The Rich Roll Podcast - Rachel Carlton Abrams, MD: Listening To Your Body’s Intelligence

Episode Date: February 6, 2017

We are all innately gifted with something called body intelligence — an intuitive sense of what best serves our mental, physical and emotional well-being. However, most of us disconnect from our bodies' persistent efforts to communicate, muting it out to favor the breakneck pace of our modern lives. Left unchecked, this leaves us at serious risk of what this week's guest calls chronic body depletion – a crisis of mind, body and spirit that can lead to everything from weight gain and chronic pain to high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, autoimmune disease and more. This week Rachel Carlton Abrams, MD, MHS, ABIHM joins the podcast to help us better cultivate our body intelligence, so that we can begin to properly treat the cause of what ails us and set a better trajectory for optimum healing and lifelong health. Dr. Abrams is a board-certified primary care, family practice physician, integrative health expert and author with over two decades of experience in preventive and comprehensive care medicine. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University, received her medical degree from UC San Francisco, earned her master’s degree in Holistic Health and Medical Sciences from UC Berkeley, and has been voted the “Best Doctor” in Santa Cruz County every year from 2010 to 2016. In the scope of her dynamic practice, she works with many of the world’s most influential people, from CEOs to billionaire entrepreneurs to Nobel Peace laureates, and has spent countless hours addressing everyday patients with chronic health conditions. The author of several books on holistic health, relationships and sexuality, her latest offering, BodyWise: Discovering Your Body’s Intelligence for Lifelong Health and Healing*, skillfully and accessibly guides the reader on a journey of discovery towards creating the vibrant, balanced, healthy life you have always deserved. This is a fun and super informative conversation packed with knowledge nuggets and practical wisdom takeaways all designed to cultivate your own body intelligence. An intelligence that will help you take better responsibility for yourself, your environment, your behaviors, your relationships, and your health so that you can fuel your body’s natural predisposition to heal and thrive. Specific topics covered include: * the concept of chronic body depletion * reconnecting with our bodies/nature * mind, body & spirit connection * taking responsibility for yourself * the business of healthcare * sense, feel & discernment * the body’s natural predisposition to heal * the benefits of integrative medicine * link inflammation and disease * the importance of positive feedback loops * adaptogenic herbs & essential oils It was an absolute joy talking to Dr. Abrams and I'm delighted to bring you our conversation. I sincerely hope you enjoy it. Peace + Plants, Rich

You know, I talk about this explicitly in the book, but I feel like once you're really actually connected to and listening to your body and you get a sense of being in touch with your own nature, that it is a natural extension to realize how connected you are to other people and how connected you are to the earth. Because there really is no separation. It's a crazy idea that we're separate from the earth we live on, right? it's a crazy idea that we're separate from the earth we live on, right? Everything we are comes from the earth and everything we're exposed to from a health point of view, all the toxins and the pesticides, the things people, you know, clean their houses with and, you know, the food we eat

all deeply connect to our bodies, right? The microbiome, the bacterial population of the earth and everything we do to the earth, whether it's, you know, tearing down trees and, you know, creating a loss of oxygen and global warming, or it's the toxins that we're using. It all impacts us directly, directly. And if you look at the emerging illnesses, allergy, autoimmune, learning disorders, neurologic disease, cancer, it's all related to our environment. So we ourselves are an ecosystem and we're intimately connected to the earth that we live on and everything we do to it. That's Rachel Carlton Abrams, MD. And this is the Ritual Podcast. podcast. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? What is going on? Welcome or welcome back to the

show. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host, and this is my podcast, the show where I go deep and I go long form with some of the world's most inspiring, positive, paradigm-breaking changemakers all across the globe. Thanks for tuning in today. Really appreciate it. Today's guest is Rachel Carlton Abrams, MD, MHS, ABIHM. I don't know what all those abbreviations mean, but they're very impressive. And the thrust of today's conversation is all about how to take better care and more responsibility for your health and your well-being by learning how to essentially listen to your

body's intelligence. So who is Dr. Abrams? Well, Dr. Abrams is a board-certified primary care family practice physician and integrative health expert and author with over two decades of experience. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University, where we went to school together. We were in the same class, along with Rachel's husband, Doug, who is a literary agent, and he's also a celebrated author in his own right. He wrote a recent book called The Book of Joy, which is an amazing book. If you haven't heard of it, check it out.

I also interviewed Doug, and that's coming up in a few weeks. In any event, in addition to graduating from Stanford, Dr. Abrams also received her medical degree from UC San Francisco. She earned her master's degree in holistic health and medical sciences from UC Berkeley. And she's also steeped in a variety of more Eastern perspectives on health and healing,

including studying with a Taoist master. And she's also been voted the best doctor in Santa Cruz County every year from 2010 to 2016. Very, very impressive person. And in the scope of her practice, which is very interesting, very dynamic, and very much focused on preventive and extremely comprehensive care, she works with many of the world's most influential people from CEOs to billionaire entrepreneurs to Nobel Peace laureates and has spent countless hours addressing everyday patients with chronic health conditions. She's written a couple books on holistic health, on relationships, and even on sexuality. And her latest offering just hit shelves. It's called BodyWise, Discovering Your Body's Intelligence for Lifelong Health and Healing. And it offers a really new and very practical

and accessible approach to decode your symptoms so that you can create vibrant, lasting health and healing for yourself. A couple more things I want to say about Dr. Abrams before we get into the conversation, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

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Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. All right, so let's just get into it. I think that I've been long-winded in these intros. I'm trying to really cut them down and keep them short. So I'm just going to say this. This one is super fun and super informative.

Not only is Rachel a total delight, this conversation is packed with awesome takeaways that I think are going to really arm you with a battery of tools to help you take better responsibility for yourself, for your environment, for your behaviors, for your relationships, and your health so that you can fuel your body's natural predisposition to heal and thrive. So this is my conversation with Dr. Rachel Carlton-Aylers. Let's do it. You ready to go? Let's go. All right, Rachel, thank-Avers. Let's do it. You ready to go? Let's go.

All right, Rachel. Thank you so much. You opened up your home to me. I appreciate it. Such a pleasure to have this opportunity to talk to you. It was really great running into you at our mutual friend's wedding. Yes.

Was that like a month ago, six weeks ago or something like that? Yeah. It's funny because at our age, it's unusual to go to any wedding, but a wedding of somebody that we went to college. Usually people are getting divorced and stuff. So it was nice to reconnect with a bunch of old friends.

I enjoyed it. And here we are, I get to talk to you and then I get to talk to your husband. And you guys have such a beautiful relationship aside. Like professionally, you're so simpatico with the work that you do. Like it fits together like these beautiful puzzle pieces of, you know, left brain, right brain, east meets west. Science meets, you know, eastern philosophy and mysticism and all these good things so it's really cool to talk to you oh i'm so happy to be here and you know doug and i feel pretty

damn fortunate because we knew each other in college right so we're all almost 50 right believe it or not and you guys did you guys met in college and we've been together ever since we met in college and been together ever since you're too young to have like an empty nest on the horizon i know that you're facing right now thank you you. I agree with you. But you know, Doug and I really grew each other up is what I want to say. We did a ton of spiritual exploration together. He, you know, was with me during medical school and medical training. And I was with him as he launched his book business and his agency and wrote all the books that he's written. And so it's not surprising that even though our fields are really different, I'm a physician, he's an agent, writer, editor, that our work really kind of coalesces. And, you know, in my opinion,

the fundamental reason that our marriage works is that we really believe that we're together to support each of us to give better gifts in the world, right? To do better work. Yeah, that's beautiful. You haven't met my wife, but I have a similar relationship with my wife. We haven't been together. We've been together 18 years, but not since college. Well, that's a long time.

And we're very different people, and we're involved in different things, but we come together to collaborate on certain projects, and that seems to work really well. We have our independent lives, but at times that Venn diagram overlaps really nicely to be of service to people in unique ways. And I see that's what you guys are doing. It's really cool. Yeah. So let's unpack it a little bit.

The book is great. Congratulations on that. Thank you. And I want to get into all of that kind of stuff. Having a lot of fun with it. Yeah, nice. And it's not your first book. You've been writing for a while. But maybe the best way to kind of launch into it in a general sense is,

you know, this is kind of a recurring theme on the podcast, and I say this all the time, but it's really true. And I'm interested in your response to this. You know, we live in this incredibly prosperous country. We have unbelievable opportunity available to us and resources and information and great food and all these sorts of things and yet we've never been more obese more sick more anxious more depressed more medicated in the history of humankind right and so i think that the work that you do trying to help people grapple with this and find healthier ways to live is more important than ever. So before we even get into it, I commend you for that. And perhaps we can start to begin the process of unpacking what is exactly going on and how we can kind of get on a better trajectory. So,

you know, maybe explain a little bit about the book and why you decided to write it. Yeah. Well, I decided to write it for that reason, honestly. And it's interesting. I was just reviewing all the blogs that I've written in the past three or four months and quite a few of them are on anxiety and depression. And that's not because that's my favorite topic to write about, even though I don't mind writing about it. It's because it's so common. And it's one of a cluster of five symptoms that I am seeing off the charts in my practice. And I call it chronic body depletion because it really feels to me. And, you know, some of the other books I've written are on Taoism and sexuality. And this is really almost a Chinese medicine concept that we can deplete

our vital energy or an Ayurvedic medicine concept from the Indian tradition. But that we as a culture, because we live in these finely crafted, beautiful bodies capable of phenomenal things, I mean, you're a perfect example of that. And this body is created for an environment that is really wildly different than the one that we live in. We're created to live in, you know, light and dark and not a lot of artificial light. We're created to intimately know about 150 people. So if you look at humans in the last, you know, 10,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago, that's how most people lived. And to know the deaths and the births and the tragedies of those people, not to be bombarded all the time with Twitter, to be outside a lot, to be exposed to natural light, to be physically active all the time,

because you had to be or you would die, right? You had to gather your food, you had to, you know, hunt your food, you had to actually work at creating food and shelter and clothing and raising children. And then we live in this world where we can almost do none of those things and survive. And there is this phenomenon in Japan. I don't know if you've heard about this. We both have sort of young adults as kids. And there's this phenomenon of young Japanese men who take a vow. There's a Japanese word for them that I'm not remembering right now, but they live in their bedrooms. They never leave.

They never leave. And their whole life is online. Oh, this is, you mean, I thought you were going to talk about some kind of traditional way of rite of passage. You mean currently? It's the new tradition, which is I don't make food. I don't gather food. I don't work is I don't make food. I don't gather food. I don't work. I don't go outside. I don't, I'm not physically active. I do. I sit like a machine inside all day. And that's an extreme version, but you and I have both worked in versions of that, right? I'm inside all day. I'm sitting at a desk, I'm stressed out. And then

I sit in my car and then I drive home in traffic and then I'm home and I'm, you know, blown by my day. And so I watch television sitting on the couch. And that life where you're not physically active, you're typically not sleeping enough for a variety of reasons, but in part because of our culture's driven need to be productive. Well, we've created these environments that immunize ourselves from the natural cycles of what it means to live. And we've convinced ourselves, or perhaps a better word would be deluded ourselves to believe that we've opted out or exempted ourselves from nature. And we refuse to believe that even though we're under a roof and we're under artificial light, that we're still in nature Yeah

You know and the idea of going to bed when it gets dark and maybe sleeping a little bit more in the wintertime and all These things that are part of the natural circadian rhythms of what it means to be an animal. Which is what we are Yes have been completely divorced from our existence. So the extreme example being those Japanese boys I mean you become a battery in the matrix, right? Exactly. And, and, and then it becomes such a struggle to try to recreate the circumstances under which we are sort of naturally inclined to simply thrive and, and operate in our optimal capacity. Exactly. And that is exactly why I wrote Body Wise, because I'm really trying to help people reconnect. I mean, a lot of people, a lot of my patients walk around like they're really smart heads,

you know, with this little thing dangling from their neck. You know, they're so completely disconnected from their bodies that they can't even feel what's going on most of the time. And a lot of us live our lives that way. But when you do that, we get sick. We get all these symptoms. We get anxious. We get that, we get sick. We get all these symptoms. We get anxious. We get depressed.

We get tired. We lose our sex drive. You know, we end up with diseases, heart disease, diabetes, thyroid issues, autoimmune disease, allergy. So, you know, in my opinion, the way out of that is to really get body intelligence. And, you know, we talk about IQ, our intellectual intelligence, and we talk about EQ even, being emotionally intelligent, also very important.

But this is BQ, right? And it's kind of hilarious that we even need to talk about this, right? Because we are animals. Or the idea that we could actually be separate from nature, I mean, it's hilarious. We are nature, right? We're a walking microbiome of intestinal bacteria, like a little rainforest. We have more bacterials, 10 times more bacterial cells in our guts than human cells. So we ourselves are an

ecosystem. And we're intimately connected to the earth that we live on and everything we do to it. Yeah. And I think further exacerbating that is the fact that we live on and everything we do to it. Yeah, and I think further exacerbating that is the fact that we don't take responsibility for our BQ or our physical well-being and we've divested that responsibility or perhaps invested it in the medical community, right? Like we just assume that our doctor knows best. We go to our doctor, we get diagnosed with

something, we're given a medication, we're given a pill, which, you know, I would venture to guess 99% of the time isn't dealing with the underlying cause of whatever brought you to that office in the first place. And it's just masking symptoms so that you're perpetuating whatever imbalance led to that in the first place. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think to kind of lay this with context, I mean, this was not always, I mean, you came up in a very traditional educational, medical educational system, right? So your kind of epiphany or gradual sort of awareness about all of these issues was not, that wasn't the

initial path, right? You practiced traditional family medicine. I did. You went to Stanford. You went to UCSF. You did the whole deal, the medical residency and internship and all that kind of craziness. So maybe walk me through kind of your evolution to this perspective, because I think that lends credence to the wisdom that you're sharing. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I was one of those driven, high achieving people.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have met you at Stanford, right? You had to be that person to get in. And I do want to say, I am not someone who thinks modernity is evil, nor do I think technology is evil, nor do I think the medical system is evil, but even though you live in Santa Cruz, okay, I choose to, I, I choose to live in Santa Cruz, but, um, you know, not a problem, but I do think that you can't just assume that we're going to be in each of those contexts and it's all going to be fine and well taken care of. I think we really have to have our eyes open and I'm trying to educate people with body wise, how to be fine and well taken care of. I think we really have to have our eyes open. And I'm trying to educate people with BodyWise how to be their own best advocates and sometimes even their own doctors. Because, you know, you educate these physicians intensively. And by the way,

society pays for us to educate physicians because it's so expensive, so intensive. And then they come out and you've got these very talented people. And you say, okay, you're going to sit in this box in this room and you're going to see people for 10 minutes at a time and you're going to see 35 people a day and you're going to make an accurate diagnosis and write prescriptions. And beyond that, the sort of process by which you get to that point is antithetical to what ultimately you are preaching. You're working 100 hour weeks. You're working a hundred hour weeks.

You're not sleeping. Yes. You know, your, your sort of BQ is not fostered or, you know, sort of emphasized. Like you can't, there's no way that you can live these principles that you're advocating as a process of becoming this person who can then share this knowledge. Right. Yeah. So right now I'm so, yeah, of that. Yeah. I haven't had a lot of time in my life to watch television because I've just been busy working, writing, and raising three kids. But recently I've had a little more leisure and my daughter and I've been watching Grey's Anatomy for the first time. Okay. And she keeps saying to me, oh my God, is it really like that? And I keep saying- Everybody's having affairs with each other.

Well, that part is exaggerated, okay? It is not really paid in place in the hospital, usually. But the hours, the intensity, the criticism, the shutting down of your humanity, it's exactly like that. It's exactly like that. Does it have to be that way? Like, I've always been confused.

Like, why? Like, I don't want to go into the hospital and have some internist come in and attend to me who hasn't slept in four days. What is that trial by fire all about? Can we create a better system? Right. So, so this is, and again, it's a nuanced answer. So, you know, when you asked me originally, like how'd I get here? Right. So here's what I would say about it. You have to have enough practical, hands-on live patient experience to be able to do medicine. And the point of residency is to really give you as much of that as possible. And surgical residency, which is what Grey's Anatomy is about, is really the pinnacle of that. So it is not untrue that you need to put in a lot of hours.

I'm not arguing against that. I think that the, and I would also say that if you've got someone who is being a trauma surgeon or even a trauma physician, you need to have an order, a pecking order where one person's in charge, they tell everybody else what to do. Everybody else has their place. It's run like the military. And the reason the military is run that way is that's how you efficiently get a job done. So I think that there is a place for, you know, that kind of pecking order power dynamic. And I think there is a place for being able to shut out your feelings because you've got a 15 year old bleeding out from a motorcycle accident in front of you. because you've got a 15-year-old bleeding out from a motorcycle accident in front of you.

What I object to is that that real need to be able to separate your emotions from the task at hand becomes global in medicine. And that's not only wrong or difficult or painful, it's actually contributes to the dysfunction of American medicine and the failure of American medicine. Because I will tell you, I did do training. It was totally brutal. I did residency with a toddler. I don't know what I was thinking. That was particularly brutal. I had my- You were pregnant with your twins, right? During residency? And then I was pregnant with my twins during my third year of residency. And I ended up on bed rest weirdly, right?

My body was saying, look, lady, you know, are you nuts, right? You're pregnant with twins and you cannot be running around the hospital and being on call at night. No. So I was on bed rest for two and a half months and I had healthy twins. But that's an extreme example. And I could give you some more. I was at UCSF and I was working the liver transplant program, which is famous and

amazing program. And the surgeries are six hours long, nine hours long. They're very, very long. And one of the surgeons, this amazing woman, you know, at the time, one of the top liver transplant surgeons in the world and female. So just imagine what she had to go through. So this is 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And she was pregnant and she had scrubbed into surgery and her water broke and she went into labor and she refused to scrub out. So she stayed. She labored.

Oh my God. She labored with a broken bag of water. During, while she was performing surgery. And finished her liver transplant surgery. Oh, my God. So, excellent example of how physicians, and not just physicians, physicians, stockbrokers, military people, lawyers, business people, financial people, high tech people are all trained that their success depends upon ignoring their bodies. And I'm going to argue that there are moments when you need to, like in the middle of the night when your infant is crying and you're, you know,

you're tired and you might be getting sick. Well, it just doesn't matter because you have to get up and take care of the infant, right? So there are times when you're going to put your body's needs aside. But if you are disconnected, 100% disconnected from your body, you will fail at what you want to do. You will crash and burn and be miserable and get sick. You know, I often say that when the body first starts talking to you, it's knocking, right? It's like knocking on the door. And then if you're not listening, the body gives you a shove. And then if you're still not listening, it just whops you upside the head. A friend of mine, Nikki Silvestri calls this a bitch slap from the universe.

Right. Right? I've had a few of those. Yeah. So have I. That would be the pregnant Rachel with twins on bedrest. Right. With premature labor. It goes back to what we were saying before this idea that you can opt out of these rhythms, right? You know, the way that we

live is a constant incurring of a debt that we can't possibly repay and to cultivate the awareness that if you do wake up in the middle of the night to tend to your infant, or you, you know, have to do stay up really late to get a project done or something like that, that's okay. That's life. But to understand, okay, I'm incurring some debt here. I'm going to have to repay that debt later. If you can consistently refuse to repay that debt by resting or, you know, other strategies to, you know, refuel and replenish your body, that, that knock will turn into a bitch slap eventually. And you're going to get sick and you're going to pay either way, one way or the one way or the other and the the interest on that debt accrues at a pretty high percentage right I would agree with you and so I'm

sorry more so the older you get right yeah you can't yeah you kick it away anyway when you're 20 okay you know it's easier to it's harder to catch the attention of young people with that because it's like, oh, they can eat whatever they want. You can, it seems like, you know, the repayment terms are so far off in the distance that maybe you can get away with it, but eventually, right?

Right. So in your own experience, your own professional experience, when did you kind of come into this awareness that there has to be a better way of practicing medicine? I mean, you set up shop and you were practicing family medicine, right? And doing kind of like what everybody does. And I'm interested in your experience with that. And also kind of giving people who are listening a sense of, you know, the positives and the negatives of how the whole system is erected around healthcare.

Yeah. So I did, you know, multi-specialty clinic like most docs do straight out. I had three small children at the time. I wasn't really ready to be in private practice, but I was always interested in the mind, body, spirit connection. I actually wrote my Stanford admission essay on that topic. Did you? Yeah. Oh my God.

Do you still have it? Yes. What was it specifically? It was about wanting to be a healer and that my father was a pastor and I was a strong believer that the mind, the body, and the spirit are connected. And that was the work I wanted to do in the world. Wow. So you had that awareness very young. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So, you know, I wouldn't say I'm typical in that I went into the process knowing that I wasn't going to lose my soul no matter what. And then I think getting married was helpful because I also had to prioritize that. You know, my marriage had to be more, even though my husband wanted me to have my career really with everything in him. It was really clear to me that we both needed, uh, my commitment to

be to the marriage first marriage first, everything else second, right? Otherwise it doesn't work. It's hard enough as it is. Right. Um, and then anyway, so I was in practice, I had three small kids and at some point it just broke my heart. And here are the moments, the kinds of moments that made me decide I couldn't do it anymore. You know, a patient would come see me for a 15 minute visit and she had had, you know, let's say pelvic pain or chronic vaginal infections. And I would be talking to her about who's your partner, what's going on, blah, blah, blah.

And for the first time in her life at 14 minutes in, tears would well up in her eyes and she would start telling me about childhood sexual abuse. Or a guy who has a hard time talking about his feelings. And at minute 14, he would start talking about the abuse he's taking from his boss. And so I'm finally getting at the nugget of why this person is ill, of why they're having repetitive illnesses. And I can't address it because I don't have enough time. And because every time, and then I couldn't help myself, right? Like, did I walk out at 15 minutes? You know, I didn't.

Right, so you're running over. So then I'm late and then I'm behind and then I'm working, you know, 13 hour days and I am physically depleted. So at some point I knew I needed to leave. I knew I had already been training in integrative medicine for years, really. I knew enough to leave and do integrative medicine. But I was terrified because it's hard to make a living in private practice.

And I started getting migraine headaches for the first time in my life. And being a good doctor, I went to physical therapy. I thought it was my neck. I saw an osteopath who was doing craniosacral work with me. And, um, the osteopath actually had to say to me, well, tell me when you're getting these headaches. And I'd say, well, it's interesting. I get them when I'm at work. Cause at the time I was only working two or three days a week. She was like, you only get them at work. And I had to think about it. And I was like, actually, yeah, that's so interesting. She said, Rachel, that's not just interesting. I want you to think about the fact that you only get them at work. Uh, and I realized that it was

my body talking to me. Right. Right. And so I quit, but I had a six month, uh, I had a contract to work six more months with that, um, business with that clinic. And I did, six-month, I had a contract to work six more months with that business, with that clinic. And I did. But as soon as I quit, the day I quit, I didn't get any more headaches. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, I think it's, you know, you talked about having that awareness early on about wanting to be a healer and being, you know, holding that intention. and I think that that is probably, probably, you know, not unique among people that go to medical school and wanna be doctors.

I mean, in my own experience with being a lawyer, you know, I knew lots of people going to law school with similar aspirations of wanting to be of service and going into the nonprofit sector, but the sheer kind of just experience of going through the gauntlet of law school and all of that. And then, and then interview, and then suddenly the law firms come and they're dangling big, you know, salaries. And then you're like, well, maybe I'll do it for a couple of years. I got these huge loans. I got to pay off, but like, I'm not going to stay, you know,

I'm just going to do it for a little bit. And slowly, but surely like that, that aspiration, just, you know, the pilot light goes out. And then there they are in the job that they never really thought that they would be in, that they didn't really want, that they didn't necessarily consciously choose. And then they start compensating for that by spending money they don't have. Right, exactly. Like acting out in other ways. And then they're just like, well, I guess this is my life.

No, I have debt. So to be able to hold that vision and have the wherewithal, the courage to hit the brakes on it when you're midway through it, that's the unusual part. I think most people don't get to that place. And maybe the bitch slap or the little wake-up call is a blessing in that regard. The migraines, as painful as they were, I'm sure you look back on that now and say, thank you for those. Yes, you know, is a blessing in that regard. Like the, the migraines, you know, as painful as they were, were, you know, I, I'm sure you look back on that now and say, thank you for those. Yes, of course I do. Right. Of course I do. And, you know, I would say that for me personally, uh, in my, in making decisions in my life, and this is what I try to teach and body-wise how to use, how to use what your body is speaking to you. And that could be a sensation or that could be a physical experience. It could be painful or it could be pleasurable, but the way that that

is actually trying to guide your decision-making because in a way it's the expression of your unconscious. It's, it's your, uh, inner wisdom speaking to you. And if you learn to interpret that language, you know, I said before that I think that if you really want to be successful in your, you could be successful in your field, ignoring your body. But if you want to be a leader, if you want to be a groundbreaker, if you want to be truly inspirational, you need to be connected to your body because from there you get leadership qualities, you get insights, you get, uh, you know, inspiration for the people around you as a manager, as a leader, as you know, as a business person, whatever you do in your life. And I think that the body

intelligence is like the secret weapon, I really do in the best way, right? That allows you to both live a life that gives you joy and vitality, but also allows you to do work in the world in a much bigger way. And when you meet those people who are doing that work, you know, not the people with huge egos who are maybe successful, but you meet them and go, Lord have mercy, you know. You know it when you walk into a room. You can tell when somebody's got it dialed in. Like they have that self-awareness, you know, to understand who they are.

And there's like a grounded power in that, that, that defies language. You just, you can sense it. Right. Right. And one of the things you talk about in the book is, is kind of starting learning how to read these signals, like understanding that words like gut instinct and what my heart is telling me actually have great meaning. It's real. Yeah. That these are real things that this isn't just woo woo, new age, Santa Cruz speak. Right. And, and I know that you wrote this book predominantly for women, but I feel like women already are halfway there. If not most of the way there in terms of, of having that language or having that aptitude for listening to their bodies in a way that

men really aren't like men are much more shut down. Like I almost feel like this is really as much a book for men, even though it's really voiced to women. Men are the ones who really need to hear this more. I agree. You know, culturally, we're kind of pushed further away from that. And it's less OK or less comfortable for a guy to talk about how he's feeling or what his heart is telling him than it is for a woman. I agree with you. And to be honest, I see men in my practice and boys,

and I see babies and I see older people. It's a typical family practice. I see everybody. And I love my male patients. And I regret actually not writing this book for men and women. It was a conscious decision because it gets complex trying to talk about the body and women's physical experience of being embodied in our culture and around trauma and around sexuality. It's a little easier to speak to women directly, but for sure, the concept really important for men, absolutely basic. And I know in the current political climate and in the last year, there's been a lot of talk about men and women and patriarchal values and, you know, what are we going to do about this? There's been a bit more of a shakeup. And I think that it's important, in my opinion, to keep in mind that, yeah, it's true that being male gets you some privilege, but it also buys you this whole system of oppression of men, a big piece of which is shutting down your body, right?

That being a machine for making money, being a machine for making a name for yourself and all these other things, that really is about ignoring your body intelligence and not listening to those voices within. And I think that our way out is for all of us to be doing that. And, you know, I talk about this explicitly in the book, but I feel like once you're really actually connected to and listening to your body and you get a sense of, uh, you know, being in touch with your own nature, that it is a natural extension to realize how connected you are to other people and how connected you are to the earth. Because there really is no separation. It's a crazy idea that we're separate from the earth we live on, right? Everything we are comes from the earth and everything we're exposed to from a health point of view, all the toxins and the pesticides, the things people, you know, clean their houses with and, you know, the food we eat all deeply connect to our bodies,

right? The microbiome, the bacterial population of the earth that our food is grown in influences our own microbiome inside of our own guts, which is such a fundamental part of health. I don't know if you've talked about this on podcast before. Yeah, of course. Do you know Robin Shuttkan? Yeah. Yeah. So I had her on. She's wonderful. I don't know if you've talked about this on podcast before. Yeah, of course. Do you know Robin Shuttkan? Yeah. Yeah. So I had her on. She's wonderful. I just love her. Yeah. And you can't separate them. We are intimately, and everything we do to the earth, whether it's tearing down trees and creating a loss of oxygen and global warming, or it's the toxins that we're using, it all impacts us directly, directly. And if you look at the

emerging illnesses, allergy, autoimmune, learning disorders, neurologic disease, cancer, it's all related to our environment. It really is. Now you're just crazy talking. Now I'm crazy. Yeah. I'm good crazy. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. All right. So, I mean, these things are patently obvious to me. But I think it's a reach for a lot isn't anxious, somewhat depressed, experiencing chronic fatigue or adrenal fatigue, who isn't dealing with some kind of autoimmune disorder

or some kind of skin irritation. I mean, everybody seems to have some form of these disorders and they have an awareness of that. So there's like a fundamental kind of baseline BQ to use your language about that. But I think extending that fundamental kind of baseline BQ to use your language about that. But I think extending that or expanding that awareness to get to the root cause and start to address lifestyle decisions around what might be leading to that is where a lot of people start to just say, just give me the pill, or just tell me,

or what is the one food that I need to cut out? The scientific method requires that we sort of isolate variables and account for cofactors, and that's how we advance our understanding of the world. But at the same time, it belies a greater understanding of the interplay of all of these things and the incredibly complicated matrix, you know, in which we navigate our lives, right? So it's not one thing. It's not one supplement.

It's not, you know, one pill. It's not any one thing ever, right? No, never. And so when I see people in my office, and really what I've tried to do in BodyWise is create this rubric in which you can access, learn how to access your body intelligence, but then also give them a ton of information, right? Because I would say that, you know, the fundamentals of health that I talk about, eating, sleeping, moving, loving, and having a sense of purpose are really fundamental.

And there is no patient in my office. And that's not rocket science. No, it's not. And nobody's going to disagree with me, right? I mean, this is not new knowledge, but it is true. And if you look at somebody with heart disease, let's say, and you don't talk to them about their relationships, you're missing the boat because a lack of love or a lack of community doubles your risk of heart attacks. Regardless of what statin you're on, you know, it's actually more important than whether they smoke. So I am always looking at those fundamentals.

And then, you know, I do have to say, once we get ourselves into these pickles, right, I've just had this week two new patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, which is very, it's a rough disease, really rough disease. And it's somebody who has had, you know, we call it the shopping cart effect, right? They had some trauma and then they had some exposures to some toxins and then they had some stress and then they ate bad. And then they, you know, a whole cascading number of events that led them to that moment that their body began to not function normally. And chronic fatigue is about,

I cannot intracellularly produce enough energy, right? It's an actual, it's a mitochondrial disease in some ways. And it's a very complex disease. And all those things we just talked about, fundamental. If they don't sleep, nobody gets better. If they don't have love or relationships or affection in their lives, they also don't get better. What they don't have love or relationships or affection in their lives, they also don't get better. What they eat, hugely important, hugely important, especially because

these people tend to be overly sensitive. So these are the folks, I mean, I really like everybody to be on a varied diet. I'm not someone who wants to restrict everyone. You should never eat gluten, and you should never eat soy, and you should never meat. And, you know, I'm not one of those doctors. I feel like there are some things that we all agree on, like processed food's not great. And, you know, chemicals in your food is not great, you know, better to eat organic, lots of fruits and vegetables. But people have different needs nutritionally, I think. And then those needs change, you know, throughout our lifetime. So it really is about paying attention to what works individually. But there are some people like with autoimmune disease or chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia who I will look at food allergies and food sensitivities

and pull some things out and it can make a huge difference, but it's complex. And so in body wise, I'm trying to provide also a bunch of the integrative medicine secrets by which we heal these diseases. Yeah. And I think what's great about the book is it's very plain spoken. You know, you sort of, you relate your own experience and you bring in these case studies from all these patients that you've had and share their stories. And you explain these things in a way that's very digestible for anybody. And then you leave people with very practical tools for helping them, you know, sort of diagnose themselves, take greater responsibility, and then some really sort of tactical approaches for addressing it in your own life. But ultimately, like the theme that I see, you know, beneath the whole thing is you have to take responsibility

for this for yourself, right? Like you say, diet, it's different for everybody. You have to use yourself as a crucible of experimentation to find out what works for you, and you cannot divest yourself of that responsibility into a third party to just tell you what to do. No. Yeah, and in fact, I would argue part of the reason our healthcare system doesn't work

is because it encourages people to do just that. Really? I'm diabetic. Okay. I'm not going to stop eating fast food for goodness sakes, or I'm a baker. So I'm not going to stop eating, you know, muffins and pie and cake, but you're going to give me some drugs that'll help me do that. Right? It's insane because the drugs may bring the blood sugar down, but they drive the diabetes. A lot of them actually make diabetes worse. So we've got this person who, you know, is basically making a contract with their doctor to progress their disease and not change their behavior.

So back to like the systemic ills of this system, we all hear stories about, you know, big pharma pushing drugs and kind of how that's embedded with the medical profession. You go to these conferences and you get to come out to nice dinners and here's the samples and here's the nice pens and the coffee cups that you can have in your like. How much of that is conspiracy theory versus reality like in your experience? It is not conspiracy theory. That's just factually true.

in your experience? It is not conspiracy theory. That's just factually true. And if you are someone who thinks that the drug in the pharmaceutical industry should be any different in their decision-making than a chemical company or a financial company or somebody who makes screwdrivers, I disagree. It is a company bent on making money for their shareholders. And they do not have morality in their compass. I don't care what they say. They do not have it. So if they can charge more and a bunch of people get sick, they don't care. So, I mean, I think we have to change the way we think about it. It's not that they're evil.

They're a business. This is capitalism. And by the way, so is the supplement industry. So just in case you think because when you look at uh you know there are there are integrative medicine doctors and naturopaths and chiropractors and acupuncturists and by the way i work with all of those people but there are some who are functioning still in a paradigm where oh i'm going to go to a conference put on by a supplement company right which is not evil because they're a supplement company.

And they're going to tell me how to treat fibromyalgia, let's say. And they're going to give me an algorithm that tells me what supplement to give the patient to fix that disease. Okay. This is the same problem. This is the same problem. So if you're going home and now you're taking, and I take supplements, so don't get me wrong. I also would take a medication if I needed it.

But if you are still depending on your natural practitioner to cure you by giving you things, it's the same intrinsic problem, right? The supplement industry is also not necessarily moral there. It's a business. And also without any regulation. So it could be even worse. I think, you know, there's a lot of good supplements out there, but there's also a lot of supplements that, you know, the consumer would not, you have no, there's no transparency

in how a lot of these supplements, most of these supplements are, you know, the vast majority of them are manufactured, right? So you don't know the purity of them. You don't know the circumstances under which they were put together and packaged and all of that. And it's just, it's rife with a lot of problematic products out there. Yes. So back to our fundamentals, if you eat really well, you're not going to need as many supplements. Eat a lot of fruit and veg, drink a lot of water, get sleep, move your body, try to be a good friend, have healthy relationships, be involved in your community and live a life of purpose. Yes. And by the way, if you get sick anyway, and I'm also a big advocate

of saying shit happens sometimes. Okay. You know, when my meditating vegan yoga teacher patient got breast cancer, you know, we all think that if we have perfect behavior, oh, you know, we're all terrified of death for one. And we think if we have perfect behavior, we can avoid what that other person got. Oh, they got it because they they eat French fries, you know, or that person has cancer because, you know, they stayed in that terrible relationship. We like to pretend we're somehow immune and there isn't one of us that's immune. So we all can get sick at any time. And when you do, then we need help, you know, and it's okay to use Western medicine. In fact, I highly recommend it in many circumstances, but you want to go in knowing your own body and knowing what works for you and what doesn't.

And being very clear about that. You want to be the captain of your ship, no matter who you're seeing. And also you want to pay attention to your intuition about the practitioners that you see. So I see plenty of people who go, yeah, I just, I don't really like my doctor, but I've been seeing them for 20 years. And I go, why, why, why are you seeing that doctor? You should never see a doctor you dislike. That doesn't make any sense. Right. So BQ body quotient is about trying to do that math of the

relationship between the foods you're eating and the way that you're living your life and however you're feeling or whatever, you know, is manifesting in you physically, mentally, emotionally, et cetera. And, and in the book, you talk about the difference between sense, feel, and discernment, and then shit happens. So like, how do you parse these different things? Like developing a sense versus, you know, what your body is feeling, and then having discernment around that. And then understanding when sometimes stuff just happens and maybe it's not related to some lifestyle habit that you're perpetrating. Right.

So the steps you just mentioned are how I teach people how to pay attention to their body. So the first one is actually measure. So I'm not throwing out the baby with the bathwater here. We like lab testing. Okay. We like blood pressure. We like basic

measurements of our health and it matters. And I do all of that with my patients. In fact, I do it probably much more than a regular doctor, preventative medicine testing. And there's lots of advanced testing that's kind of sexy and interesting. So give me an example, like a taste of what some of those tests are. So for example, my chronic fatigue patients that came in this week, and one of them I think is going to get better very quickly because I did some advanced nutritional testing on her. I did urinary amino acids. I looked at heavy metals. She's got extremely poor detoxification. Her liver detox, her glutathione, that's an all an integrative medicine nutrition test. I also did some genetic testing and she's got a bunch of SNPs.

Now SNPs are, this is not a genetic defect. Like the gene itself doesn't work, but it does mean that the enzyme that it codes for, the protein that it codes for is a little slow. It's sluggish. It doesn't work as well as the regular one. And she had a bunch of abnormal SNPs in her detoxification and methylation system. So in other words, like that genetic disposition is not expressing itself the way that it's meant to.

Correct. So, and I mean, the really good news here, and I'm not someone who thinks everybody needs to go out and do 23andMe necessarily. In fact, I would highly recommend you think very carefully about that because a lot of people are so paranoid and obsessive about their health that a test like that is dangerous for them. It's dangerous for their mental health. It's better not to know. Well, it can lull you into this idea that you're just predetermined to suffer from X, Y, or Z, right? And that you can't do anything about it.

And we know that our thoughts are powerful, right? And there's that adage like genetics load the gun, but how you're living your life is what pulls the trigger or not, right? Yeah, genetics is like 5% to 10% at most in terms of predicting disease. 5% to 10%. The rest of it's all lifestyle. A piece of this that I thought was super interesting is that it's true that the other, you know, 90 to 95% is lifestyle, but a good 25% is your experience in the womb.

How much weight? 25%. 25%. 25%. All right. So explain, unpack that a little bit. So imagine that you're a developing embryo and everything's sort of coming together and the brain is being formed, for example, and all the structures of the brain. When that baby's born, many parts of that infant's physiology are complete, right? So yeah, everything's going to get a little bigger.

And some things like the brain, it's certainly going to develop as they get older. But let's just say that that mama who was pregnant with that baby was a refugee from Syria and was barely getting out. And the boat she was on collapsed, but she made it to shore and she shortly gave birth in a refugee camp. This is happening right now. Um, then the impact on that infant is that that infant got bathed in cortisol in utero, that infant got bathed in adrenaline in utero, and that actually increased the growth of the stress, uh, aspect of the brain that controls adrenal function permanently. So you, and this is sort of the field of epigenetics or how our environment controls the genetics that we express. So, you know, we used to think one gene, one protein,

one enzyme, right? And it's just not true. They're often duplicate genes. You know, we've got 10 different ways to code for this particular protein. And the one we pick depends on our environment. And then that happens to be passed down. So it may be that this baby, you know, of this refugee woman is now far more likely to be an anxious person. Um, and they are, but that baby's baby and that baby's grandchild are more likely to be anxious. That's amazing. It's generational. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's coded in the experience of the mother less than in the actual sort of sequence of DNA, right? Right. Right. And then you have this other thing in the book about testing the embryonic fluid and the amount of, like, toxins and chemicals that are typically found in that.

It's terrifying. It's terrifying. So we have added, I think it's 80,000 new chemicals to our environment since 1950. I think it's 80,000 new chemicals to our environment since 1950. And only people don't understand that you can make a chemical in the lab, find a purpose for it in industry, and have no testing on it whatsoever for safety. Especially, and if it's going to be, let's say, in a shampoo or a lotion or it's going to be in a human product, then it will get a little more testing, but not that much. It won't be tested in humans necessarily. Only if it's a medication, does it get really stiff testing. And we, the United States think it's very smart to put things on the market and see what happens, you know, unlike, right? put things on the market and see what happens. Unlike Europe that says, look, if it's not proven to be safe, we're not going to put it on the market. What an intelligent way to approach life,

right? In many countries, not just Europe, but no, we don't have that. We don't have that. We just put it on the market and see what happens. Like one of the advanced tests that I do when I'm looking at detoxification is I look for the gasoline additive MTBE. Do you remember that? It was in gasoline for years, right? We didn't test that to see what it did. We tested a little bit, but not a lot. And it was in gasoline.

It wasn't a human product. So it doesn't affect humans, right? We're idiots, right? Of course it affects humans. We're pumping the gas. It's in the air. It's on the ground. It's leaching into the groundwater. It causes defects in animals and it affects humans. We're pumping the gas. It's in the air. It's on the ground. It's leaching into the groundwater. It causes defects in animals and it affects humans. And it's in our groundwater supply

permanently because it doesn't break down well. And so I'm looking at it in humans. I'm measuring it as a measure of how well are you containing this toxin that you're exposed to? And I can tell you my chronic fatigue patient with the poor detoxification and the poor genetics for detoxification had really high levels of MTBE. That's crazy. And when you think about all of those, all of those, uh, those chemicals and those toxins that are found in the amniotic fluid or the embryonic fluid, um, you know, how do you even begin to try to figure out what's doing what when there's so many of them? Right. And, and, and this is really what makes me crazy because we test each one for its toxicity by itself, right? We don't think about how it

actually occurs in nature, which is the thousands of toxins that that infant is exposed to before it's even born. And it's the thousands of toxins together, plus, you know, our Syrian refugee stress level, plus, you know, the lack of food she had during her pregnancy or the poor quality of the food or the lack of protein that influences that child's ultimate disease state. It's all of those things. It's not one thing. It's amazing. We're not all just crazy sick all the time. Right. I mean, I'm getting depressed. So let's be optimistic for a moment. So here's the really good news. You and I are not, we're not depressed and nor are we sick. Right. And that's because humans are unbelievably

resilient, unbelievably resilient. I always say I'm so lucky as a doctor because I treat humans, right? Because people who come to see me, they're very likely to get better. And it may have nothing to do with me. In fact, it probably has nothing to do with me. But I look good, right? Makes me look good because the human body likes to heal. It likes to return to balance, right? And I'm just like tweaking it a little bit here and a little bit there. But if I just create the right nest for that human body, the right

environment, people heal beautifully. And I guarantee you this patient I saw with chronic fatigue this week, because we identified what her particular vulnerabilities were. And by the way, her adrenals are shot and she's stressed out too and can't sleep. And as soon as we cover that territory, and I think we're close to it, she's going to get better. She's better this time than when I saw her two weeks ago. Yeah, that's like a modern Western approach to what is essentially Ayurveda, right? Like the idea of bringing the body's systems into balance so that the body can heal itself. Right.

It's an ancient concept. But this concept isn't in Western medicine. And that's why we're talking about it. So it's in Chinese medicine. It's in Ayurvedic medicine. It's in the native healing cultures of almost every culture in the world, you know, as is this concept of chi or prana or vital energy, whatever you want to call it. You know, it's in the Bible. It's in ancient Hebrew. as is this concept of chi or prana or vital energy, whatever you want to call it.

It's in the Bible. It's in ancient Hebrew. This concept that we have vital energy and that our body needs to come into balance, Greek medicine, Hippocrates, same thing. It goes way back. It's only Western medicine that divorces your wellness from your body to some degree. It's sort of crazy. It's not sort of crazy. It's completely crazy. Yeah. Socially, you're maligned for even talking about these sorts of things. And as somebody who has this amazing pedigree, you know, Stanford

educated UCSF for the, for you to then go and get your master's in holistic medicine from Berkeley. I mean, what did your peers make of this? Like, did you have to suffer some repercussions in, you know, socially as a result of kind of stepping out and trying to, you know, switch the lens on which you deal with health and disease? Well, I would say that a really hugely important thing to me was to find my tribe. So even if my tribe wasn't around me when I was practicing, even when I was still in that regular doctor job, I was going to integrative and holistic medical conferences and I would go, ah, and I'd relax. These are my people. These are my people,

right? They don't think I'm crazy. They think I'm awesome. So, I mean, I think surrounding yourself with people who really support, you know, the best part of who you are is a big deal. And then there's something about, you know, I used to talk with people about being at UCSF, a very competitive medical school, super smart people there, about what it was like to be a female. Like when I was on that liver transplant service, it was with all men, I believe, except for that one female attending. And there is also just the one who just the baby during the baby during surgery. But there is also something about just not being cowed by it, you know, being being quite confident that I'm not crazy, you know, and that loving people and being heartful and listening to people and, you know, believing that my patients know how to heal themselves and that really it's just my job to help them find it. You know, it's empowering. And not only that, it's successful. It works. Makes me look good.

Yeah, that's the thing. It works, right? I think it's a really great time because this is happening right now. In my opinion, this is the future of medicine. Yeah. And I think consumers, citizens are increasingly, you know, turning to the kind of services that you provide because they're realizing like the other way is not working. Yeah. They look around like all you have to do is travel a little bit. You can see how unhealthy people are everywhere you go. And it's, it's, it doesn't take that much of a leap of faith to think there's got to be a better way. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, miracles happen. I mean, this is the happy part of what I do, right? So I was telling you about my chronic fatigue patient. I had another patient about three weeks ago, three, four weeks ago, who came to see me with fairly severe rheumatoid arthritis. It's a terrible condition, absolutely debilitating and exhausting. A lot of people know about the pain, the joint pain, but they don't know that they also get just knocked out both by the pain and the disease itself is exhausting. And, you know, I worked with her on diet. So she's someone,

people who have allergy and autoimmune disease, immune system is confused it's attacking the wrong thing right it's either attacking something in the environment allergies that isn't actually dangerous or it's attacking the body itself autoimmune disease it's a it's a whoopsie of the immune system but in this case it's attacking the joints and one thing we know about the immune system is it has specificity. So it'll attack the joints, but not attack, you know, the tendons or, you know, it'll attack in someone who's allergic dust mites, but won't necessarily respond, you know, to all the pollens. So it's selective, but it's also has a general volume control. And if I take a patient, I mean, I had a,

as a little bit of a divergent topic, but I had a young man in my practice who was a competitive baseball player at a university. And he had horrific seasonal allergies. He's allergic to all grasses, all pollens, all trees. I mean, poor thing. Totally miserable because he's out on the baseball field with a wind blowing. And he had acne on his back and on his face. Attractive young man, but couldn't get rid of it. Got a lot of antibiotics for his acne.

And when I saw him, I knew that what he eats and if he responds in an immune way inappropriately to what he eats, it adds to the burden, right? So I did food allergy and food sensitivity testing on him. And he was allergic to dairy, but he was sensitive. So not allergic, but producing immune response, IgG response against also gluten and eggs. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

So this poor guy eating at the dorms, but he said, yeah, I'll try it. So he went off amazingly, dairy, gluten, and eggs. And I saw him three weeks later, he had no acne. He had no congestion. And he said, I haven't felt this good since I was five years old. Right. That's amazing. So this is the power of integrative medicine because, and so for my rheumatoid arthritis patient, one of the big things we did is we actually put her on, we tested her for food allergy and food sensitivity, and we reduced her diet and we put her on great natural anti-inflammatories, green tea, fish oil,

turmeric, boswellia, which is frankincense, like the baby Jesus got. And within a month, she went from five medications, okay, and rheumatoid arthritis medications are dangerous. They're like, they are chemotherapy drugs, right? So she was on methotrexate. She was on another nasty rheumatoid arthritis drug. She was on prednisone, which causes diabetes and muscle loss and makes you a crazy person and manic and unable to sleep. And she was on a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. And we got her off three of her medications got her off prednisone and we got her off the two more serious autoimmune medications and now she's still on she takes sometimes she takes a non-steroidal and she was on continues on one of the lower level

rheumatoid arthritis drugs but she's otherwise controlled and it has everything to do with how she eats. Simple, right? Yeah. So when you talk about chronic body depletion, I would imagine, you know, that sort of circle falls well within, you know, a larger circle on the Venn diagram of like chronic inflammation, right? Like the toxins we're exposed to, terrible foods that we're eating, the lack of sleep, the amount of stress in our jobs, and, you know, maybe dysfunctional relationships. All of these contribute to a state of chronic, you know, basic chronic inflammation. And we're realizing now the relationship between chronic inflammation and all

of these chronic lifestyle illnesses, right? So how much of what you do is oriented around reducing that inflammation? And maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, how our immune system functions and what inflammation really is and what it means to reduce that inflammation, whether it's through lifestyle habits or anti-inflammatory foods and supplements. And I think it's important to put this in the context of where we started, which is our physiology is almost 10,000 years old. Okay. So our human body is created for a world where there's a lot of bacteria, there's a lot of parasites. Um, there's a lot of, uh, injuries and exposures.

And we need a really kind of super powered Amazon immune system to keep us healthy and well. And a huge part of that immune system, I mean, right now it's flu season in California, and it's really pretty rampant. And when I see my patients with the flu, they come in and their noses are all red, you know, from below because their nose is running. The inside of their nose is swollen. They're coughing because the inside of their lungs is swollen, right? So those are inflammatory reactions, but they're appropriate inflammatory reactions because the body's trying to fight off a virus. And the body fights off a virus by white blood cell, by identifying it, and then by the white blood cells basically dropping hydrogen peroxide or other toxic substances on that area. And it does, in fact, kill the virus. That's why the flu doesn't kill us, and colds generally don't kill us,

and the human body's amazing. But when we dump those oxidative products, oxidative is almost like a chemical fire, that we create inflammation so that's redness and swelling um and that redness and swelling would go on and on and on except for that we have antioxidants which has kind of come to put out the fire that stop that reaction from going because when we dump those toxins we don't just kill the virus we kill the cells around the virus too right we kill our own cells which is okay because we can make more. But in any case, that's a good example of there's tremendous inflammation in the nose and the lungs, but that's the person's immune system actually clearing that illness. Right. It's healthy and it's treating an acute situation. And it's necessary,

right? Without it, it's like our, you know, our patients on chemotherapy or with HIV who have severely depleted immune systems, the smallest thing, fatal. And keeping in mind, again, we were created for a world in which the exposure to those challenges to our health and well-being, far more than we have currently. Right. So we've got this really wicked smart immune system. And then we've got this world that's very confusing. These chemicals we've never seen before that we might react to. Back to the gut flora, right? So we started out, if we look even now, we look at tribes in the Amazon or we look at the tribes in Africa that are still living in a fairly natural way, they have gut flora, far more bacteria in their gut, far more diversity of bacteria in their gut.

You can have 800 species of bacteria in your gut, right? But with the onset of antibiotics and also lifestyle, so what we eat, the chemicals in what we eat, and also the lack of fiber in what we eat, we have steadily depleted our microbiome, our bacteria in our gut over the last, you know, 70 years. And the antibiotics in the food that we're eating. And the antibiotics in the food we're eating. Exactly. Not to get depressing again, but it's pretty awful. So, yeah.

So, and then that decreased gut flora means that the immune system in addition to not having the usual you know parasites and bacteria to fight off it doesn't even have normal bacteria in the gut to deal with right right and the bacteria in your gut may be healthy and normal for you but if it were to escape the gut into the rest of your body, you would die, right? So the immune system is carefully monitoring that. And in a situation like rheumatoid arthritis, where the body thinks the joints are the problem, they think the joints are trying to kill you, right? They think it's the infection. Now we're creating inflammation inappropriately. And having the wrong gut bacteria make that more likely because the

immune system isn't properly trained. It's a very flexible and reactive organism, the immune system. And in the wrong environment, too many toxins, inappropriate gut flora or infections, not enough exposure to bacteria. So there's also all these really interesting studies on the clean environment and how kids without kids who live on farms and with pets and with animals and they're in the dirt far less likely to get allergies. Right. Kids in the clean environment with the Lysol cabinets far more likely to have serious allergies. Yeah. The backlash from that is unbelievable from, you know, a generation of Purell to, you know, to a situation now where,

I mean, when we were kids, nobody had a peanut allergy. And now you can't have peanuts on an airplane or it's like not allowed in schools. And all of these conditions that just seem absolutely foreign when we were young people are epidemics. They are. And they're epidemics because of what we're doing to our planet and our food supply. It's as simple as that. We're going to get depressed. We're going to get

depressed. Okay. So we're going to stop that right now. So, I mean, the other thing I want to say, and we started this by talking about inflammation. Right. So the relationship between like sort of the chronic inflammation that we're getting from the terrible foods that we're eating, the lifestyles that we're living, and the impact of that on these chronic ailments that really are the epidemics of our age. Yeah. And, you know, heart disease is an inflammatory condition. Cancer is an inflammatory condition.

Stroke is an inflammatory condition. I mean, we could go on and on and on here. But here's the good news. Here's the really good news. Like my patient with the rheumatoid arthritis, we all, if we have chronic inflammation, it is fixable. The body is resilient. It's amazing the kind of improvement we can have with simple things, you know, shifting

how you eat just a little bit. Doesn't, and I don't think it has to be extreme. I think most people think what you and I are talking about is impossible because it's just too hard and little things, little changes can make a huge difference. Right. So it's back to BQ again, right? And you have this beautiful, um, example in the book from one of your patients who comes in and is talking about these crazy dreams that she's having. I was snake attacking her neck. Can you talk about that a little bit? That gets a little woo woo, but I think the point is really powerful.

It is and it isn't. So if we didn't live in a culture that thought that sometimes the body communicates in images or in dreams, you know, we wouldn't be thought to be crazy, but the unconscious communicates that way. So, so this is a patient of mine who I saw as a young woman in her 20s. And she came to see me because she was sure something was wrong with her. And she was a young mom. She had a little toddler, like a 15-month-old at the time.

And she really, really, really loved children. She was one of these young women who really wanted to have a giant family and was so invested in an organic know, an organic garden and, you know, such a beautiful human. And she said, I'm terrified I'm never going to be able to have another baby. And I'm thinking she's 23. She can have another baby. Right. Like, that's a little bit crazy.

And then she says, you know, I've been a little bit tired and I'm a little embarrassed to tell you this, but I had this dream and I just can't shake it. That this snake came up and it bit me in my back and it bit me in my neck and in my brain. And I don't know what to think about it. Now, this is the point where a normal doctor would pat her on the head and say, that's nice. Right. But your blood works fine. Right. Well, if her blood work were fine. Right. So, but I went blood pressure, you know, I put the scope up here. It's okay. And you're 23. So relax. Don't worry about it. Right. And

I was hoping that that was going to be the case to be perfectly honest. Um, and I was, I always pay attention because people tell you the darndest things, you know, and it's not just that I'm an integrative doctor. Any, any doctor who listens will hear all kinds of amazing things from their patients. This is not actually an unusual story. So because she was tired, I did some blood work. Her thyroid wasn't normal. Thyroid function wasn't normal. And then I did some more blood work in her sodium andium and potassium were off and it looked like there's some issue. Ultimately, we did a workup centered in endocrinology. She had adrenal dysfunction and she unfortunately has multiple endocrine neoplasia, which is a syndrome of tumors in all the endocrine organs. And one of them was

in the back and the adrenal gland, and one of them was in the thyroid. And one of them was in the pituitary gland in the head. So her dream was right. It's just snake had bitten her in all those places. And I mean, the good news about this, the sad part about the story is that she wasn't ever able to have another baby because of her hormonal condition and needing to treat it and remove tumors and sometimes endocrine organs but she will live a healthy full life and um it got diagnosed in her father as well because it's a genetic syndrome in families and it saved his life uh and then she opened a preschool oh that's nice yeah and i don't even that's i mean mean, that is amazing. That sort of body intuition. Yeah.

You know, it was telling her like her unconscious mind was trying to signal her to get her to pay attention to something. Yeah. And you had the wherewithal to actually investigate that. Yeah. Well, you know, again, I think that you have to listen to, if you're, if you're a provider, a health provider of any kind, your number one tool is the patient in front of you. You know, the stories you hear and any good clinician will, will say that not just me regular straight up to, in fact, this is classic medicine.

These are the people I was trained by when I, you know, I trained 25, 30 years ago and the classic physicians who were 50 and 60 at that time, this is how they practice medicine because they didn't have an MRI and they didn't have an ultrasound. Um, you know, they had to listen and they had to have excellent observational skills about the person in front of them. And that's how they found their diagnoses. And that all really matters. You know, the patient will tell you what the problem is generally if you listen carefully. But ultimately, the road to wellness is paved with willingness on behalf of the patient, right?

If they're coming to you and you're doing this really comprehensive evaluation that is going to then impact, you know, what they're going to eat, how they're going to sleep, how they're going to interact with people professionally and personally impact what they're gonna eat, how they're gonna sleep, how they're gonna interact with people professionally and personally, what they're gonna, the supplements they're gonna be taking, the herbs, going to a chiropractor, acupuncture, yoga, meditation, like it's a lot, right? It can be.

So do you have strategies to try to help people step into like a level of ownership of that where they're actually willing to do the work. Because if they don't, they can take all that information, but if they don't implement it, nothing is going to change, right? Right. So I'm thinking about, you know, four or five people in my practice who are overweight with high blood pressure.

This is a classic patient, right? Overweight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a little bit of prediabetes. Typical American, actually. Right. Yeah. I was little bit of prediabetes. Typical American, actually. Right. Yeah. I was like, that's a lot. Typical American. And, you know, men and women, both.

And I've got a number of them who are of that ilk, like, really, you know, you want me to walk every day? And what I do with when that's the patient showing up in my office, we have a discussion about it. And I go, well, we have options here. You're in charge. We can. I promise you, if you change the way you eat and if you exercise and we do a little stress reduction, we can reverse probably all of these. Probably.

I can't guarantee it, but probably. But that's up to you. And if you're not ready for that, then we're going to treat them. And I give them medications. And I say, but here's the deal. As soon as you can actually do, I keep on it. Right? So I had a patient who I was trying to get her to exercise, and she just couldn't figure out how to make it happen and couldn't get out of the house.

You know, couldn't wrap her head around it. And then her sister had a heart attack. And then she came back in to see me. Right. And said, okay, now I'm worried. And I said, good. I'm glad you're worried. Because I'm worried. Well, everybody has their line in the sand. Right. And that's different for everybody. And we start small. I was like, okay, can you walk to the mailbox? She lives in the country,

so the mailbox is maybe a half a mile from her house. Can you walk to the mailbox? She lives in the country, so the mailbox is maybe a half a mile from her house. Can you walk to the mailbox once, you know, three times a week? So we start small. And I mean, here's the other thing I love about the human body and what makes my job not that difficult is that there's this positive feedback loop. Exercise is a good example. You do a little bit of something and it's hard in the first couple of weeks. Most things are.

Most changes are hard for the first couple of weeks. And then the body gets on board, right? So she comes back to see me and she goes, Dr. Rachel, I just, now I walk out the door, my body wants to go. She doesn't even want to come home. She just wants to go. In fact, I got my girlfriend and we're walking in the afternoon too. You know, so I mean, there is a positive feedback loop with eating well, right?

You put somebody on, like they're having a hard time. So maybe you do an eating program, like a cleanse. They come off that cleanse and they go eat at McDonald's. They feel terrible. They feel terrible. Or the person who's been off sugar for three weeks and now they eat it again. They feel the impact of what they're doing.

So there is this, you know, this helpfulness we get, it's like the wellness elevator, right? You do a little bit and that feels really good. And then it's easier to keep doing it because gosh, you feel better. And then you do a little bit more and that's how most of us make changes. You know, we don't do it all at once. We pick one thing. Yeah. I think there's this myth, the myth of perfection and the myth of the overnight permanent change. That's just not rooted in reality. And I think you're right about the positive feedback loop.

And I think, you know, positive action gets more positive action that begins to spill into the other areas of your life. And I think it's about community support and accountability. And I would imagine in your practice, there's a lot of, there's much more engagement and follow-up than you typically might have in a, in a traditional doctor's office where you're just on your own and come back in six months, as opposed to checking in and, you know, giving people that level of, of sort of accountability so you can help them stay on track. Right. And, you know, nobody leaves my office without a little guidance list, right? Here's the number one thing. Here's the first thing you're going to do. And then here's the second thing that we've agreed on. Right. And I don't put anything on that list

that the patient isn't invested in. Right. Because otherwise change is unlikely. Right. But I mean, I've seen miracles. I've seen miracles. You know, I've seen people reverse high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and in fairly short order sometimes when they're really on board and ready, when they're ready to make those changes. And understanding that there's no one size fits all. And there's so many protocols like, you know, we touched on peripherally, you know, acupuncture, Like, you know, we touched on peripherally, you know, acupuncture, chiropractor, you know, supplements, herbs, sleep, exercise, diet. Like we can't canvas all of this, but for somebody who's listening, who's like, okay, I'm ready. Like I need to really start looking at this a little bit more diligently than I have.

What are like the big gaping, you know, kind of areas where you could give somebody some initial like marching orders to begin to look at this stuff and make some changes? Yeah. Well, actually, I mean, at the end of the book, I have a 28 day plan on purpose for that reason. Right. Like if you were going to pick like a couple of things in each category of fundamental health to do, that's what that plan is all about. And, you know, the other thing about it is that plan is supposed to be guided by your body intelligence. So when I've done it with people, um, some of them feel terrible because they didn't keep up their, you know, whatever their sleep regimen or their extra. And I'm like, you know, it's not really about that. It's about listening to yourself. You know, one of them said, Oh,

but I got sick so I could do my exercise. I feel so bad. I was like, why would you feel bad about that? You got sick. You listened to your body. You rested. Good job, right? That's what it's about. This is not about I'm going to do because she said so. It's the perfectionism thing, right? I'm not going to do this because the doctor said so. And if I don't do it, I'm a bad person. You know, this is about being in touch with your own needs. So I would say in terms of eating, everybody can agree on fruits and vegetables. And honestly, sometimes all I can get people to do is eat some more vegetables, but eating more vegetables makes a huge difference. It feeds the gut flora. They get more

antioxidants, they get more vitamins and you know, the vitamins we get in food are way better than the vitamins we get in pills. And that becomes, I think that's another positive feedback loop because the more you do that, then the more you're going to want to eat healthy. And I like that it's focused on including something more of something as opposed to most dietary protocols are focused on what you're not going to eat, right? Why don't we just focus on eating more of the good stuff and start there?

Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that it's more important that you eat more fruits and vegetables than that you cut out. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think that it's more important that you eat more fruits and vegetables than that you cut out. I mean, Lord have mercy. You know, there are so many restricted diets right now on the market. And I just had a patient in my office who's vegetarian and she's on a diet for small intestinal bowel overgrowth, the FODMAP diet. Maybe you're familiar with that. Anyway, it's a gut healing diet but between her vegetarianism and that diet she eats almost she's nothing and i looked at her nutritional profile it's terrible

it's absolutely terrible i'd rather she eat right like a processed food vegetarian you know it's crazy it's crazy so i do think that it's possible to restrict your diet too much and that it's dangerous you know ideally we eat a varied diet so more fruits and vegetables as a ride start like the Michael Pollan how does it go again eat food eat food not too much mostly vegetables yeah basically right all right so diet aside what are some of the other like like you know most people have some deficiency or other, whether it's B or D or magnesium. Like, those are things I think people could. Those would be the three most common.

Yeah, that people need to look at. And what are some of the more, like, the herbs that you find yourself prescribing most frequently? Great question. So I would say getting tested for vitamin D deficiency is really important because weirdly 80% of the country is deficient in vitamin D. It's a big deal. Also, especially if you're vegan, because your sources of vitamin D are a little more limited.

And supplementing vitamin D is really easy. And when your vitamin D is low, you have double the risk of autoimmune disease and double the risk of cancer. It has a huge impact. So worth doing. I actually think the story of vitamin D is not just a story of not enough sunshine and therefore not making enough in your skin. I think it's also a story of inflammation. So vitamin D is one of the anti-inflammatory vitamins that actually caps a TNF alpha in the cell, which is the most inflammatory cytokine. And, um, I think we consume it. So I think that many of us get enough and we produce enough,

but our body needs more because of the inflammatory condition that we're addressing. I see. That's interesting as a society. Um, so vitamin D vitamin Bs, you know, of all I'm always, I've get mystery people, right, in my practices. This isn't from now a regular family practice doc. This is someone getting all the, I can't get better with Western medicine folks. for so many reasons, you know, poor absorption, you can have an autoimmune disease called pernicious anemia, you cannot be eating enough, you can be eating enough, but you have problems with methylation and your body actually needs 10 times the normal amount to be able to do what most people do with what's in their diet. So B12 really important and something I frequently supplement. The B vitamins, especially in women, seem to be really important. They have an impact on stress. They have an impact on hormones.

They have an impact on detoxification. And the other thing I would do is just give a shout out to methylated forms of B12 and folic acid. Because quite a few of us have genetics that can't activate B12 or folic acid well. So the methylcobalamin version of B12. Yes. Methylcobalamin, methylfolic acid. And then herbs. Really depends. Really depends. You know, if you're a perimenopausal female, I love maca. If you're a menopausal female, I love black cohosh. If you've got adrenal fatigue, I like ashwagandha, rhodiola. Herbs, in my opinion, they're medicines, right?

They're specific. So I wouldn't say there's one. Well, actually, if you consider turmeric an herb, it's a root. I would say many of my patients are on turmeric because it's such a phenomenal anti-inflammatory. It hits a lot of the same receptors and functions as non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen so for my folks with arthritis or headaches or high inflammatory markers or inflammatory bowel disease or allergies love turmeric really cool and you can do it as a root in your smoothies or you can take it as a capsule. Lots of ways to do it.

Make tea out of it. Make tea out of it. Yeah. I also love omega-3s, however you get them. So for your vegan folks, nuts are actually really important, essential in the vegan diet. The only vegans I have trouble with are the ones who don't eat gluten or nuts because of allergies. And I go, my God, you know, how can you, how can you do that? It narrows it definitely. But seeds, I mean, chia seeds, ground flax seeds, hemp seeds are all pretty good for that. Absolutely. And some people make the mistake of not freshly grinding their flax. Right. If you don't grind it, you're not

digesting. It just passes right through you. Exactly. Or if you buy it ground, the omega-3s have already come off because they're volatile. So you want to grind it fresh and use it. And then for folks who are not vegan, fish oil is an easier form for most people because it's the alpha-linolenic acid has to be transformed through three different enzymatic reactions to become EPA and DHA. And that's not as efficient as we think it should be for some folks. So it depends on who they are. There's algae-based supplements also.

There are. For vegans. There are. And they're pretty good, actually. So the algae, that's how the fish do it, right? They eat the algae and then they concentrate the EPA and DHA. Being vegans is lower on the food chain it's true it's true and it would be a better planet if most of us were 90% vegan yeah

you know if I got to vote I would vote for that it would definitely be a better better planet definitely environmentally in all ways consciously um understanding that that herbs are not again are not a one-size-fit-all but i think that the adaptogenic adaptogenic adaptogenic adaptogenic herbs are pretty safely uh prescribed for anybody because the body figures out what to do with them yeah how to put them to work right yeah ashwagandha would be one of those maca which is one of the other ones i mentioned and then ginseng which is the chinese uh well-known adaptogenic the only thing i would say mentioned. And then ginseng, which is the Chinese well-known adaptogenic. The only thing I would say about that is that ginseng especially, certain kinds of ginseng can be very stimulating,

so they can actually increase anxiety and blood pressure in some people. So you have to be a little bit knowledgeable about how you feel when you take it. What about probiotics? I love probiotics. Although probiotics are an interesting and emerging story. There's hype too, right? Yeah. Like there's hype and truth and there's a lot of foods that boost or products, I should say, that boost their high probiotic content that I think in some respects it could be fair to say are overhyped.

Overhyped. I would agree. In terms of really addressing how to best serve your gut ecology. What are the best ways of doing that? Well, the best way is fermented foods, which we're talking about. But you don't need to get a weirdly packaged fermented product. You can buy sauerkraut or tempeh or miso or kombucha or kefir of various kinds. There are lots of ways to get fermented.

And you can make it at home. I'm a big advocate for making it simple and making it cheap. If you know, like when I always wonder with respect to kombucha, because they, however, they have to package it for shelf life, the impact that that has on the live cultures. Like, I'm always like, is there really live cultures in this? Or is that all dead by the time it reaches the grocery store? Great question. I mean, I'm sure it's not all dead because you have to really work at it to kill it. You have to boil it or something. But, you know, if you made your own, it would be better. You got to be a little careful, but you can.

What about some of the products out there like VSL-3 that you like, you know, which is expensive, right? Well, it's expensive because it's so potent and it's a great probiotic. So I use probiotics regularly in my patients, say with inflammatory bowel disease or often with irritable bowel syndrome, because we're dealing with a compromised gut that actually requires ongoing probiotics to function normally. Good studies on that actually. And again, there are 800 species in your gut potentially, and there are pretty much two or three species that we have as a probiotic.

So we can't call that like, oh yeah, I'm going to fix all my gut problems by taking 400 billion. That's VSL three lactobacillus and bifidobacter, you know, and, and I'm not saying that that's not worth doing sometimes. Um, but I tend to do it specifically medically in certain situations. Like I've done gut testing on somebody, they have bacterial overgrowth, they've got parasites, they've got, um, leaky gut type, type symptoms. And we treat the parasites. We actually herbally decrease the bacterial overgrowth. And then we plant the seeds. Then we put in the high dose lactobacillus bifidobacter.

I love VSL three. Um, it is grown on a dairy medium, just saying for you vegans out there. But there are lots of potent, there's a raw probiotic that's also really high count like that. And so basically what you're saying is that's more appropriate for somebody who has an acute condition with respect to gut issues, as opposed to somebody's, if you just, if you don't have any kind of symptomology around poor gut health, is it something you would still recommend? Or should you just be eating fermented foods and eating sort of prebiotic type foods that are seeding your gut with, you know, that bacteria that can then flourish and grow from there? Yes.

I don't think everyone needs to be on a probiotic. I don't think it should be a universal prescription. And that from someone who thinks gut health is absolutely central. But the other doctors who specialize in gut health these days, it was different five or 10 years ago. But these days are suggesting maybe not a great idea to just blanket do it all the time, but to do it in specific circumstances. Or, you know, I have a patient who every time she goes off her probiotic, it's horribly constipated. Should she stay on a probiotic? Sure. Right. She should stay on her probiotic. Do you do fecal transplants? I guide people through fecal

transplants. Awesome. You can watch great videos on YouTube about how to do a home fecal transplant. Well, when I had Robin on the podcast, she's like, I envision a day where there's going to be these spas and they're going to be beautiful. And you're going to go in there and you're going to have like your selection of curated artisanal fecal transplants to improve your health. And it was just hilarious. It is just hilarious. It is totally hilarious. I mean, it is unfortunate that the FDA has come down and now will only allow it for clostridium difficile infections, for which it works really well. But you can get it in the UK, right outside of London.

There's a clinic doing it. And then there's the people doing it at home. And you got to be careful. I would be careful with that. If you're doing it at home, you're getting a sample from somebody who you don't know what's in their gut and you know you can change all kinds of things with gut flora you can change mood you can change metabolic status you can change obesity with gut flora it's really kind of amazing yeah it's exciting but it also means you can

screw yourself up so So just be careful. Yeah. We got to wind it down here pretty soon, but there was a couple more things I wanted to talk to you about if you have time. There was an interesting thing that I read. I don't think this was in your book, but I read it in an article and it was about, you know, essential oils are like a big thing now. Everybody's using essential oils, but this article was about when not to use them. It was more of a cautionary tale, like not always and all the time, right? So maybe you could shed a little bit of light on that because I'd never heard of any of this. Yes, because an essential oil, you have to realize is a plant substance, like let's take an orange peel, for example, where they've squeezed it and squeezed it and squeezed it to get the oil out of the peel. Some people don't understand. This is really concentrated fruit or vegetable or plant matter

that is extracted from that plant. So the amount of plant matter that goes into that tiny little bottle of essential oil is massive. And because plants are powerful, very powerful, that is a very potent liquid, right? So oregano oil is a good example of this. So oregano oil, I use medicinally. I use it for bacterial overgrowth. I use it for fungus sometimes. I would never want somebody on a regular dose of oregano oil or grapefruit seed extract or other antibacterial essential oils because you deplete your gut flora. You might as well be taking erythromycin on an ongoing basis, right? It's silly. You want to be mindful. So these are medicines. You got to treat them that way and respectfully, and they're powerful and they're wonderful. I love essential oils, but if you're going to take them internally, caution, caution, caution. You got to be careful. And then

even externally. So essential oils are powerful and the great majority of them should never be applied to the skin without being diluted in an oil, in a carrier oil, because they'll burn. You know, I'm one of these silly people who I started to get really interested in essential oils like 10 or 15 years ago. And I came home from a conference and I had my essential oils and I was so excited and I was going to take a bath. And so I dropped some drops of my essential oil in the bath. I think it was eucalyptus because I was sick and I wanted to clear my respiratory passages. I wasn't thinking. I got in the bath and the oil, of course, not being diluted, is pure eucalyptus oil on my skin. I had little

round burn marks. But you diluted it in the bathtub. Right. But I didn't because I diluted it in water and it doesn't dilute in water. You have to dilute it in alcohol or? In oil. Oh, in oil. In oil. Alcohol will help a little bit. But if you're going to apply it, you have to dilute it in an oil like grapeseed oil or olive oil or sesame oil or coconut oil.

Are there resources out there for people that are practitioners of the art of essential oils where they can get a little bit more in-depth understanding of that? Absolutely. Absolutely. And people who really understand essential oils are really careful with them. Um, you know, and a case, some oils like lavender is a good example can be applied directly, say to a burn. It's actually really good for that. Um, but most oils you would never want to put, uh, onto the skin directly. Right. All right, so let's recap. We need to get more sleep. Shock.

We need to remove the toxic chemicals from our cleaning supplies and our beauty products. We need to eat more fruit and veg. We need to develop more acumen around our BQ, right? We need to listen to our bodies. We need to learn a language around that as well, too. I think cultivating that isn't an overnight thing. Like, this is an inside job.

That's exactly right. I mean, look, like I said, I think women are more sort of adept and inclined around these ideas. For men, they're shut down. It's like, what, you know, they're all up in their heads. I think that's a harder thing, but I think to give men the permission and to encourage them to pay greater attention and to understand that, you know, in this world where we're just, we're, we're encouraged to burn it at both ends, that we're just a ticking time bomb. And, uh, if we, if we don't want to become a health statistic

and become obese and diabetic and suffer from heart disease that claims the lives of one out of every three people, that these are things that we need to prioritize in our lives. And I love the book. Like I said, it's very practical. It's very eye-opening.

And it gives people copious tools to begin to educate themselves around what I think are really important ideas. So thank you for writing it. Such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Cool. Um, and the other thing is obviously, uh, not that many people, uh, live in Santa Cruz. I can come and visit you book an appointment with you. right? And I love that in your book, you have like robust dependencies with lots of resources that allow people to kind of take their education beyond the pages of the book. And one of those is, I think it's a, I don't know what the URL is,

but it's a website where you can find an integrative medicine doctor in your area, right? Would you know what that URL is? Yes, there are two. So one is the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, AIHM.org. And the other one is the Functional Medicine Organization, and that's functionalmedicine.org. Cool. And my website is drrachel.com. And the book is Body Wise. And anything else coming up you want to talk about? What are you working on now? Are you working on another book? I've got lots of events coming up and I'm doing a live 28 day program.

Oh, you are cool. Yeah, you have an online course as well, right? I do, but it's a live course. So it's with me. So it's because you were saying you need community support to make these changes, right? Most people do. So this is actually creating an online program

where I'm present and people can ask me questions and we can process and we can brainstorm about what they're doing next. And then we move on to the next week. All right. Awesome. Is there, is that's all on your website as well? On my website spelled out drrachel.com. All right, cool. We did it. How do you feel? Fabulous. Feel okay? Yeah. All right, cool. Well cool well i gotta talk to doug in a little bit what should i ask him ask him how wonderful his wife is that i will do for sure all right thanks rachel you're so welcome peace My girl, she'll know it. I really enjoyed it. Quick aside, quick note.

Dr. Abrams is not vegan for all of you super hardcore vegans out there. So I wouldn't consider the book a vegan title per se, but she's extremely vegan friendly. And I think irrespective of whatever your dietary proclivities may be, there is just so much good stuff to glean from the read. So definitely pick that up. And while you're at it, use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases, including your purchase of Body Wise. I really appreciate that. You can find that banner ad on any episode page on my website, or you can just type in richroll.com forward slash Amazon does the same thing. Doesn't cost you anything extra, but Amazon supports us with some commissions based

on your purchases. So I really appreciate that. Make a point of checking out the show notes on the episode page for this episode. Lots of links and good stuff to learn more about Rachel and her work, including her TEDx talk, TEDx Santa Cruz. That's a good watch. You guys should all check that out as well. I appreciate you doing that. And I appreciate you sharing the show with your friends and on social media and all that good stuff. If you haven't done so already, please take a moment to leave a review on iTunes. Click that subscribe button if you haven't already. And just a shout of gratitude to everybody who has made a practice of using the Amazon banner ad for your purchases and also has

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We got signed copies of Finding Ultra, signed copies of the Plant Power Way. We got t-shirts, we got tech tees, we got stickers, all kinds of good stuff. Thank you to everybody on my team who helped me put up this podcast. I can't do this stuff without you guys. Jason Camiolo for all your audio engineering wizardry, production wizardry. Sean Patterson, he creates all the beautiful graphics and the look of the

show. Chris Swan, who's kind of behind the scenes toiling to help me create the best product I can across all categories. He does extra production assistance. He helps put the show notes together. He helps design the webpage as well. So thanks all you guys. And theme music, of course, by Analema. Appreciate the love. Have a great week, everybody.

I'll see you guys back here soon. Peace. Plants. Thank you.