The Liz Moody Podcast - Ask The Doctor: Burn Out Edition—How To Get Back Your Energy & Eliminate Overwhelm with Dr. Robin Berzin

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

My guest today is the amazing Dr. Berzin, founder and CEO of Parsley Health. She attended medical school at Columbia University and trained in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Tech Pioneer, named as one of the 100 Most Innovative Women in Business by Inc. Magazine, and praised by Fast Company for founding one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Her new book, State Change, is available wherever books are sold! the exact symptoms that can tell you if you’re burnt out how to know when your burn out is because of something in your body versus your mind tests you can ask your doctor for to see if you’re burnt out how to manage your cortisol to manage your burnout the best workouts to decrease burn out (it’s not what you think!) the minimum recommend workout to get results, and exactly how to tell when it’s been effective how to eat for more energy the best supplements for stress and low energy a science-based argument that will convince even skeptics to start meditating the minimum amount you need to meditate to get the benefits easy, actionable steps to help manage your relationship with technology and so much more! Tag @lizmoody and @robinberzinmd with any thoughts, feelings, or reactions as you’re listening, and show us any tips or tricks you’re trying from the episode! I would also SO appreciate it if you shared this episode or any favorite episodes with someone you love in your life! PS: My very first product is live!!! Go to htdeck.com to snag your Healthier Together Deck, which has 150 conversation starters in 6 categories! Find out more at htdeck.com—this is a self-funded limited run and these will sell out!! PS: My Patreon is live! You can join Green Smoothie Society and get access to ALL of my green smoothie recipes and advice! Get all the deets at patreon.com/lizmoody. This episode is sponsored by AG1 by Athletic Greens. Visit athleticgreens.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today.  This episode is sponsored by Pique Tea.You can getl 5% off anything on piquetea.com/lizmoody using my code LIZMOODY. This episode is sponsored by GoMacro. You can get a whopping 30% off your order of $50 or more PLUS free shipping by going to gomacro.com and using the code healthiertogether.  This episode is sponsored by Paleovalley. Head over to paleovalley.com and use the code LIZM for 15% off.  Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the healthier together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I am a cookbook author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, and today we are going to be doing just that. We have a fresh, shiny, new Ask the Doctor for you, and it's one that I very much personally needed, a burnout edition. If you're new here, my Ask the Doctor episodes are based around the idea that functional medicine is truly life-changing. But great functional doctors can be hard to find and get appointments with and unfortunately quite expensive. On these episodes, I invite on some of the best doctors in the world and I pepper them with all of your questions and mine about a topic. We have Ask the Doctors on Longevity, happiness, hormones, anxiety, gut health, and more.

So if you are interested in any of those topics, I highly recommend scrolling back in our old episodes. Ask the Doctors are meant to be super comprehensive and highly actually. The goal is for you to always walk away armed with real ways to make a positive impact on your life today. Now I am so excited to welcome Dr. Robin Berzen to the podcast. Dr. Berzen is the founder and CEO of Parsley Health, America's leading holistic medical practice designed to help women overcome chronic conditions. She attended medical school at Columbia University and trained in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a tech pioneer, named as one of the 100 Most Innovative Women in Business by Inc. Magazine, and praised by Fast Company for founding

one of the world's most innovative companies. Her new book, State Change, just came out and is available wherever books are sold. Dr. Berson shares her perspective on burnout at the beginning of the episode, but it's based around the idea that a lot of addressing the mind actually begins in the body. She shares the exact symptoms that can tell you if you're burnt out, including the best test that you can ask your regular doctor for, how to manage your cortisol to manage your burnout, the best workouts to decrease burnout, exactly how to eat for more energy, the best supplements for stress or low energy, a science-based argument that will convince even skeptics to start meditating, easy, actionable steps to help manage your relationship

with technology, and so much more. I know from personal experience that feeling burnt out is truly the worst. And I hope this episode makes you feel empowered and excited and ready and able to start truly feeling better. Dr. Berzen and I would love to hear what you're trying. So take a pick of you doing something or just screenshot the episode page and share it on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody and she is at Robin Berzen MD. And please, please, please, please share with other people in your life. that might be experiencing burnout.

It is so widespread right now. And knowing that there are these simple things that we can do to make a huge difference is just so vital and so important and so widely under-discust. Finally, if you are new here, welcome. I am so glad that you're here. Do not forget to subscribe so you don't miss out

on any future episodes. I have so many good ones coming up, including an Ask the Doctor immune system edition, an episode all about hacking dopamine and a series on women thriving through chronic illness. All right, without further ado, let's talk about burnout. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. All right, Dr. Berzin, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I just want to get right into it. I think a really interesting part of your book is that it connects the mental health symptoms that a lot of us might be experiencing with our underlying physical health. Can you speak a little bit to that connection? Absolutely. So that is really my inspiration for writing this book was seeing in so many of my patients how

when we address their physical, underlying physical conditions, when we address their lifestyle, when we take care of our bodies, that we simultaneously, almost without effort, heal our minds. And so that led me to research all of the deep connections, not from mind to body, because we've all heard about that, but actually the opposite direction from body to mind. And what I see over and over again is that people don't realize that they have underlying chronic conditions that they know about or don't know about that are affecting their mental health, that are barriers to their achieving peak mental health, that there are things that we're doing

every day that I call in the book core actions. So these are not habits. They're deeper than that. They're things we do every single day, like foods we eat, that are contributing to or getting in the way of our mental health. And that there's other really interesting science-back practices that are on the forefront of medicine that we can do with our bodies that can really transform our mental health. And so the whole book is really just a roadmap for how to use your body to achieve better mental

health, better and more stable emotional well-being, which is something that I think we all meet a little bit right now, right? Yes. Yes, both hands up in the air to that. I'm curious in your own life, because as we were talking about before we got on this call, you have like 17 jobs. You're a incredibly busy women. And then also with your patients, how do you know when burnout is something that we should be approaching through our approach to our physical health and our bodies, like everything we're about to talk about in this episode, versus the sign that we should maybe make a major life change, like switching to a new job or that something in our situation isn't working for us? Yeah. So I would think about that question as what I get a lot,

which is how do we know when burnout is real? Right. Because we hear about burnout from, the standpoint of, oh, I feel a little burned out today, like I kind of need a morning off or I need to go for a jog, right? And when is burnout actually a clinical condition? And the World Health Organization actually has classified burnout as a true medical condition. And there's signs and symptoms of it in the body that should trigger us to know that, wow, this is more than just, you know, having a bad week, right? And I think learning how to tell the difference is really important. So some of the symptoms that we can have that tell us that burnout is gone too far, our chronic insomnia, fatigue that's like you just can't get out of bed every day, which could be depression or it could be burnout. Issues with dizziness and low

blood pressure, blood pressure swings, blood sugar swings, issues with our hormones, so irregular periods, PCOS, PMS, acne, breakout, signs of inflammation in the body. In all of these could be signs that our stress mechanisms, our underlying biological stress mechanisms that are designed for us to encounter stress, manage it, get through it, and move on have been so under siege, so under assault on a daily basis from chronic anxiety, chronic stress, chronic sense of doom and gloom, right? We've all lived through the past three years in a period of time where there is a chronic underlying baseline of anxiety for all of us. It's just always there. It's always on. You never can completely escape it or it's very difficult to. And so when we see these signs in the body,

it could be telling us that our normal stress response has been pushed to the edge and that we could have disruptions in our cortisol function, which is our core stress hormone. And that disruption in our cortisol can lead to blood sugar problems, disruptions in our testosterone and our estrogen balance, and all of the downstream things that come from that. And so I always recommend getting testing and I recommend paying attention to your body. If these symptoms of fatigue, of exhaustion, of, you know, dizziness, anxiety, insomnia are sort of becoming like your norm or your hormones are really out of whack. Burnout could be the underlying cause. Are there specific tests that you would recommend anybody could kind of go to their normal general practitioner and ask for?

You know, there's a few that you could actually get quite easily from your regular doc. You can look at your blood sugar balance. You could look at your sex hormones. If you're a menstruating woman, you want to look at those on the right day of your cycle. If your cycle's all over the place, well, then it does, or you don't have a cycle, then it doesn't matter. Although I'll note on that point, a lot of people get hormone testing when they're on hormonal birth control, like the birth control pill. Not so useful. Not telling us what your hormones are doing because the pill is masking them. So you wouldn't need to be off the pill for some of those tests. But a regular doctor can run that blood work. You can look at cortisol, morning cortisol through blood work, but the best

has to look at your cortisol function and to address your adrenal function is actually not a blood test. It's best to look at that through saliva or urine. And these are what I call specialty tests or fancy pants tests. We run them for patients nationwide at Parsley Health. So they're really common tests that we run for people here. It's a little bit harder to get them from your just standard PCP, but a provider who's trained in functional medicine, integrative medicine, who's a licensed doc, meaning they can order tests and read laboratory tests, can run these tests. So you can find them out there today. And they can be really, really helpful for identifying what's the difference between having a disease and what's the different in that and having deeply biological and

functional burnout, right, where your hormones are out of whack and that's driven by your burnout. And would you say from a pragmatic perspective, a good course of action with burnout would be to maybe get these tests to address the things that are happening in our body to do all the stuff we're going to talk about in this episode. And then if stuff still doesn't feel good, if you're still feeling all of those symptoms you listed, then maybe it's time to look at, like, should you be in a new job, should you be making a pretty big significant life change? Yeah, you know, what we want to start with is a whole body assessment. And for anyone out there listening, you can actually get that. We walk through our whole body assessment and it's called our symptom score at Parsley. And we developed it and it's been researched and Stanford University's using it in their research now, which is super cool. But it gives you a symptom score. And it looks at seven body domains. So it looks at your mental health. It looks at your cardiovascular health. It looks at your gut health. And it takes about two minutes. And you can do it. online at parsleyhealth.com slash insights. You can also do it by hand just on paper if you're if you're

reading the book. And it gives you a sense of where are you at across all of these broady domains and what is your symptom score? High, meaning a lot of symptoms, not so good, low, very few symptoms, pretty good. And that allows you to track over time. And the reason I'm starting with that is it's really hard for us as individuals, I know myself included, to like think back the past two weeks. So what did you have for lunch two weeks, two Mondays ago? Do you know? No, I literally have no idea. I don't know what I had for lunch yesterday. Exactly. And so before we like quit our jobs or leave our partners or runaway screaming to Tahiti forever, although that could be no solution. And I have prescribed like, you know, a week at the beach or a month of the beach,

certain patients first because that's the only thing that's going to help them. The reality is you need to start tracking in a measured way, a way that you can see over time and note over time how you're doing because it's really easy to get lost in a really bad day or really bad week. And it can be hard to understand the patterns of your own body. And so the Parsley Symptoms score, which again, you can do for free online at parsleyhealth.com slash insights, is a way for you to get that score and understand overtime. It's designed to be done every two weeks. And I recommend doing that every two weeks for, say, six weeks to be able to understand, like, what is happening in your body and allow you to connect the dots and do that self-assessment. There's also a self-assessment in the book.

This one is only in the book around how your core actions every day could be affecting you. Are you spending 12 hours a day looking at a screen? Are you largely eating a high sugar diet or a highly processed packaged diet? Are you getting less than eight hours of sleep a night or having really poor quality sleep. And so the book gives you a mechanism by which to look at the things you're doing every day and to start to pinpoint how some of these core actions could be impacting you in driving burnout. And starting with this head-to-to-to-to-life style assessment is really important because it can be really impossible. And I think for any of us to just say like what is actually driving this? And where could I start to feel better? Not by like overhauling my entire life, which I find

for most people feels like climbing Everest, how can I start with just getting to base camp by making some changes or pinpointing where I might be causing brain fog, causing anxiety, causing fatigue that is body based? And how can I start to shift what's happening in my body to be at that base camp so that I have hope of climbing Everest because you have to start somewhere and you have to start with those first steps? Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Okay, let's start talking about some of those sort of individual things that we could tackle. I would love to start with the relationship between hormones and burnout. Are there any hormone supportive things that we could add into our lives that would help decrease our likelihood of getting burnt out or help with any symptoms that we might already be experiencing? Definitely. So when it comes to your hormones, when you say hormones, which hormones do you think about? When I think about burnout, I think about cortisol.

Awesome. So cortisol is where it starts oftentimes. And if you're living in fighter flight mode all day, like, you know, not running from a lion, but in this case running from your email or whatever is stressing you out, your cortisol can be really high all day. And your cortisol is actually supposed to be high in the morning and then come down over the course of the day. And so when we do cortisol testing, we look at cortisol throughout the day, not just in

the morning. we see what that pattern is. And for some people, it's really high all day. And that can lead to high blood sugar, which in turn increases insulin, which can turn can cause weight gain, especially abdominal weight gain. It can cause testosterone to go up because insulin drives up testosterone. And then when testosterone is high, it's converted into estrogen. So when testosterone's high, you might be seeing some of that acne, that greasy hair, hair loss, facial hair growth. you could also be seeing irregular cycles, polycystic ovarian syndrome.

And then when all that testosterone is converted into estrogen, you could start to see your PMS, your heavy bleeding, heavy periods, your irritability, breast tenderness, all of those types of symptoms. And so getting that cortisol tested can be really illuminating. Another person might see that their cortisol is actually too low all day instead of too high. And then for them, that's that feeling of I can't get out of bed every day. And that all of these things can direct some changes in simple things like what we eat and how we work out.

So, you know, if your cortisol is high all day, that's going to really drive your blood sugar not in a great way. We really need to make sure you're getting protein and fat at every meal. If you're starting your day with a high carb meal, even like an oatmeal, you're getting too much carbs in the morning and that's pushing everything in the wrong direction and downstream, it can affect all of your hormones. If you're somebody who's cortisol super low and you're kind of at the point of what's called phase three adrenal fatigue and burnout, you may not have a disease of the adrenal glands, but you may be functionally pushing your adrenals to work improperly and to have low cortisol all day. And if you're trying to go to the gym and do hit classes and do long haul cardio, like long cycling classes, that kind of thing, you're just pushing yourself to the brink. and what you need to do is more yoga, more restorative exercise, and more drinking more water, hitting a lot more omega-3 fats and healthy fats fiber in your diet, and start to restore the body. And actually more rest is going to restore your metabolism more than more working out.

So it's really important to know what's happening with that cortisol at the beginning. And a lot of people will get their sex hormones tested, which is why I ask you. because I find most of my patients, when I say hormones, they think testosterone, progesterone, estrogen. They're not really thinking about cortisol, and they're also not thinking about thyroid. And I talk about thyroid quite a bit in the book because one in five women, I've seen one in five and one in eight. So there's different research out there. But a lot of women are going to be diagnosed with or have a thyroid issue in their lifetime, usually low thyroid function. And that gets misdiagnosed a lot.

It gets missed completely all the time, and it gets misdiagnosed a lot. So when you say hormones, you're thinking cortisol, when a lot of my patients or people I talk to say hormones, they're thinking estrogen, testosterone, those types of hormones. When I think hormones, I'm thinking cortisol, I'm thinking thyroid. I'm thinking all of the thyroid hormones, not just one of them, not just TSS. I'm thinking DHEA. I'm thinking estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, Pregnitalone. And so we really do all that testing up firstly because

which hormone is out of whack and when and where actually really matters. Do you think that thyroid testing should just be a regular thing that women are doing? 100%. So we do in-depth thyroid testing in our practice at Parsley as part of our parsley baseline labs. And the labs that we do, we do for everyone. We test men. We test women. And we not only test for T-SH. We test for free T-4, free T-3, which are your active thyroid hormones. And we test for thyroid antibodies. Because a lot of people have undiagnosed autoimmune thyroiditis called Hashimoto's. I have a patient in the book that I talk about that just really stuck with me because, you know, she had been experiencing chronic fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, mood swings, some constipation.

And she'd basically been told by her sort of regular PCP, who she'd seen for years, who'd known her for a while, oh, you know, you're just getting older. And she's like, you're in her early 40s. She's like, I'm not that old. This just doesn't seem okay. And, you know, they had recommended an antidepressant. And antidepressants can be very valuable medications, but in this patient's case, their doctor hadn't even bothered to test their thyroid fully and a totally miss Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Autoimmune disease onset is typically in the 40s and 50s. This is classic, classic. And so by diagnosing a thyroid condition, we were able to treat that. thyroid condition, manage that thyroid condition, and help her get off of antidepressants,

which in her case, we're doing nothing for her. So I always like to say, you know, like a boatload of Zoloft will do nothing for you if your depression is actually rooted in thyroid. So it's so critical that we all get these tests. And I 100% agree with you. I think every single woman, really every man, because we're seeing this more and more in men, there are endocrine disruptors in our diet and in our personal care products, that means endocrine hormone, blood sugar can really mess with our thyroid. A lot of things can trigger an autoimmune attack on the thyroid. And so even though men only represent about 20% of autoimmune disease, autoimmune is on the rise for people everywhere and we're not proactively testing enough.

Let's talk about the workouts, which you mentioned. I was very surprised in your book that you sort of advise 20 to 30 minute workouts pretty much every day, but they varied. Like some days were yoga and some days were more strength training and you had walks and stuff. And I think the 20 to 30 minute thing is really interesting. I do 20 to 30 minutes every day because I'm trying to take the decision fatigue out. Like I was just like, I'll just do some active thing for 20, 30 minutes and not worry about figuring out if today's a workout day or not. But I think it's a lot shorter than what many people think of as counting as a

workout? Can you speak to how you arrived at that number? I love that you caught that because I am one of those people for whom the mental hurdle of having to like go work out for an hour. And I've got three little kids. I've got as of this recording a 12 week old baby. I'm working like things are nuts, right? And I could not, if working out for an hour, even three times a week or four times a week is the bar, I'm out. And when it comes to exercise and movement, first of all, exercise has been shown to improve anxiety and depression in 95% of people, whereas antidepressants are only effective in roughly 50%, 40 to 60%. And the literature, the scientific literature, the medical literature, actually says that doctors should be prescribing exercise for every patient who has mental health

symptoms or a mental health condition, but they're not doing it. The research is so clear and so abundant. There is no question of this benefit. And so we have hundreds of millions of people dealing with anxiety, depression, burnout, chronic fatigue, insomnia, not exercising is actually one of the primary sleep disruptors that we all experience. So if you're not sleeping well, exercise could be the primary culprit. And so if we have to fit in an hour of exercise, like I'm, I'm out. I'm over. It's not happening. And you can do a hit workout, high intensity interval training at home, at home through a YouTube workout online. I do them all the time for 10, 20 minutes, and boost your metabolism, break a sweat, get your endorphins going, feel really great,

sleep better that night, and also start to build muscle mass. You can go to the gym and do a lifting routine that's 10, 15 minutes. And when you do it right, you're in and out. there. And you have boosted your resting metabolism for the next 24 to 48 hours. You have improved your cognitive function. You've improved cognitive blood flow. You've lowered inflammation and you're managing your blood sugar. Boom. And even with yoga, which is like my love, like I'm a total yoga nerd, my studio, which went online during the pandemic, I was so grateful for. It's all my favorite teachers, but they started recording like 30 minute practices. And yes, I would love to do that 90 minute practice or even that 75 minute practice. But if it's the difference between 75 minutes and a really

focused 30 minutes where I'm stimulating my connective tissue, my fascia to build hyluronic acid that is going to lubricate my joints and prevent me from being like a hunched over old lady someday, I'm going to do it. And it is effective. It's meaningful. And it's also all about feeling good and not losing weight or getting fit. And I also find for me in particular, like when I kind of linked exercise in my earlier life with how I looked, I had a really crappy relationship with exercise, to be honest. It felt like a should. It felt like a punishment.

It felt like something I had to do or else. And as women, I'm sorry, but that's the last thing we need. That's the last thing I need in my life at this point. And yet when I link exercise to self care, to mental health, to positive outlook, to better sleep, to my ability to be a better leader in my company or a better partner. to my husband, that's game-changing. It's also an immediate reward versus a reward that you might not see for weeks or months or ever. And I think for me having that immediate reward of like, I'm going to feel good today and

really trying to create that connection and my mind makes it so much more motivating than like, oh, I hope I lose weight in two months from doing this, you know? Yes, exactly. One thing we know about humans in general is that, you know, a future reward is a difficult motivator. And we've studied it in public health, actually, that prevention, unfortunately, for most people, not for everyone, but for most people, is really tough as a motivator.

But when we talk about everything that we talk about in state teams, the things that you can do for your body today that impact your mood or your sleep or your energy or your ability to focus and think clearly, your ability to have a positive outlook, all of those things have immediate benefit. And I think a lot of people don't realize that there's a lot of things we're doing every single day that are making us feel like crap.

And not doing them for a couple days even can have a massive benefit. And you can feel it immediately. What was your favorite yoga studio that went online during the pandemic? Oh, I'm like a Kula yoga nerd. Kula yoga. I have a lot of yoga people I love. but they were in my, like, studio because they're local to me, and they have a lot of my teachers I've been working with for a long, long time. And they never had online before. So when they did online, I was like, sweet, this is amazing.

Oh, so many great studios went online out of necessity. And it's honestly been such a blessing because, like, I left New York and I can still practice with my favorite New York teachers, which is amazing. And so, it's so great. And you know what? Although I will say, having, they've reopened. And when I do go back to that in-person class, right, that's my splurge. That's like my hour, hour and a half. I go to class. I see my people. I'm in the room. All my technology is turned off and away from me. And that feels really, really good on like a soul level and a physical level. And we need that too. But when the pressure was there for that to be the every day, then that's what wasn't happening. This is maybe a little silly and maybe too granular, but how do we know if it has counted? Like if we go walk for two minutes, does that count if we did yoga for five minutes, if we just went into the gym and did one bicep curl.

Like, how do we know that it's been enough to tip any scale in our body in a positive direction? Yeah. So the way that you know is that it has to shift your homeostasis. It has to shift your balance. So whatever state you're in, if you do five minutes of yoga every day and you for a week or two and you see that you feel lighter, you feel more relaxed, you're sleeping better, your digestion is better. Awesome. I mean, that's amazing. Now I would say, hey, see what 10 minutes does for you. Same with meditation, right? Because you may get more benefit from a little bit more. And then there's a point at which there's only marginal returns. I would say if you don't notice a change in your balance and change in your homeostasis, the exercise has to be enough to push you out of the zone that you're in,

whether it's breaking a sweat, whether it's upping your heart rate, whether it's ripping your heart rate, whether it's ripping gently some muscle fibers so you build new muscles, right? All of those things are a change in your body's balance and you have to do enough of an exercise to achieve that. So if it's so little that it really doesn't change that, you'll feel it and I think you'll know. All right. So if I feel sore after a workout, that's a pretty good indication that I've made a difference even if I feel sore after 20 minutes of weight training. Yeah, absolutely. And you know what? I always recommend if you do belong to a gym, and there's so much great stuff online now.

Like I do a lot of, I'm not a gym person. But when I have gone, most of them have trainers that you can do like a one-off or two-off session with. You know, I don't have a personal trainer or anything like that. And I kind of hate the gym, to be honest with you. It's like not an environment I'm super into. But I will say that that 20 minutes on the elliptical where I break a sweat or that 15-minute weight training session that a trainer sort of showed me how to do,

I can just go rinse and repeat that. And that can be a once a week thing for me. But then you kind of know you're doing enough. You know you're doing it right. And if you're doing it at home, I'm really a big fan of. I use these like resistance bands that are loops and they travel with me. And I, when I used to travel, right? I'm just kind of traveling again a little bit now, thankfully.

And, you know, I keep them at home. And they're super light. And I can just do a five, 10 minute workout with them and that I've followed somebody online. And I get a great workout from those. And I'm definitely sore. I also love the section in the book where you spoke about the patient who switched from hit workouts to yoga and then actually ended up losing belly fat. I would love for you to speak to that briefly because even though I don't like to use weight as like a big motivator or health metric, I think a lot of people feel like they need to do these more like intense workouts to lose weight. And that fear keeps them from trying other types of workouts that might actually serve them more. You know, it's such a great point. And I alluded to this earlier. If you're one of those people who is having an imbalance in your cortisol and those workouts

as really intense spin classes or some of those really intense workouts can actually at the same time boost your stress levels, boost your cortisol and deplete you if you're already dehydrated, if you're already low in electrolytes, if you're already exhausted. And they can kind of send you into a bit of a metabolic disarray. And if all of that is I'm running through the day and then I'm running to my workout, you can actually kind of get in your own way. And if you notice that you're in particular having a hard time losing abdominal weight, that belly fat, that can be a sign that your cortisol is too high and in turn your blood sugar's

too high. And paradoxically, getting that to go away is more about relaxation, breathing, meditation, yoga, strength training, things that replete and calm the body. as opposed to something that revs you up even more. I think that's so interesting and it's so important because you can feel like you're just adding stress on top of stress. And I think you can feel that in your body if you really tune in. But I also think we live in a world that makes it much harder to tune in. Absolutely.

I mean, everything around us is telling us to pay attention to me, pay attention to me, pay attention to me. And very difficult to spend some time with yourself and quiet, right? And so sometimes even the quiet or meditation practice or yoga practice, one of the reasons I find people who are really into more of the hit type workouts and the cardio type workouts, I have a hard time with those types of exercises. They'll say, well, this isn't real exercise. It's not doing anything for me. I'm like, well, that's not true. It's improving your balance. It's improving your proprioception. It's lowering your cortisol levels. It's building lean muscle mass. And it's stimulating, like I said earlier, your fascia, which drives. which is actually an organ in your body that doesn't get enough attention. But it also is a time, right, to slow down a little bit and be more in tune with yourself. And that for people is actually sometimes the reason they don't like it, not because it's not, you know, quote unquote, a good workout. But because being with ourselves is, I think, a muscle we've lost.

And it takes a lot sometimes to be present with what's going on inside. I love the idea that being with yourself is a muscle and that you can actually. actually like train it and practice it and become better at tuning into yourself, better at being by yourself, better at knowing who you are and what you want? A million percent, not even 100 percent, a million percent. Can we talk about diet for a second? I would love to talk about a few dietary changes that we could make that would support eliminating burnout, feeling more energy. I think a big symptom we all connect with burnout is just feeling depleted and not energetic all the time. So I would love like two to three super specific things that we could do every day.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I start with the things to take out, which seems less fun because eating's fun and food is great. And we want to eat more things, not less things. But I will just alert everyone to something that I think you hear a lot. But I think even those of us who are health conscious like you are, because this is the world that you're in and you're in your profession or me as a physician, things we take for granted as healthy often aren't. And we really don't realize how much sugar and processed food we're eating. The average American diet is about 70% ultra processed, ultra refined. And so, you know, even if it's your health bars or your smoothies or your, you know,

health drinks or health meals, if it's not real whole food that came from the ground, plant or animal that you can kind of recognize in its original form, then it's been processed. And while it may have had a bunch of good added ingredients, you're probably eating too much sugar and too many refined carbohydrates if that's the bulk of what you eat. And we've sort of exiled cooking food given how busy we all are. And yet cooking is not only a beautiful analog relaxation technique. It's actually my husband's preferred. He likes to cook. Thank God.

Or I would die literally. But it's how he unwinds. But it's also like a way for us to really know what's in our food. And if you're making at least two out of three meals a day, even if it's just breakfast and lunch or breakfast and dinner most of the time, I know a lot of us get lunch to go. But even if you get lunch to go and it's like salmon and vegetables or grains or things that you can see, that can really eliminate a lot of the processed carbs

and processed and refined sugars. And those are a real big problem for us because they not only derange our blood sugar, which then in turn can cover. anxiety, depression, brain fog. When you have high blood sugar, you actually have low-grade brain inflammation. So if you're having brain fog, having a hard time concentrating, feeling like you have anxiety, your high-sugar diet could actually be directly driving that. But these things also really mess with our gut bugs, our microbes.

And those bugs in our gut, which we've heard about the microbiome, are making really interesting neurotransmitters that are important for our brains to function and are very important for our moods. And so if we're eating a high-carb, high-refined sugar diet, we are feeding the wrong bugs, the bugs that aren't helping that neurotransmitter balance. And we are not feeding the right one. So it all kind of flows through. And the other one that I always want to make sure people take note of is our omega-6 fats. That's our vegetable oils. You know, and that's our grape seed oil, rape seed oil, canola oils, the oils that are made, even in really nice restaurants, a lot of times they're not using olive oil, which is good for omega-3s.

They're using a lot of these omega-6 oils. And these oils are real big problem because they not only cause inflammation in the body, they are important for the building blocks of the cells of our brain. Our brains are actually mostly made of fat. And when we're mostly eating these omega-6 fats, they are messing with our immune systems, messing with cognitive function, increasing inflammation. And I write about the science of all of this in the book. But the good news is when you get rid of the process,

processed and packaged foods and you cook and you cook with olive oil instead of your, you know, these canola oils, vegetable oils, you can get rid of all of that. And so that means you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to never eat out again. You don't have to never get a grab and go meal again. You can eat some processed food sometimes. If you're balancing that with a couple meals a day that you're knowing are with real whole ingredients and are not made with those vegetable oils, you can largely win there. And I think that when people start eating that way, you know, I write about a few patients in the book who have had this experience where they didn't realize the degree to which they had a food allergy and they were eating something that was

causing them to feel brain fog or causing irritability, actually a gluten sensitivity can for some people, if you're skeptical about gluten out there, we'll just try cutting it out for a week, for three or four weeks, you may notice that the biggest change is actually in your mood, rather than your skin or your digestion or something else. And then the same happens with refined and processed foods. When people sort of do a month of trying to eat more whole foods and cutting that out, they are shocked at the degree to which they're finding calm and clarity. And I think you have to sort of do that mini elimination to figure out what's affecting you the most.

So that was the not fun part of all the stuff we have to take. Is there any, like, fun things that you think we should be adding in that we could really focus on? It sounds like omega-3s are a big one for you. Yeah, omega-3s are huge. So have your walnuts, have your olives and your olive oil. Get your, you know, wild salmon, but also your sardines and your herring and your little fish, right? I'm a big seafood eater, although I am mindful about the high mercury fish because those are not so good for the brain either. but I'm a big seafood eater.

I put olive oil and everything. You can like drink the stuff. So don't be afraid of it. It's heart healthy. It's brain healthy. It's gut healthy. I also love butter, although I don't eat too much dairy, but I cook with a butter a bunch.

You can really get, and if it's butter from grass-fed sources, you're going to get some of the healthy fat from, you know, the animal side of the equation. And I'm meeting lots of avocados, which are really good for our mono-unsaturated fats, It's less so omega-3 specifically, but another good kind of healthy fat. I'm eating lots of nuts and seeds because they're also full of minerals and fiber, whole grains. I'll eat rice.

I'll eat quinoa. I'm definitely not a carb-free person. Like, that's not my jam. I need healthy carbs as part of my diet. I love my sweet potatoes and squashes and yams and spaghetti squashes and all of the fun ways that you can cook those types of starches. And so I think the biggest newsflash for me when I started eating. this way. I actually originally went gluten and dairy-free because of my, it cleared up my acne forever, which was awesome. But when you're thinking about what you're eating and you're thinking

about eliminating things, the good news is sometimes when you cut something out, and this is not just foods, this is like in life. One door closes, another door opens. And all of a sudden, you've created space for a whole new way in this case of eating that's really beautiful and fun. And listen, I eat out all the time. But it's pretty rare that I find a menu that doesn't have something that's, you know, good protein, healthy fats, lots of vegetables. And maybe I ask them to leave something out, but I'm, you know, happy, happy and eating well, eating tons of eggs, I ate a ton of eggs. And that can be a really beautiful way to eat and certainly not a way that feels like a deprivation.

I never feel deprived in eating healthy. I actually feel like it's a celebration and it's awesome. What's your vibe on caffeine? Is caffeine hurting our burnout? Are you like, we should avoid it? Is there a place for it in a burnout free life? Absolutely. I'm a double espresso every morning girl.

If you take it away from me, I will punt you down. You know, it's everyone's a little different with caffeine. There are some people who are hyper metabolizers of caffeine. It's a particular liver enzyme. You can actually genetically test for this. You know, those people who are like, I can have a cup of coffee at 11 p.m. I'm going to get to sleep. Yeah, my husband's like, yeah, my husband's like that too.

And I'm like, I would literally be up for three days. No, thank you. That's science, right? Some of us are hypermetabolizers and can get away with a little bit more. Some are not. And so I can't have caffeine really past 10 a.m. And that sounds really early, but that I think is the truth for a lot of people without disrupting my sleep and also disrupting digestion. And so it's all in moderation and it's finding the amount that's okay for you.

In large part, we find that a little. bit of coffee, a little bit of caffeine or green tea. There's some antioxidant levels in in green tea and even in some coffee, if it's organic and everything, that are actually brain beneficial. So the net on the research is small quantities of caffeine or coffee, positive, living on your, you know, diet soda all day and having caffeine throughout your day and needing it to keep going throughout your day, that's a sign that it's burning you well. Okay. So if we, if we feel burnt out, though, no need to go cold turkey on the caffeine. Okay, let's talk about supplements for a second. Are there any supplements that you feel like are really good and we should all be incorporating daily to deal with symptoms like stress or low energy?

Yes. So there's a few supplements I love that I find can be really safely and universally added in that can make a huge difference. one I love is magnesium, specifically magnesium glycinate or three and eight. And be careful out there with magnesium, because if it's magnesium citrate or oxide, it's going to make you poo, but it's not going to make you relax. So make sure you're getting there kind of magnesium. But magnesium is nature Xanax in a way. And you can take it during the day. I take it at night to sleep.

I take about three, 400 milligrams of magnesium glycinate, which is what I recommend in the book. It's a little higher dose of magnesium three and eight. But they can not only help you relax. type muscles, but just help you relax in general. And you can also take it during the day for anxiety. Love magnesium. Another one is methylated B vitamins. So a lot of us aren't getting enough B vitamins in our diets. And many of us have certain genetic variants that that slow down the way that we make certain neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, noraphenephrine, serotonin, things that are really important for positive food. Your methyl B12, your 5MTHF, which is your

methylated folate. I take them every day. They're in my multi and they massively improve my mood. Now, I've done genetic testing and I know I have these variants, but anyone can take them safely. And I've had so many patients who are pregnant and taking the parsley prenatal for the first time, say, God, my mood is so much better. And in that, I think we sometimes reveal that they have an underlying, you know, genetic variant called MTHFR because they weren't taking nose methylated be used before and that wasn't the, you know, intention, but it's actually helped a lot. So those are two you can safely add in. And then there's some great adaptogens that I, that I walk through in the book that can be part of your regimen that are things like rodeola and ginseng, Oshoaganda.

And you want to make sure you're getting the right blend to either pick you up or chill you out because different ones can do different things. But these herbal formulations have been well studied can be taken quite safely. And I think they are an important thing for people. to look at because, you know, I had a patient who was suffering from really severe anxiety during COVID. It triggered an underlying anxiety that had been manageable and it sent it into the territory of unmanageable. So not sleeping, having a hard time concentrating, verging on panic attacks, really didn't want to start her on something like a Xanax or a benzodiazepine drug that could have been addictive and had side effects. And so in her case, we were really able to,

use some adaptogens along with nutrients like Lthianian and GABA to help her sleep and help her calm in a safe and gentle way. And that was the difference for her. She really was able to get back into a place where she felt good. She felt okay just through some safe supplements and not needing to necessarily start a long-term medication. I love that. That's such a powerful sentiment. And I relate. I think for a lot of us, we were like, okay, I can handle my anxiety. And then we were like, oh, nope, nope, it was right on the precipice and that sent it right over. Absolutely. Okay.

The last two things that I really want to talk about is meditation and technology because you talk about both of those in the book. And I do think that in addition to what we're consuming in our body, what we're consuming in our brain and how we're resting our brain are incredibly important. So I would love, I ask a lot of doctors this, but I think meditation is one of those things that we all kind of know we should be doing. but somehow none of us can actually bring ourselves to do it. So I would love any science you could bring to the table or anything that kind of finally

convinced you to meditate that would convince meditation skeptics that it's actually worth their time. Oh, my goodness. The science of meditation is so beautiful. You know, they've done functional MRI studies in monks and shown that the brain changes that happen in meditation are incredibly positive and can happen in as little as a couple of weeks. meditation has been shown to lower cortisol levels to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system through the vagus nerve. And parasympathetic is our rest, digest, relax, and heal side of our nervous system.

So if we are not in a parasympathetic dominant state, we are not able to heal from injury. So if you are super stressed, you can't, whether it's a cut or something like eczema, which is an inflammatory reaction or an infection that you're fighting, like, COVID, you're not able to fight that off. And so meditation can bring you in waking life into a parasympathetic dominant, rest, digest, relax, and heal state. And so the power is really incredible. We prescribe meditation 10x more than medication.

And personally, we do prescribe drugs all the time. But meditation is a life skill that I think should be taught in school. And it's one of the most powerful practices for me personally. And it's one of the most important things that I think can be. implemented for free on a daily basis without needing equipment, without needing to go anywhere. You can meditate in the bath. You can meditate while you're cooking. You can meditate while you're taking a walk. You can meditate on your commute. And where I help get people kind of pass the sort of skepticism of meditation is when I just teach them a breathing practice. So there's a lot of ways to

meditate. And anyone who tells you that their way to meditate is like the only way, just turn the other direction. There's like a million ways to meditate and they're all good mostly. So you don't need a mantra. You don't need a gong. You don't need like a fancy cushion. You can just breathe and breathe for an inhale for four, exhale for six. And when you breathe longer on the exhale, you actually stimulate that vagus nerve, that parasympathetic state. Set a timer on your phone for two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, and do it a little bit every day. And it is such an important go-to. And I think it doesn't, it hasn't broken into mainstream medicine yet, which perplexes me because the data on it is so powerful. Okay, so two things. One, can you convince me or explain like the

working out? Like, what is my minimum viable amount? Is it that same thing where we're looking for a state change? We're looking to feel noticeably different? Or is there a minimum amount that we just science says we should be doing for meditation? There's no minimum amount that science says, but I find most people will begin to see benefits at five minutes a day. Okay. Legit benefits at 10 minutes a day. And obviously meditation is one where to a point more is better. I probably do like an hour long meditation once a week.

And then most days it might be somewhere between five and 15 minutes. But it's every day for me. And by the way, that can be at work. If you're in your office or you're working from home, you're noticing that you're feeling really stressed out or there's a situation that, you know, as you tweaked or whatever it is, that could be your go-to, meditation moments, set a timer for five minutes and just do your breathing practice. That's all it needs to be. And you will absolutely see the benefits because that brain remodeling, that kicking in of the parasympathetic nervous

system, it doesn't take hours for that to happen. It takes literally for that. Yeah, I was going to ask how you, that was my second question, how you is one of the busiest women that I know is putting meditation into your daily life. Is it those little break moments or do you do it as part of a structured morning routine? There is no morning routine for me. I literally just get out of bed and face the chaos, which is there's a screaming baby that wants my boobs. There is a four-year-old who's running into my room asking me to fix a broken toy to get him breakfast. And there's an almost two-year-old in her crib yelling mommy because she wants me to change her diaper and get her up. And then somehow I have to like orchestrate those people and also get myself out of bed. And I just like starting my day is like a

Herculean effort at this point. So the only thing I can do is find those moments. Last night, the baby went down at 9 p.m. And I was like, you know what? Before I just like sit sucked back into my email, I'm going to take a bath. And I'm going to take a bath for like 15 minutes. And I'm going to listen to a guided meditation on Instagram that one of my friends, Kevin, Courtney, follow him. He has great 15 minute meditations on Instagram is going to do. And I like kitten kiboodled my like down time, if that's a word into one little thing. And then I got ready for bed. And then my husband was out and I walked the dogs and I cursed him every step because I was like, I can't believe I'm walking these dogs right now. I can't believe we have been half dogs right now.

But, you know, I got it in and I felt better. And it's not only about, you know, your mental health and clarity and mood. It's also performance, right? If we're trying to get through our day and be the people we want to be, we have to give ourselves a moment for our brains to have the space, to get organized, to get clear, to get calm. Who makes their best decisions in a state of total freak out? No one.

You make your best decisions when you have some space, clarity, and calm to make a decision, and especially an important one. Well, and I think that's so, all of that is so important to note, because sometimes it can feel intimidating. you can feel like, oh, these health and wellness professionals are just living these, like, perfect lives and you don't picture the screaming kids or you don't picture the chaotic morning. You picture this like very perfect morning routine. And I think it's really powerful to say like you can have a life that feels filled to the brim and overflowing sometimes and still take these tiny moments and fit them in for you. Of course. And that's the thing. I mean, I see all these people share their morning routine. I am asked to give them. my morning routine. I used to be. No one would ask me for that now, especially not after not, not after listening to this. Please don't ask me about my morning routine. Like at night is the only

time that I have for myself, right? And I think that we have to find it where we can find it. Yeah. This morning I was on the subway, right? And instead of just looking at my phone the entire time, it's a relatively short commute for me. Try to take two minutes just to kind of stay calm, breathe, let everything settle before I launch into the day. The last thing I'd love to address is technology, because it's a big thing that you point to causing burnout, but it's also just like so addictive. Like I don't think any of us are doing a great job of managing our relationships with technology, even when we have the best intention.

So I would just love like a few very pragmatic, actionable things that you found to be the most effective either in your life or with any of your patients. You know, the relationship with that we have with technology, is kind of getting out of hand to a degree for all of us. And I think a lot of us don't realize how much it's impacting our mental health. You know, I had a patient with, had a long-term history of anxiety. And between me and her psychiatrist, like she had just never been able to get much benefit out of the prescription medications, which was unfortunate. And so we were sort of heading a wall. And I hadn't realized how much she was sort of spending her time on, on social media

platforms and scrolling news feeds forever, especially during the pandemic. And we are sort of hanging a wall with her, to be honest. And I said, well, what's up with your apps? How much time spending on your phone? Could you do like a one-week detox? And she had been at the point where she was actually having panic attacks and really difficult time sleeping. And it was absolutely disrupting her quality of life. She cut out all the apps for a week. And her anxiety got like 80% better. And so she kept going and she cut them out for a month. And her insomnia resolved. Her panic attacks went away.

Now she's always going to be somebody who's prone to anxiety, always has to proactively manage it. But even I hadn't realized the degree to which her relationship with technology was causing her to be in a constant state of anxiety because that stimulation of the apps, whether it's news or social, what have you, was sending her into perpetual. chronically anxious state and it was amazing. And so a couple things that you can do. I call it screen free. Ah, screen free. I'm going to say that again. I call it screen free 30 or ideally screen free 60. So try to spend an hour at night not looking at your phone before bed. That is going to

sound herculean to people. But I guarantee if you were looking at your phone or your computer or even watching TV or streaming an hour before bed, it's not just a blue light issue. You are absolutely stimulating your brain in a way that's disrupting your sleep quality, you're not getting enough cycles of sleep to feel fully rested in the morning. Another thing that I recommend, take a morning every weekend or an afternoon, some sort of chunk of the day, and just put your phone away. Don't have it with you. And practice, build that muscle of what does it look like to entertain yourself, to be social, to be busy, to have fun without your phone being part of that equation. There's a study that showed that 80% of Americans feel uncomfortable if their phone is

more than five feet away from them. These devices are important. They're how we live our lives, but they're also devices that I think we need to take some control back from. We need to send some boundaries around. And I think that can be really simple as an hour or 30 minutes before bed or taking a morning every weekend with all. The fun thing is interesting, though, because I do sometimes feel like We have, it's easy fun. It's easy dopamine. And sometimes you're like even out with friends and talking and coming up with interesting conversation topics, even though it's more rewarding, it feels harder than

just like scrolling our phone. So you'll see people at dinner and they'll just reach for Instagram because it's the passively, it is like we've forgotten to have fun without technology almost, you know? Yeah, it's absolutely true. We're being fed stimulation and entertainment rather than having to engage. with it or create it for ourselves. And nothing is as rewarding as connecting with other people and building those relationships and watching relationships from a distance. It's just not the same. And so it's okay to have that too, right? It's totally okay. But we need both. We need both

to be full, whole, healthy, calm, fulfilled humans. And I just, I think it's an important moment in history. As a medical doctor, right? I see patients for physical ailments. I'm not. I'm not. a psychiatrist, but what I'm watching happen in all of my patients is the ways in which every day we create or destroy mental health and emotional well-being. And I think it's important for us to call attention to that. And that's really what state change is all about. And while I wrote the book, because it's not the only answer to our mental health challenges, but it has to be part of it. Otherwise, we're just sort of getting in our own way. I also think that maybe it's like what you were saying earlier about being with

ourself as a muscle that we need to work out, like acknowledging that entertaining ourselves and connecting with people without our phones as a muscle. And it's going to feel harder to read your book at the end of the night versus just scroll on TikTok or scroll on Instagram. And that's okay because it'll just feel a little bit easier,

a little bit easier, a little bit easier every single time you do. It'll feel harder to have those conversations with your friends. But the more that we work that muscle, the easier it will feel. Absolutely. I love that. I'd love one or two sort of outside of the box or weird things that people can do to address burnout. Ooh, outside the box things to address burnout. Well, I talk about this in the book.

I have a whole chapter called The New Frontier, which is the science and evidence behind some of these other modalities that are either coming to the forefront right now or aren't used enough. So things like acupuncture, massage, reiki, which is energy healing, craniosacral therapy, these are all practices that work on the energetic system of the body. So the energy system of the body in other systems of medicine like traditional Chinese medicine, it's like an organ system. It's as real as your bones or your muscles. And in our system of medicine, we don't appreciate that as much.

But we've discovered, I wouldn't say we've discovered, but we've researched that these modalities, work and in some ways because they allow our bodies to go into that deep breath relaxation state. And so, you know, I really encourage people to experiment because these are very safe modalities and they have real power behind them. What does it mean to add in acupuncture, can you sacral massage, touch, Reiki, energy healing, biofeedback? Some of these, what I call New Frontier, which is ironic because they're sort of the old frontier, but new frontier modalities that are getting greater recognition as part of our overall plan. None of these modalities is going to cure your depression, right? But they're part of a system that you can put in place around you of healing.

So I talk about that. I also talk about psychedelics in the book because what is happening in psychedelic medicine right now, I think is really important. Their entire research centers devoted to it at Johns Hopkins University and NYU and other great medical institutions. And while not widely available yet. There are some psychedelic medicines that in a supervised and thoughtful practice that are part of a medical therapy, I'm not talking about recreational use people, can be part of a healing process. And there are really great research studies to back this. So I will stop there. I think that read the book for how I think about psychedelics and how I think about some of these new frontier modalities. But I think it's important that we arm ourselves with every tool

we could possibly leverage in our tool basket and not only rely on some of the tools that are also important and effective, like medications, like therapy, or I'm seeing in my patients and what the research bears out is that those two modalities are important, but they're not enough. And so I write about that a bit. Is there one you would start with if we wanted to start with an out-of-the-box therapy like acupuncture, craneosacyl? We just wanted to go try one today. What would you say?

I would try acupuncture because it's the best researched. and I would try meditation, which we just talked about quite a bit, as the like DIY free, but can be game-changing for your mental health self-practice. Love that. And then can you just leave us with one homework assignment that we can all do to help beat burnout in our lives today? You know, I assign all of you out there listening to stop looking at your screen 30 minutes before bed and replace that time with a breath practice, a meditation practice,

something that allows your body to be in a healing and calm state, that parasympathetic dominant state that I've talked about a few times. It's going to improve your sleep quality. It's going to improve your sense of calm. It's going to create greater clarity. And then the next day, you're going to wake up every day feeling better and with even greater clarity on what you need to do that day to live your best life, your most positive life, the life that you dreamed of. And so I'd say really take advantage of that time before you go to sleep at night to be intentioned. And you're going to sleep better. It's like one of the best double. I love double whammy health stuff because I'm just like, you know, I love to like meditate in front of my red light machine and stuff like that. But it's like by getting rid of the screen time just before bed, you're going to sleep better and you're going to get all of those screen free benefits and you're going to get in touch with yourself. So you're really layering the benefits on there, which I'm all about. Yeah. It's like think about the power in that like 20, 30 minute time. It's a win, win, win, win, win. And I love when we, I love kill. more than one bird with a stove. So that's your homework.

Amazing. Can you tell us all about where we can find you, parsley, your book? Yes, you can get the book at parsleyhealth.com slash state change. It's available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the places. You can follow Parsley Health and follow me at Robin Burson, MD. And definitely try out parsleyhealth.com slash insights if you want to get your symptom score. It's free. And it kind of brings to life online. what we've been talking about in the book. But please also go check out the book because that's where I cover all of these modalities. And I have a 30-day Kickstarter plan that allows you to implement all of the recommendations I have in a really clear and simple to follow roadmap.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share all of this with us today, Dr. Burz. And there's so much that I'm immediately going to go and try out myself. So I know all of my listeners will be experiencing a state change as well. I can't wait. Thank you so much for having me. You're listening to the Healthier Together podcast. I hope you loved that episode. I hope you learned something. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. And I hope you came up with some tips or tricks or takeaways that you can implement in your own life today.

If you did love it, I would so appreciate a quick rating review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. Yes, Spotify does reviews now too. Or do it on both. Nobody is tracking that you're only listening on one platform. so I would massively appreciate it. It is one of the best ways to support the podcast. And on that note, as well, if there's anybody in your life that you could share this episode with, I would so appreciate it.

I really appreciate you helping spread the word about the podcast, but also with a topic that's as important as this, I really appreciate you helping get the word out that we can be empowered and that there are actual things we can be doing to feel better in our lives and in our bodies and in our minds today. All right. I love you. I hope you love the episode. We'll see you on the next episode of the Healthy Together podcast.

The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like, if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life. And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning. You're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important.

Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off-gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it. It has no micropastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I run very, very hot. Like I am a furnace. Zach has basically accepted that sleeping next to me is like

sleeping next to like a little fire. And the birch mattress has been a game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better. Like I can see my sleep score going up because I'm not hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic, which is really worth paying attention to if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust mites in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing it. And again, we need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the foundation of our health. And then comfort wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different sleep styles. And we both wake up feeling really good, no aches and pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress,

the best mattress for side sleepers. And Wired named it the best organic mattress period. So there you go. Birch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers. I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch Kids natural mattress. Birch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes and it comes with 120 night risk-free trial. So if it is not for you, they will pick it up for free.

You have nothing to lose here. I want all of you to enjoy a deep, restful night sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birch living. dot com slash Liz Moody for 20% off. That is birch living.com slash Liz Moody and you're going to get 20% off birch living.com slash Liz Moody. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years and I am so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent

cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refused to die. They sit there, releasing inflammatory signals, breaking down your collagen, degrading your skin barrier, and accelerating every visible sign of aging. Scientists call them zombie cells and as they accumulate, they are one of the primary drivers of how old your skin looks and feels. The team at one skin, a group of female longevity researchers and PhDs, spent five years testing over 900 peptides to figure out how to help reduce the accumulation of senescent cells. And they finally landed on it. OSO1, the first peptide scientifically studied to reduce skin's biological age at the molecular

level. OSO1 goes in and it clears out the senescent cells so it helps skin function like healthier, younger looking skin. It is not masking the signs of aging. It's not targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now, and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference. And you're kind of like, do I? Do I? And this I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer. It looks glowier. The texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer.

It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers. I hate that, like, sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on. This does not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well. And then again, I'm reducing my skin's biological age. I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. One skin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies and over 10,000 five-star reviews.

The data backs everything up for a limited time, get, 15% off with code Liz at one skin.co slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at one skin.com with code Liz.