be something you could go to an urgent care, you could wait and wait it out, see what happens to it over a couple of days. You could try to see your personal doctor or healthcare provider if you have one, but that can be a difficult decision for people to make when they're at home or alone or frightened or during a pandemic or all of the above. So that chapter I think is really important for everyone because that is a perfect example of how to think like a doctor and how to learn how to stratify risk. What's my risk of going? What's my risk of not going? What are the benefits of going? What are the benefits of not going? And there are some things that when I grew up in a completely medical

family, as I talk about in the book, my mother was a nurse, my father was a doctor. And one thing that I learned from my mother, actually, because this is so typical of like nursing kind of mindset, which is so important in this is something hurts. Is it the same, worse or better? Real simple. Like you don't have to make it into a medical case report. Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? Or is it the same, worse or better? Real simple. Like you don't have to make it into a medical case report. Is it getting better? Is it getting worse or is it the same? And so depending on how bad things are, if you ask yourself that question over time, you can usually lead yourself down

a decent path of, am I doing the right thing? So I think that's a really, really important chapter. That's pretty awesome too, because the heinousness of this virus was you can't go to the hospital because you're worried about getting it there. You're like, that's like virus central. You know, what I, the other thing that I talk about in the book is hospitals remember, this is not their first rodeo with an infectious disease, right? Before COVID, we dealt with tuberculosis, hepatitis, HIV, measles, a ton of infectious diseases. In many ways, the hospital is one of the safer places to be. As I say in the book, heart attacks did not stop during the pandemic.

So if you're having chest pain and you say, I don't want to go to the hospital because I might get COVID, I would say, okay, stay home and die of a heart attack. If you stay home, there's a good chance you could die of a heart attack. If you go to the hospital, there's a low chance that you'll get COVID because they know how to isolate and do infection control. So that's where you have to take a holistic view of how you manage your health. And by holistic,

I don't mean swinging a crystal over your head. Like holistic, like the whole person. It's not just COVID we have to think about. Dr. Ashton says, note to self, don't burn sage so that you feel better. Oh, wait, hold on. I want to show you mine. And that hangnail shouldn't

take you to the ER. Okay. You see this? This is not the biggest joint you've ever seen. This is sage that my mother got me because she likes to burn it and go around the house and communicate

with spirits. Yeah. I do that with marijuana, so there's that but it's legal that's also effective i talk to the spirit sometimes so another uh thing you talk about that you help people with is food stress and parental care because this is parents really took a freaking hit with kids and kids out of school. And, you know, suddenly they're like, I have to take care of these people 24 seven. I didn't sign up for this. No, I'm just kidding. But parents are under a ton of stress. If you want to address that in your book.

Well, you know, I actually think that the effects of this pandemic on children and teens, probably if I were making a list of the group that was impacted the most, it would be that age group followed by the elderly. Children, and the reason I would put children and teenagers first is because they don't have the life experience to say, okay, this is a year or this is a year and a half. In the big picture, yeah, it's inconvenient, it's unpleasant, but I'm 40 or I'm 50 or I'm 65. I'll be fine. This is one year of that. For them, if you're 13 years old, one 13th of your life is a big deal. And the other thing is, is that for children and teenagers, just because of their development, what they're missing, they cannot get back. So if you take a toddler and one out of three years that they've been on the planet, you pull them out of social interaction, that kind of thing, that's a real human experiment that's never been done before. And it's not the job of a parent

to interact with that toddler the way another toddler would interact with that child. It's not even possible. So I think that the challenges of this pandemic are unique and they're very significant for children and teenagers. I think the burden or the stress on parents, oh my God, I don't even know where to start on that. First of all, parents are not, they're not professional educators. They're not, they're balancing their own stuff. They're, I, when my kids were, now they're 21 and 22, but when they were in grade school and high school, I would always say, listen, 50% of the day they're with, they're 21 and 22, but when they were in grade school and high school, I would always say, listen, 50% of the day they're at school and 50% of the day they're with me. I'm not a professional

educator. So I stay in my lane. I let the teachers do their job and I'll do my job. The problem is, is that this pandemic forced parents to try to wear all these other hats. And it's not only unfair, it's not even logistically feasible. And I remember I had an experience, I think, after I finished the book, so I don't think it was in there, but with my son who had just graduated college. And he has a job that enabled him to work from home, and he's lucky to have a job. And I remember saying to him, actually, I didn't say this, but I felt it like, this is amazing. He's living at home. He's saving money. He's with me or he's got, and he was like, actually, it's not so amazing. When you're 22, you're not supposed to be living at home. When I realized that he was right, just because

he was saving money by living at home doesn't mean that's what he wanted to be doing because that's not what most people at 22 do. And I think it's been incredibly hard on kids. I think it's been incredibly hard on parents. And it's, it's something that I just think we need to take a beat and realize just how tough it's been. Yeah. And you give some great advice for that in the chapters of your book. One other great thing that was in your book that I really liked is you advise people on where to get their medical news. And evidently, the National Enquirer probably isn't the best place for that. I don't know.

You don't quote that in your book, of course, but I'm just throwing that joke. Part of what happened in this pandemic was, as I refer to the book, and it's not my term, it was actually the World Health Organization's term was the info dump because you had a lot of people playing telephone or spreading myth, misinformation, whatever, that just was not factually based at all. And then you had a lot of doctors who just because they had an MD after their name, they were giving medical advice, and they were not up to speed on, on really the nuts and bolts of this virus and the pandemic. And so I think that became really critical. And when it's over, quote unquote, or when we come fully out of this, there's still going to be a need for accurate, reputable, credible medical and scientific information.

And so I go over that in the book and I talk about what goes into interpreting a medical headline, how I do it at ABC and my counterparts at other networks. People need to understand in the United States, there are three television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they each have one or two medical correspondents. That's it. So this is, and they have that few number for a reason, because we're doing this every single day. We're interpreting studies, we're talking to experts, and then we're distilling it down in 60 seconds of live national television or radio or whatever. And that is a trained, learned skill.

That doesn't mean that doctors who don't do that don't know what they're talking about. It just means that every word that comes out of my mouth is not, oops, that word just flew out. Now, so I'm actually, Chris, better on the air talking about medical topics than I am at parties, because it's only when I have the time pressure of speaking to millions of people that I can speak with. I have to go to a party. I'm in real trouble. But, but I, in the book, I talk about why you can't believe every headline in the news and what people should look for so that they can interpret these headlines for themselves. Yeah, it was insane. I imagine if you go to parties, everyone just comes up to you and goes, does this look infected? That's one of the challenges. When I do that and I go and i go don't do that it's kind of like when you tell your family members computers it's like a really bad idea because then they're always calling you and going hey this what's going on here yeah that's my son's life that's my life too your mom always calls you and be like i can't figure out how to get the windows open beautiful

book what very well written i love how you help people through a lot of the different aspects. You break it down. I think we almost need like a national mental health psychiatry assistant grant after this where everyone can go get some psychiatry after all this stuff. And you write some beautiful things on silver linings in the back of the book as well. Anything you want to mention as we go out? I think that I hope, first of all, I really appreciate this time to talk to you about it, Chris. And I hope that your listeners will find the book helpful and or give it to someone who also can find it helpful.

Because the big picture view of this pandemic and what we've been through is that we are going to get through this, but we want to get through it with more resilience, physically, emotionally, psychologically, medically, scientifically. And I think that reading the book is a good way for individuals to do that and accomplish that and understand that in science, an open mind and an honest mind is an authentic mind. And that's the way we are in science. Anyone who says they know all the answers is not a true scientist, because in science and medicine, it's really about asking the right questions. And while it was my sixth book, in many ways, it was probably that and Life After Suicide were my two most important or the two most important because I think this last year has shown us how scary life can be. And I'm an eternal optimist. And I believe that with the right science, but also the right psyche, we can get through anything. So I appreciate having the time to talk to you about all that stuff.

Thank you for spending the time with us today, Jen. We certainly appreciate you doing that. Thanks, Chris. It was great to be with you. Thank you. And can you give us your plugs or you want people to look you up on the interwebs? Instagram is the best, at DRJAshton. And you can see me every day on ABC and GMA3, What You Need to Know, 1 p.m. Eastern, 12 Central and Pacific with my great colleagues and friends, Amy Robach and TJ Holmes.

Awesome sauce. Thanks, Moniz, for tuning in. We've been talking today with Dr. Jennifer Ashton. She's the author of The New Normal, A Roadmap to Resilience in the Pandemic Era. You definitely want to check this out. Listen to the doctors. Listen to the scientists. These people have trained for sometimes dozens of years and got so much experience.

And the nice thing about her book is it will give you a lot of guiding advice, and it will also make you feel better about life and feel like once you master something, you feel like you have at least some control over some sort of chaos. So be sure to check that out. Go to youtube.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. Go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram.

There's multiple accounts over there. You can check those out as well. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Stay safe, wear your mask, and we'll see you guys next time.