The Dr. Hyman Show - Use Your Mind To Heal Your Body

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. You could have the healthiest ketogenic, vegan, intermittent fasting, enzymes, food combining, and if you're living in fear, if you're living in pain, the cell is not in a state to actually absorb anything. Hey, Doctor's Pharmacy listeners, if you're a fan of the show, I'd love your help. My team and I put together a brief survey to hear your feedback on the podcast and learn a bit more about our audience and continue to provide you with free content around the biggest issues of our time. We're going to be giving away five air doctors and five AquaTrue devices that are water filters. So by filling out the survey, you can enter to win one.

Starting point is 00:00:46 You can do so by visiting drhyman.com forward slash fan. Again, that's drhyman.com forward slash fan, F-A-N. And just thanks so much for your support. I really, really appreciate it. I know a lot of you out there are practitioners like me helping patients heal using real food and functional medicine as your framework for getting to the root cause. What's critical to understanding what each individual person and body needs is testing, which is why I'm excited to tell you about Rupa Health. Looking at hormones,

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Starting point is 00:04:28 With every thought we think, we have an opportunity to create a sense of ease in the body or create stress. Our thoughts are powerful and our bodies are listening. Negative thoughts can lead to inflammation and even disease, while positive thoughts can be healing. In today's episode, we feature clips from three Doctors Pharmacy interviews about the impact of thoughts on be healing. In today's episode, we feature clips from three doctors pharmacy interviews about the impact of thoughts on our bodies. Dr. Hyman speaks with Dr. Joe Dispenza about how we can use our thoughts to control our health. He also speaks with Emily Fletcher about using meditation to reduce the stress response in the body, as well as Dr. Leonard Calabrese, who discusses how joy and gratitude support the immune system. Let's dive in. Thoughts are the language of the brain and feelings are the language of the body and how

Starting point is 00:05:08 we think and how we feel creates our state of being. The problem is, is that the person thinks of the problem, feels the emotion, and that is a thought and feeling. That's an image and an emotion. It's a stimulus and response. And that starts the conditioning process to get the body emotionally conditioned into the past. Now, here's the crazy part about it. Yes. The familiar past emotionally is producing dramatic effects on the body because the body is so objective that it does not know the difference between the real life experience that's creating that emotion and the emotion that person is fabricating by thought or memory alone. The body's believing it's living in the same past experience seven days a week, 365 days a year. And the problem with that is, is that the environment signals the gene. That's epigenetics and the end product of an experience in the environment is an

Starting point is 00:06:00 emotion. So the person is keeping the same gene regulated because the body's believing it's living in the same environmental condition so getting that person to step outside of that familiar known territory into the unknown where there is uncertainty and have them be comfortable there and begin to think about how they are going to think and you're telling me to give up their identity of who they are, what defines them, their past, their stories, their beliefs. I mean, you're coming after it. You're going for the jugular in our old patterns and our old ways of being that keep us not well and keep us unhappy and sick.

Starting point is 00:06:36 Turns out that's 95% of who we are. So if we don't address those unconscious programs, and you're an integrated physician, you understand this, you could have the healthiest ketogenic, vegan, intermittent fasting, enzymes, food combining. And if you're living in fear, if you're living in pain, the cell is not in a state to actually absorb anything. It's in a state to actually absorb anything. It's in a state of emergency. In an emergency, there's no growth and repair.

Starting point is 00:07:08 So can you see the person- I've seen patients like that who do everything perfectly and they're like still sick. And I've seen people who like don't give a crap about their health, but they have the best attitude and they're fine. Because the body's believing it's in a different environment and growth and repair is what does it. So then we said, okay, let's see if we can demystify the process so the concept the word meditation literally means to become familiar with if you look at the

Starting point is 00:07:37 symbolism of it and you look it up as familiarization so you sit down and you say okay I don't want to be unhappy I don't say, okay, I don't want to be unhappy. I don't want to be angry. I don't want to talk trash about people. I don't want to complain. I want to blame. I don't want to make excuses. I don't want to feel lack. I don't want to have an attitude that's telling me I can, it's too hard. That's the old identity, right? So the moment you start becoming conscious of those unconscious thoughts, the moment you become aware of your automatic habits and behaviors, the moment you can notice that this is actually guilt that you're feeling or sadness or pain, the moment you can become conscious and familiar with those states of mind and body if you keep becoming familiar with it if you keep becoming conscious of it you won't go unconscious so sitting in a meditation to know thyself most people all of a sudden here comes the barrage of thoughts here comes the the propensities and

Starting point is 00:08:35 habits and here comes the emotions the body's saying you normally complain at this time what are you doing sitting with your eyes closed let's think of a reason why you can complain and the body starts influencing the mind so you break it if the mind. So if you break it down for a person to understand, how many times do we have to forget until we start remembering and keep remembering and stop forgetting? That's the process of change. So then you put a person in a meditation and they hear that voice, they hear that chatter, they want to get up and go to the bathroom, they want to check their cell phone, they want to feel angry. And instead of getting up and saying, I can't meditate, see, they're coming to the end of the known. So they want to go back to what's known, right?

Starting point is 00:09:21 If you teach the person what to do and you show them that on the other side of that is freedom, on the other side of that is joy. You got to become so conscious and it takes a lot of awareness. It takes a lot of energy to sit with yourself long enough to disentangle from those programs. Now, we now know that it's a formula, that if you follow a formula, you will actually start pruning circuitry. You'll start the condition, stop the conditioning process and move the body out of the past. And it starts liberating energy. And that's, that's energy to heal with. That's energy to create a new life. That's energy to digest again. That's it. The body's no longer living in survival, living in emergency. And the majority of people's emotions then tend to be derived from the hormones of stress.

Starting point is 00:10:06 And so that we started realizing that the arousal of the stress hormones, that the rush of the chemistry is actually tapping the body's resources. And the stronger the emotions we feel towards any problem or person in our life, the more we pay attention to them. And if where you place your attention is where you place your energy, then you're giving your power away to that person or problem. And if a person can learn to sit in the fire and say, it's not my boss, it's not my ex, it's not my job, it's not the pandemic, it's me, that this emotion isn't serving me because this emotion is the exact emotion that's pushing the genetic buttons that's creating disease.

Starting point is 00:10:45 Okay. If I can keep practicing, lowering the volume to that emotion, I'll keep taking my attention off that person or problem. And in a sense, the body starts moving back where into the present moment, it starts getting relaxed in the, in the unknown. So we started teaching people the process and process and by a person overcoming their past, not the trauma, just the emotion. They just have to work on breaking that conditioning process because if you keep doing it over and over again, a habit is when the body becomes the mind,

Starting point is 00:11:21 now the servant, now the body's influencing the mind. So we teach a person then how to break that conditioning process. The body starts moving into the present moment. It's no longer in the same environmental condition. And then all of a sudden we start to see some pretty dramatic changes in people's health. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty remarkable. What you're talking about is helping people understand that the voice in their head is not them it's a program who is it that's actually aware that you have a voice in your head like that's the person we're after they call that witness consciousness you know or non-judgmental awareness or whatever they call it mindfulness mindfulnessfulness. Mindfulness. Yes. And, you know, honestly, Joe, like it's scary in there. Like your lower self has literally hijacked the road trip.

Starting point is 00:12:13 And for me, I'm constantly in relationship to my lower self, trying to see what it's saying, trying to shift the dialogue and flip it so that I'm not constantly repeating these same negative thought patterns that are causing me unhappiness or suffering or disease or pain or whatever it is. And I've been working on this for a long time and I don't find it easy. I find it challenging. It's like, it's a four in the morning. My mind just kicks up about, you know, my ex-wife or like, you know, and I'm like, I'm like pretty chill most of the time. I'm like, God, it's just, it's so deep in this wiring and programming.

Starting point is 00:12:47 And your work really helps people with a methodology to, to deal with that. Right. And, and, and what's, what happens in the work that you've done is so tremendous is that not only do you see the changes in people's lives, but you're seeing changes in their biology, which speak to the underlying physiology of joy, happiness, freedom, you know, right? That's a very new thing. You're familiar, I'm sure, with my friend Daniel Goleman and his partner, Davidson, Rich Davidson, who wrote Altered Traits about studying these Olympic meditators who've been in caves for nine years meditating

Starting point is 00:13:21 all the time, and their brains look totally different. And you're seeing this not in nine years of being in a cave, but after seven days, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, God, if you were to ask me, Mark, a year ago or two years ago, if I would think in my lifetime that I would be seeing what we're seeing in our measurements, I'd probably say, wow, probably not. But it's, you know, it's pretty ambitious because sometimes we see such levels of order in our community's brains when they apply that formula. We just found the articles that said that the mathematical probability of this type of coherence happening in the brain is statistically impossible. And if it occurred, it would occur as a momentary phenomenon that's random. And so our collective groups of people are sustaining these states for extended periods of time. So we can see dramatic changes in people's brain

Starting point is 00:14:26 circuitry and but not only their circuitry, but this thing called coherence and coherence is order, it's rhythm. So the antithesis is, if you're living in stress, and you're living in survival, you feel like you can't control something, you feel like you can't predict something. And you feel you have the perception that something's getting worse. And the arousal of those stress hormones causes you to shift your attention from one person to another problem, to another thing, to another place. And every one of those elements has a neurological network in the brain. So the arousal in the brain is saying there's an emergency. Try to control everything.

Starting point is 00:15:01 Try to predict everything. Prepare for the worst. And you start firing all these circuits individually. You shift your attention to your boss, to your coworkers, or whatever, and you start causing the brain to fire very incoherently. And when the brain is incoherent, we're incoherent. And when the brain isn't working right, we're not working right. So then the arousal causes us to narrow our focus on the material world. Our senses become heightened, and we focus on everything that's. As we become, our senses become heightened

Starting point is 00:15:25 and we focus on everything that's physical and material and we start over-focusing. That's what stress does. So we thought, what if we taught people to do the opposite? Instead of narrowing their focus on whatever is material or known to them, let's have them open their focus and broaden their focus and put their attention on nothing physical

Starting point is 00:15:44 and put it on nothing, on space, on energy. And if we can create what's called a divergent focus, is it possible that the brain would begin to fire more coherently? And all of a sudden we started seeing the front of the brain, talking the back of the brain and synchronizing areas together and what sinks in the brain, links in the brain. And all of a sudden you see the person starting to feel more whole. You keep doing that, more coherence creates more energy. The waves start standing and they start building on each other. And when that happens, there's an arousal that ultimately takes place

Starting point is 00:16:15 in the brain, but the arousal is not fear. The arousal is not pain or aggression. And the arousal is not anger. The arousal is ecstasy. The arousal is bliss. The arousal is love. That sounds The arousal is bliss. The arousal is love. Sounds pretty good. Where do I sign up?

Starting point is 00:16:28 The cool part about it is that when that occurs, the stimulation that's being created, and we see these high gamma patterns that are off the scale. The arousal that's taking place is not taking place from anything out there in the environment. It's not taking place from the sports car or the wardrobe or the movie or the cell phone. It's happening inside the person. And all of a sudden, that's a new feeling. They've never had that feeling before, and they start feeling connected. The side effect of that is even greater levels of order in the brain. And all of a sudden, the heart gets very turned on.

Starting point is 00:17:09 It gets very signaled. And the person is moving into an elevated state. And that kind of combination of energy between the heart and the brain causes the person to become creative. Not a little creative, but really seeing possibilities. They're conscious of things they were never conscious before. And that's a greater level of awareness. And that's a greater level of energy. And so people all of a sudden start seeing synchronicities that start taking place in their life because they have a coherent brain and a coherent heart. And you got a Wi-Fi signal.

Starting point is 00:17:41 And you feel connected to something. You don't feel separate. Stress causes us to feel separation and lack. And this feeling makes you feel whole. And all of a sudden, all the things that you wanted because you were in lack, you no longer want because you feel like you have them. And that's the kind of place where you can relax more into the present moment and enjoy the sunset and enjoy the meal and enjoy the conversation and enjoy the connection because you're present. And I say that that's a skill. So the biological- It is really. And our whole society is geared to make us not present. I mean,

Starting point is 00:18:15 the phones that we have are just these distraction animals. I think it's hard for us to come back to ourselves. And I remember, I'm old enough to remember when we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have computers, we didn't have anything except postcards and a landline. And I remember the quality of my experience was quite different. And the quality of my inner joy was much higher. And, you know, I'm sort of inspired by what you're saying. And I decided actually last week that I'm going to go for a month into a cabin somewhere where I'm going to have food delivered, not see another human and go into a retreat and meditate and be and have no phone, no computer, no books. I'm not even going to take your books, Joe. I'm going to take a pen and paper so I can write,

Starting point is 00:19:01 but that's it. And it'll just be an interesting experiment to see what it feels like to just be with no distraction and to let all that settle and, and begin to get into the space of coherence. Because, you know, I've noticed that for myself, and I'm sure like everybody else that, you know, the, the, the mind is a hard monkey to tame and, and it takes us down pathways of beliefs and ideas and things that take us away from a vibrant, full, joyous, happy life. And what's great about your work is it's not just theoretical. And yes, you've got all the science behind it and you're really mapping out the changes that structurally happen, you know, in our bodies but um you talk about these four elements of healing your body with your mind um and and how we can rewire our brain by changing our thoughts i mean so so it sort of implies that we have the capacity to master our thoughts which a lot of us don't agree to but can you take us

Starting point is 00:20:00 through what those four well first of all first of all i want to respond to that because okay okay because a lot of people a lot of people don't know what to do yes when they have that thought they they have no formula that's scientific and and practical that if they can practice enough times if nerve cells that fire together wire together, then nerve cells that no longer fire's no longer going to be there because you no longer paid attention to it, no longer accepted it, no longer believed it, no longer surrendered to it. And most people, when they get to this point, Mark, they think I'm doing my meditation wrong. And I always tell them, no, no, no, no, no. You're actually doing it right. That's what I want you to see. That's staying in the way between you and your happiness on the other side of that is a whole new area that you get to wire your brain any way you choose. So then there's an unlearning process before the relearning process.

Starting point is 00:21:16 There's a breaking a habit of the old self and a reinvention of a new self. You got to prune synaptic connections and they got to practice sprouting new ones. You got to unfire and unwire. You got to refire and rewire. You got to deprogram and reprogram. You got to lose your mind and create a new one. And you have to unmemorize emotions that keep you connected to the same familiar past and then recondition the body to a new mind and do a new emotion. So then that process, if there's a formula to apply, let's just say, you sitting in your meditation, it means- Because it sounds good, right? But how do you get from here to there? I'm sure everybody's thinking and listening. Yeah, of course. But everybody's done it. They've done it. They just

Starting point is 00:21:58 haven't made it a habit. And so then if you're sitting in a meditation and you have something to do and you your body starts going i'm angry i'm frustrated and it's my ex-wife it's my whatever and you you go like this to your body okay okay now listen you settle down and you know exactly what to do and you tame the animal you tell it to stay and relax it back into the present moment. What I want you to know. Sit down, boy. Sit. That's a victory. That's a victory. And then if the body starts going, I got to get up.

Starting point is 00:22:31 I got to check my cell phone. I got to go. I got a meeting. I'm busy. And you notice that your body's habituated into the same predictable future and you settle your body back down into the present moment. Now you're executing a will that's greater than those unconscious programs, and that's a victory. Hey, everyone, it's Dr. Mark. People are always surprised when I tell them that even with a whole foods diet rich in plants, we can still be nutrient deficient.

Starting point is 00:22:57 And addressing nutrient deficiencies is one of the lowest hanging fruits for optimizing our health and feeling better at any age. And that is why I'm a huge fan of AG1 from Athletic Greens. Now, since our soils no longer have the same levels of essential nutrients or not enough of microbiome in the soil, because we've killed it with glyphosate and other stuff and then they can't extract the nutrients, we're up against issues like chronic stress, toxicity, sleep deprivation, like never before.

Starting point is 00:23:22 Our bodies actually need some extra help getting all the right information to work properly. And that information comes in the form of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and good bacteria, all of which help our cells remember how to efficiently tackle their important jobs. Now, one of the things I use every day to support my diet is AG1 from Athletic Greens. It's a comprehensive superfood powder with a special blend of high quality whole food ingredients that work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. It's a comprehensive superfood powder with a special blend of high-quality whole food ingredients that work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. It's specifically designed to support energy and focus, aid with gut health and digestion, and support a healthy immune system, which we all need. I've made AG1 part of my daily ritual because I feel better knowing I have a little extra nutritional insurance to complement my healthy diet.

Starting point is 00:24:03 It also gives me a nice energy boost without feeling overstimulated. I like to think of it as a huge leafy green salad shrunk down into a simple glass of water that I can take anywhere. Right now, you can get 10 free travel packs of AG1 when you make your first purchase. Just go to athleticgreens.com forward slash Hyman. That's A-T-H-L-E-T-I-C-G-r-e-n-s.com slash hyman now let's get back to this week's episode of the doctor's pharmacy meditation is medicine talking about food is medicine but i also come to realize that meditation is medicine and that it can be applied for all sorts of issues that people have and that it actually creates a healing response in the body you know drugs actually shut off a pathway or block something.

Starting point is 00:24:46 They interfere with your biology to stop a symptom. Meditation actually is a tool that helps to activate all the healing mechanisms. So what are those mechanisms that get activated? Yeah, so when we get stressed, and what a lot of people don't know is that when that adrenaline and cortisol starts to flood our body, those chemicals are acidic in nature. So when your body becomes acidic, it becomes inflamed. And that inflammation, as you well know, is the basis of a lot of different chronic diseases. And so with meditation, not only are we getting rid of that adrenaline and cortisol, but we're starting to flood the

Starting point is 00:25:16 brain with dopamine and serotonin, which are alkaline in nature. So we're changing the pH of the body. And if we go, if we look at why the human body reacts to stress in the way that it does, we really need to cut back in time a few thousand years. Say we're hunting and gathering in the woods. Sabertooth tiger jumps out with the intent to kill. First thing that will happen is digestion will flood with acid because you can't afford to spend that energy digesting your food. You need all hands on deck to deal with a tiger.

Starting point is 00:25:42 That same acid will seep onto your skin, so you don't taste very good if you get bitten into by the tiger. That's why stress can premature your aging, because it makes your skin... It makes your blood clot, so if you get bitten, you don't bleed to death. That's right, that's right. It makes your nervous poos. It makes your bladder and bowels evacuate,

Starting point is 00:25:56 so you can be light on your feet. And it also dampens your immune system, because who cares if you're going to get cancer if you're about to be killed by a tiger? Again, we need all hands on deck for this threat basically activates you to be a super duper power machine to run as fast as you can or fight as much as you can but if you're in that state all the time it breaks down your system that's right it's not bad for us to get stressed it is terrible for us to stay stressed and because our modern demands are no longer predatory attacks, when we get stressed when our boss yells at us,

Starting point is 00:26:27 we never outrun our boss. We never physically fight our boss. We're not as physical as we used to be. Sometimes you feel like fighting. Yeah, sometimes you might feel like it. But this is why a lot of people think that exercise is their meditation. I hear this all the time.

Starting point is 00:26:39 I'm like, I go to the gym and I run it off or I box it out. Or I bike ride and clear my space. And look, exercise is great for you. And exercise is very good at getting rid of your stress in the now. But if you want to deal with a dog that barked in your face when you were 10 or your parents divorced when you were 12, we have to give the body rest. I was five. Sorry. Tricky, right? And that stuff, it gets imprinted in ourselves and we got to rest in order to get rid of it. Yeah. So what are the other things that happen biologically? Well, one thing that's a fun benefit that not that many people are talking about is the sex

Starting point is 00:27:13 piece. There's a whole chapter in the book called From OM to OMG. And what's happening there is if your body's stressed, again, procreation is not really top of mind. Like the meat suit is not that interested in making mini meat suits if it's afraid for its own survival and its own life. So when you get your body out of that chronic fight or flight, you know, you get out of sympathetic into parasympathetic, you can start to have some energy for things like procreation or pleasure. Also mess up your hormones. You know, actually they've done studies where they looked at guys who were watching their sports team. And if their team lost, their testosterone went down. The stress of the loss of their team. If their team won, their testosterone levels went up.

Starting point is 00:27:55 Man. Which is pretty interesting. See, this is a great reason for people to be rooting for their partner's teams. And infertility is a huge issue. You write about it in your book. And a lot of work has been done on this at harvard and other places where people just couldn't get pregnant and they start meditating and be mindful yeah we have a bunch of ziva babies right now myself

Starting point is 00:28:13 included i was 39 i got pregnant on my first try we had a 40 there's a woman in the book who was 42 when she came to me her doctors she was not even a candidate for ivf and then she started meditating and two years later at 44 she went back to her doctors and she had the fraternity fertility markers of an 18 year old so it's we've we oftentimes conflate maternal health with maternal age and so a lot of people think well as I age my fertility goes down but that's not always the case if you're getting healthier it's possible to a degree to a a point, you could become more fertile. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:28:47 It improves your immune system. It actually lengthens your telomeres, which are these little end caps on your genes, on your chromosomes that determine your aging. So literally you can kind of reverse the biology of aging through meditation. And this is some fascinating new science. And I love that I read the telomere effect,

Starting point is 00:29:04 which I think is so exciting, but we've all seen it. We've all seen that 60 year old yogi and this is some fascinating new science and i i love there i read the telomere effect which i think is so exciting but we've all seen it we've all seen that 60 year old yogi who's meditating and doing yoga her whole life and has the most glowing skin and bright clear eyes and is super strong and then we go back to our you know high school reunion and someone's been drinking and sitting on the couch every day you're like whoa you look 30 years older than you are. So we know that stress ages us expeditiously. You want proof of that? Take a look at any president the day they take office and that same president four years later. So we know stress is aging us, but it's, but now we have the proof. Yeah. And then even stem cells, we're all talking about stem cell

Starting point is 00:29:39 injections and stem cells, but meditation actually improves stem cells. This is so exciting to me. I know you talk about this. I don't know a ton about the stem cells, but meditation actually improves stem cells. This is so exciting to me. I know you talk about this. I don't know a ton about the stem cells, but I love that you do. It's great. And also it seems to have the ability to rewire your brain, like you were saying, to increase the connections, improve the connectivity of your brain, which helps you learn and focus. Yeah. Neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change itself.

Starting point is 00:30:03 Now it also strengthens something called the corpus callosum, which is that thin white strip that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. And we've known for a long time that meditators have thicker corpus callosums than non-meditators, but we weren't able to prove if it was causal or correlated. But now we know that the longer you meditate, the thicker that thing becomes, which, cool party trick, but why would I want a fat corpus callosum? Well, everybody should, because it's quite literally the bridge between your critical mind and your creative mind, your masculine and your feminine. It's the thing that allows you to come up with those creative problem solving ideas when your boss is yelling at you, or perhaps even more importantly, so you get into a fight with your partner and it gets really heated. And then

Starting point is 00:30:40 you shut down and you retreat to the bedroom. And about two hours later, you start coming up with all these hilarious witty comebacks. And you're like, why? Why could I have thought of that in the moment? Well, my theory is that the thicker your corpus callosum is, the easier it is for you to come up with those creative ideas when it counts, when it's go time. Although it may not be good to use those to undermine your relationship. No, not undermining it, but just responding versus reacting, even with your partner.

Starting point is 00:31:03 Yeah, it's true. I think that's one of the most powerful things I noticed is that, you know, I always was pretty good at being self-aware and not reacting. But the truth is I would react inside. And I learned how to modulate that on the outside. And what happened to me as I started meditating and over time, I noticed that the activation wasn't happening. It's really changed, and it does lead to a much higher level of performance

Starting point is 00:31:32 and function and ability. If we go back to the fulfillment piece for the relationships, I find that a lot of us approach romantic relationships as a place where we want to go to fill ourselves up. We say, well, I'm 80% fulfilled. I'll get my partner to give me the other 20%. But that's impossible. No one can make you happy. Your happiness does not lie on the other side of any person, place or thing. And then you get in the relationship, and you're

Starting point is 00:31:54 mad at them because they didn't deliver you that 20% that you wanted them to. They've now failed you. But what I think meditation allows you to do, because you're tapping into the very source of fulfillment, you're flooding your brain and body with dopamine and serotonin you're a hundred percent fulfilled so you can bring that to your relationship and it's their job to be a hundred percent fulfilled on their end and they bring that to the relationship and then it becomes this beautiful dance and compliment versus a dance of neediness it's not 50 50 it's 100 100 yes yes yeah i think that's really true i think the uh you know there's a there's also sort of something i want to bring up around the meditation which i think uh puts

Starting point is 00:32:31 people off it's like well you know i have to have a quiet room i have to you know have my candles and my incense and my cushion and not be disturbed and my singing bowls and my gong. It's nice to be in a meditation hall in the mountains, and that's awesome. But the reality is most of us don't live in that world, and I certainly don't. And I found that, I remember the first time I was sort of hanging out with you,

Starting point is 00:32:59 we were at an event, and we had, as part of the event, there was a party on a boat, and we were coming back from the party and the boat was just crowded with people and it was loud and noisy. And you were just like sitting there, like with your legs outstretched on the bench, just deep in meditation. I'm like, wow, that's impressive. And I'm like, I, that seems like doable. Cause you know, I, I often, you know, do it in places where, you know, I'm like on a plane ride or where it's not your typical place, uh, or I'll just go in a room in my office, you know, in Cleveland clinic and I'll shut the door and I'll sit on the floor and meditate. I, I, it really changes my whole state very quickly.

Starting point is 00:33:46 So, you know, I often do it not to be enlightened, but I often do it because I feel the quality of my life improves literally immediately. It's not like, oh, if I do it for six months, I'll notice something. It's literally like, open my eyes, the world's different. Yes. I'm happier. I'm more rested.

Starting point is 00:34:03 I feel more energetic and more focused i have um you know less anxiety i just like really amazed at how wonderful it is and it's like easy to kind of just think you can't do it because your life isn't structured for that but you can and you might not always be able to do it twice a day. I mean, but it's so powerful and easy to do. So talk a little bit about the practicality of it and what it is. And also the myth around the fact that people say, well, I'm not good at meditating because my mind won't shut the heck up. Yes.

Starting point is 00:34:38 So this is the number one reason why people think they can't meditate. They think that the point is to clear their mind. And I don't know who this dude is who's telling everybody to clear their mind. Mark, we got to find them and we have to teach them can't meditate. They think that the point is to clear their mind. And I don't know who this dude is who's telling everybody to clear their mind, but Mark, we gotta find them and we have to teach them how to meditate. Because then people sit down, they're like, all right, brain, stop thinking.

Starting point is 00:34:53 Hmm, sure would like a snack. I wonder what Mark Hyman, what snack Mark Hyman should think they should eat. Hmm, now I'm thinking about Mark Hyman during my meditation. Oh no, I suck at meditation, I quit. And that's the beginning and the end of most people's career. And it makes me sad because they potentially think about me that they just think about Mark Hyman and then you're enlightened. But it makes me sad

Starting point is 00:35:14 because people potentially rob themselves of a lifetime of bliss and fulfillment because they're judging themselves based on misinformation. So the good news here, if you've ever tried meditation and if you're sort of cooking dinner and tuned out, like, listen up, this is super important. If you've ever tried meditation and felt like a failure because you could not clear your mind, the good news is that the mind thinks involuntarily, just like the heart beats involuntarily. So trying to give your brain a command to shut up is as impactful as trying to give your heart a command to stop beating. It does not work. I can get it to slow down, though. You can?

Starting point is 00:35:46 Yeah. Impressive. Oh, yeah. You can use it to change your breathing. Yeah, and that's what a lot of techniques do. They use the breath as a tool to slow things down, or they use the breath as a tool to focus, and that's all great. But to your point, those are more monastic practices,

Starting point is 00:36:00 and they require a little bit more quiet or calm or focus, whereas what we do at Ziva is designed to be integrated into your life. So you can do it on that boat. You can do it with your kids on a plane, on a train. And so it's not about quieting the mind. It's not about clearing the mind. It's about inducing deep healing rest so that you can get rid of that backlog of stresses from your past that's making you stupid, sick, and slow. Yeah. I have to admit, I once meditated while I was getting my teeth cleaned. I do it too. I meditate at the dentist all the time. And sometimes like if I don't have time, like I'm getting a haircut and I'll tell him I'm

Starting point is 00:36:34 just going to take a nap. Yep. I always do it at the salon. I'm getting a pedicure at the dentist. My dentist is like, you don't salivate, Emily. It's very odd because it's a de-excitation going on. Yeah, it's powerful. So people are thinking about wanting to meditate.

Starting point is 00:36:49 There's a lot of ways they can start. This is the big thing I would encourage folks to do is that if you have a practice right now, but you're not seeing a return on investment of your time, if your life is not getting better in market ways, then maybe research and find another technique. Maybe find a teacher that resonates with you. Find something to where if you're going to make an investment of your most valuable resource, which is your time, make sure that you're getting a return on that investment. Stress is bad for your immune system. I mean, classic chronic stress, you know, acute

Starting point is 00:37:21 stress run from the saber tooth tiger. That's really good. Chronic stress of my job, my life, the environment, politics, and the world is bad. We are now starting to appreciate that the opposite of that, the immunology of joy can be immunologically potentiating. And you mentioned a very nice example. I call this the immunology of gratitude. And gratitude has wide-ranging biologic effects. There's a recent study done at UC San Diego that showed that patients with asymptomatic, echocardiographically documented congestive heart failure with six weeks of gratitude journaling could improve ventricular function. Your heart pumps better and faster if you're grateful. Right. So you've got to open your heart. It's exactly, let's take this a couple,

Starting point is 00:38:20 a couple of steps further. By the way, before you go on, there's another condition, which is the opposite, which is stress-induced heart failure. Broken heart. Broken heart. I literally had a patient with a broken heart. He was healthy otherwise, and he went into heart failure after his wife died. Sure.

Starting point is 00:38:33 And through using various modalities around stress and energy medicine, we were able to get it better. We think that that's the basis of voodoo deaths. Yeah. You know, you're petrified in your heart. So it's all connected. That and fugu toxin.

Starting point is 00:38:48 Right, right, right, right. So the immunology of joy, there's been some tremendous work in this. And it's such a great phase, the immunology of joy. I just love that. Some people, Cohen from Carnegie Mellon has done such beautiful work looking at resistance to respiratory viruses and the effects of hugs.

Starting point is 00:39:16 And did this elegantly controlled study where they measured social interactions, the amount of touching that goes on in a person's life, and then actually inoculated all the people in the study with a cold virus, and then measured their antibody responses and clinical things. And hugging was an important and significantly clinical variable. Even though the hug people were more exposed to viruses, you know, they were protected. So, I mean, a small example. That's great. So hugs, so you won't get sick. That's why when Lenny ever comes to see me,

Starting point is 00:39:52 we always hug each other. Absolutely. It's therapeutic, right? He's the only doctor at Cleveland Clinic who gives me a hug. It's pretty amazing. That's good. I want to be known for that. Fulvio De Quista from London, who's going to be visiting

Starting point is 00:40:08 us in May, where my immunology summit, which has been going on for 16 years, is actually going to start out full half day on the immunology of wellness, who does experimental work on the immunology of joy. And he actually has animal models. Mice, take mice and let them live in his little home. Take another set of mice and put them in a dirty cage and they get all upset. And you take the other set of mice and you put them in the Ritz-Carlton house

Starting point is 00:40:37 and you pet them, their immune systems shift. So, you know, we don't know how to quantify this, but it certainly fits with our model that in those behaviors of diet, exercise, sleep and stress, we can't do anything about with targeted therapy. And we have to deal with it, you know, bio-behaviorally. And people have to, they have to be empowered to do this. And that's where I think that, you know, you guys have been doing this for your whole career. And know but 20 years ago you were the wellness guys you were over here all right you're over here this is alternative therapy right i'm trying to bring um immunologic strength wellness and immunologic health building to the mainstream

Starting point is 00:41:38 of people some of the people that you're interviewing on the show yeah um who deal with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases every single day. So, you know, we're, we're shifting the curve a little bit. Well, you said it was really important before you said before wellness was sort of a nice idea that we all believed in, but didn't have a lot of data. Now you're saying there's a lot more data. And I saw a study recently where they literally injected cold viruses into people's nose and they looked at stress questionnaires. That's the same work of Sheldon Cohen. Incredible. And they found that those who scored high on the stress questionnaires got colds and

Starting point is 00:42:11 the other ones didn't, even when they injected the cold virus right in their nose. That's right. So what kind of data are you seeing around stress and wellness, diet? Let's just kind of go through it. I want to spend a little time digging in because it's such a compelling area. And I think your work is so important and you're such a great voice for this. Well, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll knock these down one at a time. But, you know, one of the interesting things that, that has happened here is that, you know, a decade ago, I felt very comfortable talking about these topics to the wellness community and translating it for them.

Starting point is 00:42:50 But it's taken a bit longer, and only in the past five years am I now trying to take to the airways, literally, and in the scientific literature to bring it to my immunology colleagues. So it's a shift. And the data speak for itself. Let's just take one disease. Let's take rheumatoid arthritis. So, okay, so for the audience, rheumatoid arthritis, most common cause of inflammatory arthritis,

Starting point is 00:43:17 you know, 100 years ago, inexorable, terrible illness. The great Sir William Osler, the greatest physician of the past century said when he saw a patient with that disease walk in the front door, he would walk out the back door. Yeah. Even when I was a resident and fellow, we had very little to offer. Steroids. And steroids were just in the dawn of them. Today, we know so much more about this. So we have large studies the who gets rheumatoid arthritis well there's a genetic predisposition you have the genetic makeup but not everybody that carries the gene gets the disease so they have not everybody who has the disease has the gene

Starting point is 00:43:59 exactly but most do so we have hypothesized for a long time that there are environmental influences. So gene plus environment. And that environment may be external, could be your own behaviors. Big studies like the Women's Health Study that have looked at 100,000 women for decades have found that if you take people, women who are predisposed to rheumatoid, many autoimmune diseases are female predominant. More, yeah, mostly. Yes. And you look at certain variables, diet, okay?

Starting point is 00:44:32 And if you, you know, just to make this understandable, if we take the dietary range here from over here, the standard American diet, the sad diet. Yes. And over here, let's just call it the prudent diet. And at the end, we would peg this as a vegan diet. The further you go down toward a healthy diet, the more plant-based you become.

Starting point is 00:44:55 Statistically, for each quartile, for each quarter of dietary health, you statistically lower the likelihood of developing rheumatoid arthritis, particularly when you're young and active. It's an unbelievable and stepwise regression. health, you statistically lower the likelihood of developing rheumatoid arthritis, particularly when you're young and active. It's an unbelievable and stepwise regression. And, you know, so we know that diet can be a tremendous influencer. Once you have the disease, once you have the disease, looking at dietary composition, we know that patients that eat fish twice a week will have statistically,

Starting point is 00:45:31 and I'm not talking about trivial improvements, palpable lower disease activity than people who are non-fish eaters. And in fact, just eating any fish in your diet in these cross-sectional studies have suggested that it contributes to the soap composition, healthy fats, things that we can dig into a little bit later. So this is hugely important. So we can take people who are genetically predestined to this and modify their risks early on. And once they have the disease, actually can make contributions to lowering disease activity. So what are the kind of diets, besides, for example, eating fish, what would be the dietary recommendations you'd give to someone with an inflammatory disease or rheumatoid arthritis? You know, so my recommendations are to, well, Ultimately, you know, I'm very happy with someone who has achieved a semblance of what we would recognize as the Mediterranean diet. I'm very happy with people who have achieved,

Starting point is 00:46:37 you know, becoming either total vegans or close to that. Very good data coming out now that paleo diet also can have some anti-inflammatory effects and pegan diet. You know, I tell people, you know, so, you know, people are not coming to me. So what's different for people who come to see you and people come to see me. So people are coming to see me, are coming to have their disease sorted out. They're looking for the most advanced targeted therapies, and they're looking for a little extra. People coming to you are looking how to rearrange their lives and do this. So I have a very slow and stepwise process. It might scare him away if you told him to go to the hospital. If you can do Meatless Monday, I'm very happy. Let's start. And the one thing that we know in IMID diseases, it's not a foot race.

Starting point is 00:47:31 It's a marathon. So I'm going to be seeing people for years and decades. IMID diseases is immune-mediated inflammatory disease. So rheumatoid, inflammatory bowel disease. So we try to take the low-hanging fruit and try to make little modifications. And then over time, I'm so impressed that people can make meaningful progress. So in the dietary aspect, I encourage real food, get rid of the junk, plant-based, monounsaturates. I have no problem with protein as long as it's high quality.

Starting point is 00:48:13 And I think there's a place for it. So that's where we start with people. Step two, exercise. I became interested- By the way, for people maybe not realize, but 60% of your immune system is right underneath the lining of your gut. So it's there because you're exposed to foreign molecules

Starting point is 00:48:35 from food and bugs, and your immune system is the first line of defense. And so when that system gets disrupted, and you get what we call a leaky gut, it creates a lot of inflammation. And so changing your diet has a huge impact on there. Working on your inner garden, your gut microbiome plays a big role. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:51 You know, I'm glad you brought that up and diving into the science just a little bit. I mean, the microbiome, which is connected to every organ system in our body, and you've talked about it extensively on this show, is critical in both the development and the function of our immune system. I mean, you know, if you're born with a sterile gut and you're immunodeficient, and we know that from animal models, we know it from people. We know a lot about, and you just, you know, I had Dr. Hazen on the shows, studied this in the most, you know, robust scientific way possible. You know, we know what a healthy microbiome kind of looks like, you know, diverse and rich. You know, we've yet to dial it into this organism, that organism. So, you know, we know that good diets that people that eat real food, you know, usually have a more diverse and rich

Starting point is 00:49:56 microbiome and that supports immunologic health. I'm reluctant to tell people, you know, Carl Sagan used to say, you know, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary data. And so, you know, we don't know how to reduce it to that crystallized, eat this, do this one thing. It's probably much more complicated than that, but we do know that prudent diets versus sad diets, a huge effect on the immune system. In the frame of functional medicine, we often people on elimination diets, which is eliminating inflammatory foods and anti-inflammatory diet. Things like gluten and dairy

Starting point is 00:50:30 can be an issue. Processed food, obviously. Eating more whole foods, plant-rich foods is really key. So that's sort of what you're saying. Absolutely. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. One of the best ways

Starting point is 00:50:42 you can support this podcast is by leaving us a rating and review below. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff

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Starting point is 00:51:37 my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search

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The Dr. Hyman Show - Use Your Mind To Heal Your Body

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