The School of Greatness - The Science of the Mind-Body Connection & How To Treat & Prevent COVID-19 w/Dr. Roger Seheult EP 1157

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

My guest today is Dr. Roger Seheult, who is quadruple board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Diseases, Critical Care Medicine and Sleep Medicine through the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is the co-founder of MedCram, a medical education company where his mission is to demystify medical concepts for people around the world. You guys really enjoyed the first time we had Roger on, so we brought him on again to really dive into the root cause of disease and how to prevent it!Today we discussed the pros and cons when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine and all of the latest studies Roger has seen when it comes to treating and preventing COVID-19, how variants of viruses are formed and how we can eliminate them, how to actually change your diet for good and how the body and the mind are all connected.For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1157For part 1 of our interview go to: www.lewishowes.com/1156The Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod 

This is episode number 1157 with Dr. Roger Schwelt, part two. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. My guest today is Dr. Roger Schwelt. Roger is a quadruple board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary diseases, critical care medicine, and sleep medicine through the American Board of Internal Medicine. And he is a wealth of information, does so much research, checks all the data.

He's also the co-founder of MedCram, which is a medical education company where his mission is to demystify medical concepts for people around the world. And this is part two of a conversation we had, so make sure to check out the previous episode after this. But in this episode, we discuss the pros and cons when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine and all the latest studies Roger has seen when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine and all the latest studies Roger has seen when it comes to treating and preventing COVID-19, how variants of viruses are formed and how we can eliminate them, how to actually change your diet for good, how the body and the mind are

connected, and so much more. Again, if you're enjoying this, make sure to share this with someone that you feel would be inspired by this or this information could be helpful to as well. Also, click the subscribe button right now on Apple Podcasts to stay up to date on the latest and greatest here on the School of Greatness podcast. And a big shout out to one of our fans from the week who left us a review over on Apple Podcasts. This is Cottondale Carmen from the U.S. And they said, I started listening to your podcast with episode 1000 and I'm hooked. I'm practicing visualization. I enjoyed Brene Brown and I am an eternal student.

Thank you for the teaching and the lessons. I loved every episode. Lewis Howes, you are awesome. Well, I appreciate that very much. Thank you so much for your kind words and for your review. And again, if you guys want to be shouted out on the School of Greatness, then leave a review right now and let us know the part you enjoyed about this episode the most. Okay. In just a moment, the one and only Dr. Roger Schwelt.

Could you give me, if you're a lawyer, could you give me the top five pieces of evidence or mindful information for and against taking a vaccine. Okay. Just say like, here's what the data is saying. Here's what's happening. You want me to play devil's advocate? Yes. Okay. I want you to be a lawyer on both sides.

Okay. Here's why you should get it. And here's why you shouldn't get it. Because there's a lot of people who are, you know, saying no to it. I don't want to have it, it's not what I want, here's all the reasons why, and there's a lot of people saying you're crazy is why you need to have it.

Yeah, and it's almost like these two, I mean usually with a population there's an overlap where you can meet in the middle. There's no overlap. There's a right and a wrong. Exactly. And it's almost worse than politics right now. It's like it's breaking up families,

it's breaking up friendships, it's breaking up business relationships. If someone's not doing something, then they're bad and wrong on both sides. So could you give the case? That's a great question. Okay, so. Case for and against. Okay, so.

You're the lawyer on each side of this. I'm going to, which one should I do first? I'm going to do. Give me the case for getting the vaccine, maybe the top five reasons and the top five for not getting the vaccine. Got it. All right. All right. So I'm going to go with the pro-vaccine one first. And that one, I'll have to admit to you, is a little bit easier for me to do. Why? Because I'm a critical care doctor and I've seen the worst of the worst. I mean, I have seen families ripped apart, wiped out because of the virus. Really? Yeah. I've had situations where we're intubating somebody and we say, call the husband. And they call the husband and he's down in the ER himself. No way. Yeah. And they're in the same room and people,

one dies and the other one's still there. Oh. Yeah. So this is the type of, I've seen these things and we've got to call up family members. So so this is these are not just war stories. These are things that that that happen. Wow. And it's hard. You're seeing this on a weekly basis on a daily. There was a period there in February where I worked literally five weeks in a row. I got up at six in the morning, went in at seven, didn't get home till eight. And I did that for five weeks. Wow. Because there was just nobody else. Who else is going to do it? And to see that, I mean, we had nurses that instead of seeing two patients at a time, they were seeing four patients because we had nothing else. We had to write up, and maybe these are the reasons right here, basically.

We had the state of California, and I don't think the state of California is unique in this. I think all 50 states were doing this, We're making their hospitals to come up with plans as to what we would do if people came to the hospital and we just didn't have resources. What would you do? Yeah. So we had to come up with a protocol that would say who are we going to give treatment to and who are we not going to give treatment to. And the reason for that was I'll explain has to do with exponential growth which we'll talk about sure but it was interesting in that protocol we could not use age as a

determining factor it had to be based on medical medical futility basically interesting yeah so that's very hard to do to do. I've been a physician for 20 years, 20 plus years. Never thought about that. That's like disaster medicine. Okay. Disaster triage. So one of the reasons for it is, and I think one of the things that

is the reason why people don't understand why things are going is because of this idea of exponents. So let me explain. I'll give you a choice, Lewis. I can give you a million dollars right now, or I can give you a penny right now, but tomorrow I'll double the penny, and the next day I'll double it again, and the next day I'll double it again for 30 days. What would you take? I would take the second option. You would take the second option? Exponential growth. That's because, Lewis, you understand exponents. Yes. So if you do that to 30 days, you'll realize that on the 30th day alone, I'm going to be paying you over $5 million.

Right. Okay? But to someone who doesn't understand that, think about this. I give a million dollars to somebody and they go out and buy a house. That's logical, right? If someone won a million dollars and they went out and bought a house, what they're doing would be commensurate with what they got. Yes. Okay. Now, imagine I give somebody a penny today and I'm about to give them two pennies.

And they understand exponents, but nobody else does. And they go out and they buy a house. And they go out and buy a boat. And they go out and they buy a house and they go out and buy a boat and they go out and buy a car and they go on a big vacation and you're like whoa this guy is crazy right he's way he's way overspending he's got by the end of the first week i think he has like 64 cents in his wallet wow by the end of the second week he's got a few hundred dollars so clearly this guy is way overspending and that's the thing that I think a lot of people see is they see a few hundred cases here and

there and the government's coming down like a ton of bricks and they're saying you're just using this as an excuse to... but what they don't understand is that it's going to go like that for a long time and then right right at the end, things start to pick up and go real fast. Real fast. And we have examples of this. This happened already. I mean, the Delta variant came from India. It was first discovered in India.

And what happened over there was, I mean, if you look at some of the stories, they showed up to the hospital. There was nothing there for them. There was so much, there was such a demand for oxygen. They ran out of medical-grade oxygen. They had to use industrial grade oxygen. And the problem with that is it wasn't sterilized. And so they're getting pumped full of oxygen and two weeks after they get off,

that they survive and they get off, now they have black mold in their sinuses and it starts to eat through their skull and into their brain. And they have to get this cut out. Yeah. So this is the kind of stuff, I mean, there's whole situations where ICUs, basically the oxygen just ran out and everybody in the ICU died at the same time. Really? Yeah. So this is the problem with exponential growth. Start to learn about

exponential growth and you'll see why once we get to exponential growth, there's very little that we can do about it. And so one of the pro points of a vaccine is that it could potentially reduce the spread and prevent you from getting to that exponential growth. So that's called the R naught value. If you look at the R naught, that'll tell you, if it's at one, that means that there's gonna be no growth. One person infects only one person, so it's at one, that means that there's going to be no growth.

One person infects only one person. So it's going to stay the same. Everybody, the number of people that are infected is never going to change. If that R value goes down below one, that means the pandemic is going to just go out. It's going to fizzle out. Where are we at right now? We are at one point something.

And it's going up. So one person infects 1.1 people. This is on average. And so long as that number stays above one, we're going up. The chance for exponential growth is going to happen. That's correct. Okay. So the natural history of these things, have you noticed that they go up and then they come down? So what's happening there? Something is changing. You know, this last time in February, it came back down. A lot of people said, oh, it's the vaccine. It's not the vaccine.

What caused it to go down? Lewis, remember back when things started to get really rough, did you notice that a lot of friends of yours said, hey, you know what? We were going to get together Saturday night, but we're not going to do that this time. That's exactly what happened. And when that happens across the board, the virus can't spread. Unless people gather.

Exactly. And so what really is causing this to stop and come back down again is people's behavior. The actions they take. Remember, in California, we had a mask mandate. Yes, for a long time. Did you see anybody doing anything about it? Doing what about it? Were they actually wearing masks? Some of them were.

Well, you couldn't go into stores without masks. Correct. But, yes, outside. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that we didn't have. We didn't have sports. We didn't have concerts.

Those are big places where things can spread. And so things stayed low for a long time. Then when we started to open up, so people say mask mandates don't work. They're right in a sense. The thing that works the best

is when people start to see what's happening. It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Things are going well, and then when things start to get really bad, people start to hear about relatives that are in the hospital. People start to hear about things personally in their own friends. They change their habits, whether it's a government that tells them to do it or it's their own personal choice that does it. It doesn't matter who's telling you to do it or why you're doing it. It's the fact that you're doing it. And so when you do less risky behavior,

the virus can't replicate and it comes back down. And that's why even the Delta variant, look, look at the Delta variant in India. It went up, it spiked. How many people in India are vaccinated? 3%. Really? That's it? It came back down. So it's not the vaccine that takes it down. That would be one of the reasons to say, I mean, those are one of the reasons against vaccination, right? It's not vaccination that ends the pandemic. Let me put it this way. It's not vaccination that causes the wave to come back down. It's a change in personal behavior.

Got it. Multiplied across the board. Right. That's what causes it to go down. Now, if you want to eliminate the virus, you've got to eliminate the ability for it to reproduce because variants happen when viruses reproduce. The only way you can get a variant is if the virus makes a mistake when it's reproducing. So when the virus is reproducing your body a billion, trillion times, it makes a slight mistake. And that spreads to another person.

And that mistake can have two effects, three effects. It can have no effect, it can have a worsening effect on the virus, which means that it doesn't infect as well, in which case it's just a dud anyway, it's just one out of a trillion, who cares, right? Or it can make it more infectious, more lethal, whatever it needs to be. And if that virus then gets to reproduce, now you have a Delta variant and it just takes over. That's exactly what happened.

So the way to stop variants from happening is stop replication of the virus. The way you stop replication of the virus, that's tricky. Some people believe we'll never be able to completely eliminate this virus. And we'll go from a pandemic to an endemic. What's that mean? That's like the flu. The flu comes back every year. Right. Okay.

So that's the question. Okay. So what's another case for it then? What's another case for getting the vaccine? Well, before the Delta variant, we had really good data that showed that getting the vaccine prevents not only hospitalization, but also transmitting it to somebody else.

Because of the Delta variant, that amount of infection aspect of it has gone down. In other words, people with the vaccine are more likely than they used to be to contract the virus but still less likely to contract the virus if they weren't vaccinated. What we have been seeing up to this point is that the way that the vaccine keeps you out of the hospital has not really changed. It's still above 90%. So you get the vaccine, you're still going to the hospital? No, no. If you get the vaccine, it keeps you out of the hospital. It was according to all the data that we've seen so far, greater than 90% efficacy, even with the Delta variant. Okay, you have the vaccine, you're going to be sick, but you don't need to go to the hospital. Correct. Exactly. So it's not stopping you. Getting the

vaccine, people are still getting COVID. Correct. So they might get a positive test, but they're like, oh, I just have the sniffles. And they don't end up going to the hospital that's where we're seeing the slip whereas before they weren't even turning positive okay now the latest news is that in Israel and the reason why we look to Israel is because Israel was the country that vaccinated everybody first so we see everyone got back so just about everybody like 70% 78% so we look to Israel to see what's going to happen next, because when we see what happens in Israel, we can see what's going to happen here in the United States, because we're maybe about a month or two behind.

What they're noticing in Israel is they're starting to see an uptick in people who have been vaccinated who are ending up in the hospital with mild to moderate cases. Really? Yes. Why is that? Excellent question. So when they looked at who these people were, it was people with two characteristics.

Number one, they were older. And number two, they were vaccinated way at the beginning. What does that have to do with it? Well, they're thinking that the vaccine effects of keeping people out of the hospital is wearing off. It's wearing off. It's wearing off. Last six months or eight months. Eight months, exactly. So you have to constantly be getting new shots. the hospital is wearing off. It lasts six months or eight months.

Eight months, exactly. So you have to constantly be getting new shots. So this is the thing. Israel has already made up their mind and they said everybody over 60 gets a third shot. Wow. So it's not like they're getting another two shots. They're getting, actually, it's just one shot and within a day or two or a week or no, within a day or two, antibody levels come up immediately a day or two antibody levels come up immediately so it's

like it's kind of like you were studying in college it took you a long time to study the Krebs cycle or whatever you I don't know what was your major in college sports management sports management okay I don't have a good one for that but you studied something right okay how many I don't know how many holes there are in golf 18 right okay so you learned you learned that right and then when you go back to it it just takes you very little time to remember what that was. You just, just a flash card and you're right back to it. That's the same kind of thing that they're talking about. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. What's another case for getting it? Another case for getting the vaccine is, well, so let's review. It's hospitalization. Hospitalization, preventing infection. Yep.

Those are the big two right there. Okay, cool. Okay. Oh, and also, if you don't get the infection, you don't get the long COVID stuff. The long COVID? Long COVID. What's that? I mean, it doesn't say anything. Symptoms of COVID that last for more than two months.

Okay, wow. Three months. Wow, that's not fun. Actually, the official definition now is if you have symptoms for more than 12 weeks. Okay, wow. That's a long time. That's a long time. That's a long time. So in other words-

It's harder to recover from that. Well, if you have it for less than 12 weeks, you think that's pretty long, but that's actually par for the course, to use another golf analogy. Sure, sure, sure. Okay. So now you're standing in front of the judge and you are defending not getting vaccines. What are the points, the evidence, the proof that you could show for everyone that's saying, you know what, I'm not going to get the vaccine, or I don't believe it, or I've seen cases

of people who've gotten sick right after getting the vaccine. I don't want to get side effects or sick from this. It hasn't been enough time that was pushed through faster than any other vaccine in history. What's the- Yeah. so the strongest arguments, the strongest arguments for- Against the vaccine. Against the vaccine is this idea of we don't know the long-term effects. Okay, that's the strongest argument. Is there, are there antibodies? There's a lot of talk about something called

antibody-dependent enhancement. What is antibody-dependent enhancement? What it is is basically when you have something in your body that makes antibodies to it, but instead of the antibodies neutralizing it, which is what they should be doing, the antibodies somehow bind to it and allow it to go into the cell better. You understand what I'm saying? So in other words, your immune system is kind of shooting itself in the foot.

That's antibody-dependent enhancement. You can see the whole meaning is right there in the term. So the antibody-dependent enhancement. You can see the whole meaning is right there in the term. So the question is, is that happening? There's some data to suggest that in vitro, in a test tube with the Delta variant, there's some evidence to suggest that there may be antibodies that could do that, but they haven't seen that in real life. And I would just say, haven't seen that in real life. And I would just say, to tell you the whole truth, when you look at who is ending up in the hospital right now, 95% of the people who are ending up in the hospital with COVID have not been vaccinated. So if we were to see antibody-dependent enhancement, I would have expected that to be worse.

Now, in Israel, they're starting to see that that 95 is eroding. They're starting to see more and more people who have been vaccinated. But realize that in Israel, almost everybody's vaccinated. So if there is going to be breakthrough cases, it's going to be likely in vaccinated people. Because that's who you have to start out with. So that's that. Another strong case against vaccination. I mean, let's go with the stuff that's been actually proven or actually been shown.

So in the Johnson & Johnson case, there was a number of cases, about six, in six million shots. Remember, the Johnson & Johnson is a one-shot deal. So there was about six, mostly women, younger women, who developed something called a superficial venous thrombosis, or actually an intracerebral venous thrombosis, sinus thrombosis. Thrombosis, what is that? Thrombosis is a blood clot in the brain. And the concern was, is why was this happening? There's some data to suggest that because the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was using an adenovirus as a vector. So in other words, in the messenger RNA vaccines, they were using little lipid droplets with the mRNA in it, and that would fuse with the cell. it and that would fuse with the cell. The Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, by the way, those vaccines don't use the little lipid droplets. They use basically viral shells.

And the virus then infects and then it dumps the DNA in there and it can do what it needs to do. So when they did that, that was sometimes associated with thrombosis. So that's kind of scary, right? Thrombosis, who wants to get thrombosis, right? Six in six million. So it was about a one in a million. Now, there could have been some underreporting of that. So maybe it's, I mean, those are the ones that got reported, right? So there's probably more of those.

So it's probably not one in a million, probably more than one in a million. But it's still kind of rare. To give you an example of what else do we engage in every day that has a one in a one million chance of dying? You're supposed to do the against, you're supposed to be going like this. I know, I know, but I wanna do it in,

No, I mean, I'm just kidding. Yeah, yeah, it's driving a car. Yeah, exactly. Right, so you may not realize this, but 100 million, sorry, 150 million people drive every day in the United States. Wow. And I didn't realize this, but 100 million, sorry, 115 million people drive every day in the United States. Wow. And I didn't realize this, but 16,000 of them get into car accidents every day.

That's why we have body shops. Now, 16,000 people get into car accidents. How many people die? 100 die every day. From car accidents? From car accidents. Wow. In the US?

Out of 115 million. So that's a one in a million chance. Right. Okay? So that's kind of what we're talking about. But we still drive every day. From car accidents. From car accidents. Out of 150 million. So that's a one in a million chance. Right. Okay. So that's kind of what we're talking about. We still drive every day. We hear every day about car accidents. Yes. And we still drive every day because we have to weigh, and here's the key point, the risks versus the benefits. So that's, now Pfizer and Moderna have their own issues, this issue of myocarditis. So again, spike protein. We talked about the spike protein, right? So again, spike protein. We talked about the spike protein, right? The spike protein was that thing that bound the ACE2 receptor.

And that ACE2 receptor was like a big enzyme in your body that was supposed to be reducing the oxidative stress and reducing antioxidants, right? Or increasing antioxidants, right? So what happens when you give a Moderna or Pfizer vaccine? You're actually causing your body to make spike proteins. So it's a lot, lot less, and it's localized. I mean, think about it in terms of this, right? The virus is making billions upon trillions of virus particles, each with their own spike

proteins on them, versus the injection, small amount of spike protein. There's some studies that show that the spike protein, very small amount of it gets in the blood, actually, and starts to go other places. The question is, does that spike protein cause problems? Well, after the second shot, there's some data now that they're looking at in Europe and also here in the United States, also about one in a million in Europe. There was about, in the Moderna vaccine, there was about 19 cases of myocarditis in about 19 million shots. So again, about one in a million, probably underreported. Yeah, probably underreported, so probably higher than that. And so the question is there is, yeah, so there's a chance. So most of these patients have myocarditis.

That's basically inflammation of the heart. It usually goes away on its own after a couple of weeks or some treatment. But again, one in a million shot. So there's someone that actually did a study. So the question is, should I get the vaccine or not? And the question is, well, we know about the risks of the vaccine. What are the risks of or not? Because there's two

possibilities on or not. The or not could be that you get the virus or you don't get the virus. If I had a crystal ball and I were to look down in time and I would see that you would never, ever get the virus, then why do you need the vaccine? I would say don't get the vaccine. Because clearly you are not at risk for getting myocarditis from the virus because you're not going to get the virus. The problem is that in a pandemic, in an epidemic, in an endemic, there's a very good likely chance that you might be infected. And so what we have to say is, do I get the vaccine or do I get the virus? And when they did that kind of a study, you were about six times more likely to get myocarditis

from a viral infection than you were from the vaccine. Myocarditis is? The inflammation of the heart. Interesting. Yeah, and so it's very important for athletes, especially like yourself, you don't want to be exercising or doing things because that can actually make it worse.

So you want to make sure that you're resting. When you get? When you get myocarditis. If you get COVID. If you get COVID at work. If you COVID. If you get COVID and or the problem with the heart. So let's bring everything together. Okay. The pros and the cons. The cons against, all of the arguments against the vaccine are very, very strong when you don't have a big incidence of the virus. Because you're looking at the risks of the vaccine

versus nothing happening to you at all. Right? Okay. But when we're in that exponential growth phase, when the hospitals are being flooded, you don't want to need hospital care when the hospitals are full. And I'm not talking just about COVID.

I'm talking about if you're having a baby, if you're in a car accident, it's gonna be very hard to get the appropriate care that you need when the hospitals are filled. So you may be saying, I'm fit, I'm healthy. There's no way I'm going to have a problem with COVID-19. This could still affect you because you could be driving and get into a car accident or you could get a bout of appendicitis. You've got to go to that same hospital. That's full.

It's full. And so, yeah. So now the pro arguments of getting the vaccine start to become very powerful when we're in a wave. Right. Because now the chances of you getting the virus go up. And so the question about whether or not to get the vaccine and the risks and benefits are mitigated. It's a dynamic interplay in the scale of back and forth is where are we in the pandemic? Right now, as it stands,

cases are surging and that's a problem. So that's, I mean, those are really the arguments for and against. Now, again, I'm coming from a side where I'm a little bit biased. I'll say that because I see all of the absolute worst things. And somebody who hasn't been in the hospital and somebody who hasn't seen these things isn't going to see that, and it's not going to weigh on their mind. So I use data, but I also have this irreparable image in my mind of my work and what I do to try to save patients and all of these sorts of things. So I could understand how some people who don't have access to that, not of their own fault,

could come up with a different opinion. Sure. Got it. How much does fear play into contracting a virus or getting sick? So fear is- Fear, anxiety, stress, worry. Fear, anxiety, stress, absolutely. How much does that affect, I guess, maybe getting inflammation, which would then cause you to get sick more likely? It's huge. Really? Okay, so let me tell you about a study that they did.

This is a study at a McMaster University. Heather Heiss did this. She's in charge of the Fit Lab at McMaster. And on her campus, six weeks before final exams. You can remember final exams. Very stressful, right? So six weeks before, she had three groups of people that she randomized. One group did nothing.

They just went through the six weeks and they measured them at the end. The other group did moderate intensity exercise training. Moderate intensity. So they had their heart rates up into the 140s, let's say. Three times a week, 20 minutes a day. Third group had their heart rates up into the 140s, let's say, three times a week, 20 minutes a day. Third group had their heart rates up into the 170s for 20 minutes a day. And she wanted to know, how does this mitigate how we go to the end of the term? So your question was about fear and anxiety. This is the time of the year where students have a lot of fear and anxiety because their careers depend on how they perform

Here at the end on these exams one of the striking things that they found in the control group This is a group that did no exercise Was that compared to their baseline six weeks before the end of the term when they got to the end of the term? Their depression scale was significantly higher and they used a validated Beck Inventory depression scale it was significantly elevated because And they used a validated Beck Inventory Depression Scale. It was significantly elevated. Because they did zero working out.

They didn't do any working out. They were just a control group. They lived their life. Yeah, they just lived their life, studied really hard and took their exams. They had more depression. More depression and higher levels of anxiety, both on a scale that was measured objectively

and also self-reported stress, both. So very high. They said they were stressed and the markers were showing they were stressed. Correct. Then she went ahead and she measured the amount of interleukin-6. What is interleukin-6?

Interleukin-6 is a surrogate marker for inflammation in the body. And tumor necrosis factor alpha, those were increased as well. Now, in the moderate to severe, now I think you'll find this interesting if you're interested in exercise. Who did better? Who did better, the moderate exercise or the high intensity exercise in terms of stress, depression, perceived stress,

and inflammatory markers? Oh man. So one group did three times a week. Three times a week. Moderate. Moderate. The other one did three times a week. Intense. Correct. Gosh, I feel like this is a trick question. Part of me wants to say the intense was better off, but for some reason, I feel like you're going to say the moderate was better off. You're smart. This is something that they describe in the literature as the J curve. Okay, so here's the point. Here's the point for everybody listening, is that you don't have to be an athlete to get the benefit of exercise. Right, you don't have to go super hard every day. You don't.

So just enough to get your heart rate up actually did better than pushing it. Than pushing it. Because the people that pushed it. So first of all, let's back up here. So remember I said that the control people had higher levels of depression? Higher levels of depression. Not only was moderate intensity exercise able to eliminate that increase, it actually went down. Wow.

It actually went down. Felt happier. They felt happier. Now that happened in both the depression went down in both the moderate and in the intense groups so they both did well gotcha but when they asked them about stress and perceived stress the moderate did much better than the than the active interesting yeah then when they measured interleukin interleukin-6 same situation the moderate intensity exercise training went down. So what does this all tell us?

There is a relationship between the body, the mind, and that is connected through the immune system, it's connected through the hormone system, it's connected through exercise, all of those sorts of things. Things that we learn about in textbooks that are in different chapters, actually underneath the surface are connected. And so you talk about stress and fear. Here's another study that they did. So people in Japan, they took these CEOs, high stress people that are the tops of their companies. And they took them out into the forest. Into the forest. And this was a Hanoki.

Forest bathing. For this forest bathing. This was Hanoki tree, Hanoki oil, sorry, Hanoki cypress trees. And they basically spent, to make a long story short, they spent about two nights there. And they measured everything. They measured the white blood cells,

they measured the amount of granules in the white blood cells. They measured the amount of granules in the white blood cells. And to make a long story short, at the end of the three days when they measured everything, and also the phytocides in the air that were coming off these trees, their immune system, their innate immune system was much better at the end. And it lasted for at least seven days. So a walk in the park every weekend, in other words, could do one, it's another one of those Swiss cheese slices that goes in there.

Now, when they did the same experiment, but they put them, they checked them into a hotel in Tokyo, not going up to the big mountain. They checked them into the hotel in Tokyo. And instead of having them walk around for three days in a forest, they infused this Hinoki oil into the room. Huh.

Okay. What happened? Same effect. Really? The oil? The oil. What is this oil? I gotta get this. Hinoki cypress oil.

Do you use this or no? You know what? Here's the good news. It's not just with enoki cypress. This happens with just about all of the oils that comes from these trees. Eucalyptus, another one that they studied. Eucalyptus oil has been shown to improve the innate immune system where they actually in vitro dropped eucalyptus oil on these cells

and they basically turned into these cells that were activated and ready to do what they needed to do. By the way, in the pandemic in 1912, Australia's eucalyptus trees were almost completely cut down because of the essence of that eucalyptus oil. Have you ever had Vicks? Yes. You know what the major ingredient is in Vicks? Eucalyptus. Eucalyptus oil. So if you ever smell eucalyptus oil, you say, oh, this is Vicks. That's what it is, that's why they use it. So now I told you though, that the people in the Japanese forest

and those people in the hotel room, they both had the same effect. I didn't completely finish because there was one difference. And the difference was, is they measured urine cortisol levels. So cortisol is a stress hormone that goes up when you have fear, anxiety, and stress. So where do you think the urine cortisol levels were the highest? In the people in the hotel room or in the people up in the forest actually naturally getting their hinoki oil from the trees themselves people in the hotel room

No, unless there was like they're afraid of like a bear Let's say her sounds every night in the woods and maybe you'd be more afraid but yeah, no you're absolutely right So so here's the difference is that you're not getting the full benefit when you're out in nature And there's a study that showed that the more green that you're exposed to, just the green coming in. Looking at it. Looking at scenes of greenery and nature. It has a calming effect on the body. The cortisol levels plummet. And cortisol is a major problem in terms of your immune system. It's been shown over and over again that cortisol inhibits your immune system. And so to get those levels down, it's really important. So yeah, they got half the benefit

in the hotel room. They got the hinoki oil, but they didn't get the full benefit because those cortisol levels were still elevated. So here's the point is try to figure out as many slices of Swiss cheese that you can find and try to line those up. So I approach this in a very different way than a lot of people might think that I would. A lot of people try to find things that work so they don't have to do other things. I try to find as many things and just try to line them up. Do them all. Do them all. to find as many things and just try to line them up. Do them all. Do them all. And what you'll find is that the slices that work to cut down on coronavirus are the same slices that work for

just about every other disease. And just living longer, healthier, happier. Exactly. If you could only do five things yourself, five natural, you know, organic activities, whether that's sleep a certain amount of hours, have oil in your bed, you know, whatever these things are, non-medical related things. What would be the five things that you would do on a daily basis? That's a great question. To prevent disease, to prevent inflammation, to prevent COVID, you know, and optimize your body. Okay. Number one is sleep on the list. And I'll tell you why that is. We talk about antibody levels and vaccines and these sorts of things. And we get all hung up about how much antibody levels are there. Here's a study that was done. The night before somebody was vaccinated with the flu vaccine, This was a study out of Pittsburgh.

If they had greater than eight hours of sleep, their antibody response was twice that than if they didn't get enough eight hours of sleep. Twice. So sleep is really important. I'll tell you another reason why sleep is important. Just I'll take a little detour as to why. When you look at how you sleep, you go to bed, let's just say you go to bed at 11 o'clock at night, 10 or 11 o'clock, and you get up at about

six or seven in the morning. Those hours of sleep are not equal. There are different stages of sleep. There's deep sleep, which usually occurs at the beginning of the night, and then there's REM sleep, which occurs at the end of the night. Deep sleep is extremely important for physical, mental, restorative sleep. It's also tied to growth hormone. So when we talk about growth hormone, you know what I'm talking about. This used to be known as the holy grail of the fountain of youth. Exactly. Delta wave or slow wave sleep is directly tied to secretion of growth hormone from the pituitary gland.

Once you pass a few hours of sleep, you've lost that ability that night to get that growth hormone secretion. So in other words, let's put it this way. The hours of sleep before midnight are worth twice than the hours of sleep after midnight. Wow, okay. Yeah, okay. Go to sleep before midnight are worth twice than the hours of sleep after midnight. Wow. Okay. Go to sleep before midnight. And by the way, it's also redundant there because guess when your melatonin starts to come on? Right as you're going to sleep.

Wow. And we didn't talk about this, but melatonin is a very, very powerful antioxidant. Even to the point where we were actually giving melatonin to patients in the intensive care unit who were on COVID, who had COVID. So if there was one thing that I would say is try to get at least seven hours of sleep and try to make sure that those hours of sleep are before midnight. I mean, not all of them after midnight, before midnight, it'd be hard to do, but get two hours of sleep, maybe. Go to bed at 10 o'clock and try to get as much of that as possible. It's not to say that at the stroke of midnight, you're not going to get any more, but it starts to decrease after that.

Wow. Interesting. Okay. That's number one. Okay. That's number one. Number two, we talked about diet. So for reasons that we've already enumerated, whether it's sialic acid, whether it's inflammation, start to look at diet and to look at that. Now, I would say this. Here is the temptation. The temptation is to look at your diet and say, I don't want to do that anymore. And then look at the new diet and say, I'm going to switch to that. Don't do that. It's hard. That's hard. It's hard to make a huge switch. It is. It is. Because the problem is it's not sustainable. And then what you're going to do is you're going to throw the

baby out with the bathwater. So what I would do is look at your diet and find the worst thing about your diet and say, that's what I'm going to work on eliminating and do it for a month. Then figure out the next thing and do that for a month. That's smart. What you will find, and I've done this because I used to eat meat. I used to do these things. And I started to, it wasn't an overnight change. It was something that gradually changed.

So I went to the University of California, Riverside. And I was a chemistry major. And there was a Carl's Jr. in the cafeteria. And that's, I mean, it was so easy. Just go in there and get the burger, right? Yeah, of course. Nothing against Carl's Jr. in the cafeteria. And that's, I mean, it was so easy. Just go in there and get the burger, right? Yeah, of course. Exactly. Nothing against Carl's Jr. They're good burgers. And they tasted good. But then after a while, I started to go away from it. Well, it wasn't an absolute for me. So when I went back to it two or three months later to try it out,

because I was in a situation where I was there on campus, I didn't have any food, I'll just go get a burger, whatever. Didn't taste the same. You would be very surprised at how your brain and your tongue, that's actually a two-way communication. It goes back and forth, taste. Things that, if you stop eating something for three months and then go back to it, it will taste different.

And the point is that the satisfaction that you're getting from it now, you won't get from it later when you stop eating. It'll be different. You'll get satisfaction from different things. Your tastes actually change. We don't think about it, but it actually happens. So I know that this whole issue about diet is very, very personal.

Yes. People have very personal habits. It's not only just personal habits about what they eat, it's also ingrained in their family. For a lot of people, they're not the ones making the food, it's somebody else making the food, and it's very complicated. But what I would say is that despite all of those barriers, that I believe a lot can be gained by looking at some of these things and trying to make some changes. Okay. Nutrition. Okay. Yeah. Number three. Should I group it together or not?

Sunshine and fresh air. They come together. Yeah. They sort of going, getting outside. Yes. Nature. Nature. So we had on our MedCram channel a guy by the name of Dr. Joseph Allen out of the Harvard Medical School and talking about ventilation and sick buildings and the air turnover. And he talks extensively, very good, very educational for me to listen to him, about how when buildings were designed, buildings were designed so that they were energy efficient. So a lot of the data that came out and a lot of the stuff that has kind of influenced how we build buildings came out of the 70s. And what did we have in the 70s?

We had the energy crisis. How can we make buildings so that they are extremely efficient? And so antithetical to efficiency is high turnover of air because you've got to heat and cool that air. So it's a real problem. So that's when we started to see in the literature, Dr. Allen says, is when we started to see this whole thing about sick

buildings, people who work in sick buildings. Who get sick. Correct. In these buildings. The buildings aren't sick yet. The people in the buildings, right. And why is that? He says, you'll notice this. And when he brought it up, I started to think about this. You'll be in a room, it's kind of stagnant, not a lot of airflow, and you have a hard time. And as soon as somebody opens the door, it's kind of like, ah. It's interesting, right? And so this idea of airflow, he's cracking some windows open. It could be as simple as just cracking a window open.

He showed us in his video about how you can buy a meter that can actually measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. And it's a surrogate for measuring how much ventilation is going on. So that's really, really important, is getting outside. What else is about getting outside? Vitamin D. There's ultraviolet radiation.

There's a study that came out that showed, and this is really fascinating, is that there was a connection between how much light somebody got and their COVID-19, it was either infection or mortality, I can't remember what it was. Yeah, and so the thought was is that this was vitamin D mediated, but it wasn't.

They controlled for vitamin D. There was another effect above and beyond vitamin D that people were getting from being outside in the sun. What's that? We don't know. Happiness. Could be. Joy.

Yeah. Peace of mind, right? Less stress. Exactly. Well, we know that there's something called SAD. It's aptly named Seasonal Affective Disorder. This is where people become very depressed in the winter months. Why?

There's not a lot of sunlight. And again, it's this idea of the mind, the body, and the spirit being connected. And so that leads us to the last one. I don't know, am I number three or four? That's number three, number four. Oh, you're going to push it out of me here. Okay. Yes. I've got one more that I can definitely think of. I don't know if I can come up with five. It's the spiritual aspect. And this kind of comes from my, it's informed from my upbringing. You mentioned that I lived at Loma Linda, which is a blue zone. What's a blue zone? It's where people live longer.

And so this has been this kind of the secret sauce, I think. So Dan Buettner, who worked with National Geographic, came up with these blue zones. He went to Sardinia. He went to Okinawa. And he went to these places. Why? Because these people live, like they've got people in their hundreds, which is very, very unusual. The one thing that Loma Linda, and Loma Linda was the other place. The one thing that Loma Linda was different in is that the people in Loma Linda were not of the same genetics. All different genetics.

All different genetics. So Okinawa. Immigrants and this, yeah. Exactly. And different genetics. All different genetics. So Okinawa. Immigrants and this, yeah. Exactly, and in Southern California of all places, like where the air, like I remember people telling me when they got to Loma Linda in July to start school, they didn't even know there were mountains until December. Right, right.

Okay, I mean, because it was just this haze of fog, of smog, so the one thing that was really unique to Loma Linda as a Blue Zone that the others did not have is that it wasn't a genetically homogeneous population. There was Caucasian folks, African-American folks, Hispanic folks. And the short of it is basically, yes, there is community. Yes, they do follow a diet. But there's other populations that do that too. And so the question, what was the real special sauce?

Here's the real special sauce, I think, that's that last one out of the group. And that is having a connection and resting. Resting. Resting. So, you know, we have, we sleep. We talked about how important sleep is. We talked about how important sleep is. We talked about how important sleep is. Sleep is something that we do every day to recharge ourself.

But is that all that's needed? And I would submit to you that the answer is no, there's something else. When you go through a week, you know, we have a work week of five days. Most people rest for two days or they have a break. But the question is, do we ever stop what we're doing and relax and sort of remit ourselves to a higher power? There's a lot of literature on faith and the faith literature in terms of believing in a higher power and taking those things that give us stress and giving it over

to something else not carrying the weight the spiritual or emotional weight now that can cut both ways because some people can get into faith based things where it can cause more stress. So you've got to make sure that that is not the case. But being in a situation like that where you can truly kind of get off the roller coaster,

as the wheel is spinning, have a chance to get off, recharge, think about other things, spend time with your family, spend time with your God, whatever it is. These are things that I believe that inside of our bodies, and I'm not prepared to talk about some of the research, but I know there is research that says that not only is there a circadian rhythm, circadian means is Latin for about a day, but there's also a seven-day cycle. And it kind of goes back to this thing with these guys walking in the forest. That effect of them walking in the forest lasted about seven days. After the fact. Yeah. So connecting to nature, connecting to something greater, letting go. Correct. Lasted for seven days. Yeah. And let's look at the French Revolution. In the French Revolution, they wanted to get rid

of everything that they had known. And they had a seven-day week. And they said, we are not having a seven-day week. We're going to go to a 10-day week. It didn't last. Right. They couldn't do it. It didn't make sense. It did not. Right. So they went back to the seven-day week. We're going to go to a 10-day week. It didn't last. They couldn't do it. It didn't make sense. It did not. So they went back to the seven-day week. We are programmed as individuals to have a seven-day week. If you think about it, we know why we have a year. We have a year because it takes a year for the earth to go around the sun. We have a month. Why do we have a month? Because it takes a month for the moon to go around the earth. We have a day. Why do we have a month? Because it takes a month for the moon to go around the Earth. We have a day. Why do we have a day? Because it takes one day for the Earth to spin around on its axis. We don't have anything for a week. We have no astronomical sign that gives us a week.

And yet, every single culture in the world is on a seven-day week. Why is that? Something higher. Think about that. Every single culture in the world operates on a seven-day week. And there's nothing that guides that. If you were to ask me why that is, it's because I believe the Judeo-Biblical historical record on why there's a seven-day week. It was instituted from the very beginning.

But I think it's interesting evidence. And if that is in fact the case, then maybe the instruction manual should be followed. Interesting. Or maybe, let's put it this way, there's benefits to be derived if the instruction manual is followed. Right, right. Speaking of the spiritual aspect, as someone who's been practicing for over 20 years now, can you think of one or two instances in your practice where people have healed themselves that they shouldn't have been able to? Medically, you're like, this doesn't make any sense. As soon as you said that, I know exactly who I'm going to talk about. Go ahead.

Okay. So there's a condition in medicine where if not enough blood is getting to the brain, because the brain needs oxygen continuously, after about four minutes, there's irreversible brain damage. You might still survive. Correct. But you could have, you know, you just want to be able to function. Correct. Memory loss, speech loss, motor function, all that stuff. Exactly.

So there was a young gentleman. This was when I was in training. This must have been in the early 2000s. And he had testicular cancer, unfortunately. But at that age, testicular cancer is pretty curable in most cases with chemotherapy and surgery and that nature. So he went to surgery, and there was a problem in surgery. The patient didn't do well. The blood pressure went. He may have coded. I can't remember exactly what it was.

But he came back up to the floor, up to the intensive care unit, which is where I was training in the intensive care unit. And when we picked him up, he was, you know, we lifted the sedation and he was just not there. He was dead? He was alive. But he was not responding to our commands. He was not acting appropriately.

And we could see that there was twitching, maybe even seizures going on. And this was a young Hispanic gentleman who had just been married. In his 20s. In his 20s, yeah. And so he was there for the better part of the month. By the time I got on service. In that process. In that process, correct. Not responding. Just there. Yep. Just on like a life support. On a ventilator. Yeah. On a ventilator. He was on a ventilator. He was pretty much going brain dead. Correct. But he wasn't brain dead. Right. He was still alive.

Right. Technically. But he was just not there. He didn't move. Correct. Was he in a coma? Essentially, yeah. Yeah.

We would today, at the time we called it persistent vegetative state. Wow. Yeah. Where there's pretty much no coming out of that. Generally speaking, no. And that's exactly what we told the family. And we even had a neurologist come in. And the neurologist did some special things with MRI.

They were able to look at choline levels in the brain and all this sort of stuff that was hopeful in predicting whether or not these people would get better or not. Now, the one thing that he had going for him was that he was young. Generally speaking, people over his age, they really wouldn't have a chance of coming back. So yeah, I mean, we would meet in rounds and we'd like, what are we going to tell his wife? His wife is, she's like, she's there every day. She would come in and she would say, you know, can I put, I made some, we would feed the patients with tube feeding. So there was a tube that went down and and it would be like a milkshake, basically, that would go down. She would blend the stuff up, and she would ask, like, can I put this in?

Oh, my God. And she would bring some energy drinks, or not energy drinks, but nutrition. Healthy stuff. Healthy things, yeah, to put it down there to help him. Wow. And we would just shake our heads. I was like, what do we get? I mean, she doesn't get it.

Every day for a month. Yeah, for at least a month. And so one day she came in and she said to us, she was right at his bedside. And she wasn't, I wouldn't say that she was an unhappy person, but she obviously understood the situation and she would have tears and things. One day she came in and she said she looked very happy. She had a smile on her face.

And we're like, well, why are you so happy? What's going on? And, of course, he's kind of shaking like this and doing this sort of stuff. And she said, I had a dream last night. I had a dream that he got up. Shut up. That he was going to get better and he was going to walk out of here. No way.

That's what she said. And she was so sure. Certain. Certain. That her countenance changed. That's what she looked like. Her energy. She looked younger. Okay. So remember I'm in training. So I'm looking at the attendings. I haven't seen this kind of stuff before. It's 20 years ago. This is 20 years ago. Uh, and so I'm looking at this and they're like, oh man, she just doesn't get it. Right. Cause they know this is no coming out of this. Well, and I'm looking to them because they've been doing this a lot longer than I have. I'm like my first or second year of training. Right. Yeah.

Um, and, uh, so we said, okay, you know, I think at this point he had been trached. So the tube normally goes down into the mouth, now it's through the throat. Yes. Because he's there for long-term, right? So we're working in a circle. The hospital rooms are round in a circle. And in the center is the central nursing station. And this is up on one of the high and in the center is the central nursing station. And this is up on one of the high floors, and this is the intensive care unit. We're rounding around. So you can kind of like be in the center of the circle where you're rounding,

and you can kind of look through the door and see the patients in the room. And one day, you know, it just started. There was a little bit of a change in him, something different. And he would kind of shake like this, you know, doing little bit of a change in him something different and He would kind of shake like this, you know doing this kind of a thing and I Could see his eyes were kind of open But we didn't know if anyone was there and this had been going on for some time and we looked through I remember one day I remember I remember this distinctly

I was looking through the door and I saw him there and I just saw him come to and I just I don I don't know what I did, why I did this, but I just kind of put my hand up like this and I kind of waved. And I'm not kidding you. He put his hand up and did this and put it back down. And I was flabbergasted. Wow. I'll make a long story short. Three months later, he walks into our unit to give us flowers to thank the staff. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Like healthier, like speak fine. He's walking on his own.

Speaking, talking, the whole thing. Wow. With his wife. And I am so glad that that happened early in my career because it changed my thinking. Whenever I was in a similar situation, I wanted to make sure. I realized that that was either a miracle

or something very, very rare. It's one of those two. I believe in miracles, and so I know that these things can happen. I miss the day in school where they told us how long someone was going to live. Have you ever heard this? The doctor said I was going to live 31 days. I miss that day. I have no idea. I don't know where this comes from. But I am now very cognizant to know that when I have a patient who's not doing well in the hospital, and I'm talking to family, and they want to know that when I have a patient who's not doing well in the hospital and I'm talking to family

and they want to know what are his chances, I've seen miracles happen. Wow. So it's, it's, it's, I have, I'm, I think about those every day. I think about that, that gentleman. Wow. And it was very early in my career. So when you asked me, you can see why when you asked me, that was the one that came to mind. So you've seen other cases similar since then in the last 20 years, or you've seen other things happen that are like, wow, that usually doesn't happen, and it's amazing that it did. Yeah. I mean, I've had a patient once that he was a young guy, and he had bad asthma, really bad asthma. And I don't know if he was smoking or what he did, but he came in and he could not breathe. And when I say he couldn't breathe, we put him on the ventilator.

And the thing that happens in asthma is the airways get so small that you can put air into the lungs, but you're waiting for the air to come out. And it can take up to 20 or 30 seconds. In this guy, it took about 20 seconds. Feels like a lifetime probably. Yeah, so that means the most we could have him breathe

was about three times per minute. Oh, man. And so the carbon dioxide levels were building up in his system. His pH was dropping. We literally, I had to get a respiratory therapist to bag him. That's called bagging when we push air into his lungs through the ventilator tube. We had a helicopter land at this hospital. We got the patient into the helicopter.

I got our respiratory therapist to go in the helicopter with him. And that's not easy to do because they have limited fuel and they can only be so many pounds. And this helicopter went all the way down to a hospital down in Los Angeles where they had to put him on a heart-lung machine because his lungs just could not breathe. And two weeks later when I came back to the hospital, I said, how did that guy do? And they said, oh, he just called us up yesterday. He's having breakfast at his grandma's house. And to realize how close this guy was to not making it. So yeah, I've seen some. I had another guy where he basically had a heart attack so badly that his blood pressure wasn't even up.

We couldn't keep it up. And so I gave him, as a last-ditch effort, I gave him a bolus of calcium. Blood pressure came up enough. We were able to get a helicopter in there, get him in there, and ship him off to the tertiary center where he could get cardiac bypass. So I didn't know what happened. Two weeks later, I'm in clinic. And where I work in clinic, the pulmonologist

and the cardiologist work right next to each other. So I'm in clinic and the cardiologist comes down the hallway and knocks on my door and he says, hey, I got somebody here that I want you to see. So he takes me down and sure enough, it's the guy in the helicopter. And now he's in clinic. So yeah, I've seen some amazing things.

Do you think we can heal some of the worst cases of disease and pain with the mind? I believe that a lot of problems that we have come almost entirely from our mind. Now you're speaking my language. Yeah. I like this. Tell me more. People, you know, there's a saying that says, the mind is a powerful thing.

It can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven. If you look at survival camps, what do I mean by survival camps? Concentration camps where people have survived. if you look at survival camps, what I mean by survival camps, concentration camps where people have survived, almost exclusively the people that survived those kind of situations do so because of their thinking and hope. Hope is a very powerful thing. And so absolutely the mind is irrevocably connected to the body. If you think that you have a problem, if you think that there's

going to be issues, that in and of itself sets up a situation with stress and cortisol where you're going to lead to this problem. We have something in sleep medicine called psychophysiological insomnia. Psychophysiological insomnia. Let me explain it. You can't go to sleep. Okay? So what do you do? You go into your bedroom and you sit there and you don't sleep. And when you don't sleep you feel like, oh my goodness, I'm not sleeping. So now I'm going to be very, very sick. I need to get sleep. So you wake up the next morning and you do your, and say, tonight I'm going to get some sleep. I'm going to go to bed earlier to get some sleep. And what

happens if you go to bed before it's time to go to bed? You're not going to sleep. You sit there and you're stressing about it. Exactly. And so what happens is you get this performance anxiety for sleep. And so the very, the very effect of you not being able to sleep prevents you from going to sleep imagine if we were to walk through this school of greatness sign and on the other side of this sign was a

was Carnegie Hall stage okay and I were to ask you do you play the piano? no okay pretend you were or even better

you can't play the piano and there's a big grand piano sitting on the stage at Carnegie Hall and the place is packed yes okay go ahead and play a piece on the piano there's no way that's going to happen that's performance anxiety now imagine if instead of a piano I put a bed and I tell you go into that bed and sleep there's no way right and And for some people with insomnia, and I'll have to say that we talked about at the beginning about make sure you get enough sleep. There's some

people out there that are watching this to say, I would love to get sleep and I can't do it. And this is part of the reason. And trying to figure out how to get people to sleep when they have insomnia is like trying to peel an onion. It's very complicated, and you've gotta sort of dig down to it. But here's a classical story of what I see with psychophysiological insomnia, and it has to do with the brain. And to unravel it,

you have to do cognitive behavioral therapy. But to do it is you have the situation where they want to sleep, but because they can't sleep, they have anxiety. So they're out in the kitchen, they're out in the living room, and they feel tired and they say, okay, it's time to go to sleep. Great, I'm going to go to sleep. And they walk into the bedroom, that one room in the house where they are battling their demons on a nightly basis and all of the subconscious stuff that comes with it. And then what happens?

They're like, oh, performance anxiety. I can't go to sleep. And so they walk into the bedroom and now they're not sleepy. Now they can't sleep. And this is the problem that we have to battle when I see people in my sleep clinic to try to get them to sleep. So I do ICU work, I do pulmonary work, and I do sleep work. And I see it, it's all connected. Right. But you believe that the mind can heal the body as well. There are things that the mind can do to support. Oh, yeah. I mean, well, this is a perfect example of that because the treatment for insomnia, more than medications, it's been proven, scientifically proven, medications don't substantially, sustainably treat insomnia. You know what does? Cognitive behavioral therapy.

That is completely a treatment of the mind. It is. Absolutely. There you go. Addictive behavior, cognitive behavioral therapy. This is really where the real money is in terms of treating these kind of conditions. Absolutely. Yes. I love this. Dr. Schwalt, you're amazing. Is there anything else that you would like to add before we wrap things up? Yeah, this has been a far-reaching discussion. There's a lot of things that we could talk more about, but I think we've talked about enough. Sometimes people can get information overload, and they might have to watch this video again. But if they are interested, there's our first interview that we did, so they can watch that as well. I think it's almost 2 million views right now, so people are loving that one. And of course, there's the MedCram channel as well.

What do you guys teach on MedCram? What's the main subjects you guys cover? So before the COVID pandemic, we were geared toward healthcare professionals and trying to teach them things that are difficult to understand in an easy way so that they could understand it. Since the pandemic, we've done a lot of our YouTube videos have been on the pandemic. Trying to teach the population. Correct. Exactly. How to understand these things. Exactly. So we've kind of pivoted there. But if you go to our website, MedCram.com, it's primarily for healthcare professionals. If you ever wanted to learn how to read an EKG, that would be a place to go.

If you ever wanted to know what a chest x-ray shows you and what you can interpret from that, that would be a place to go. There's some interesting devices you can buy now. You can put it into your wallet, pull it out. You can actually see what your EKG is. Really? Yeah, for $100. Kind of like at the gym where you hold it. Yeah, exactly. And you can see your thing. So, you know, if you ever wanted to know what that shows, you can come over and read. There's even devices now that you can get for your phone that tells you how you

sleep, what your pulse rate is. Right. So if you want to understand a little bit more about that stuff, you can. All that medcram.com. Yes. And then you're on, are you on social media as well? Yeah. So we're on Twitter, both me personally, and alsocram.com. Yes. And are you on social media as well? Yeah. So we're on Twitter. Both me personally and also MedCram is on Twitter. We're also on Instagram as well. What's your personal...

It's just Roger Schweltz. Okay. MD. Yeah. MD. Okay, cool. And the last interview we did, we talked about your three truths

and your definition of greatness. So I'm going to have people go back there. We'll link it up below so they can see what your three truths and your definition of greatness is. Other than that, Roger, I appreciate and acknowledge you for constantly doing the research, for constantly diving in on this, for giving us the information on all sides, for being a spiritual practitioner as well.

I really appreciate your approach spiritually towards hope, towards the mindset type of things, which maybe next time we can go into mindset as medicine and how to approach your life with a mindful, you know, with the mind and all the different things you can do with the mind to heal yourself. I think that'd be interesting from a doctor's point of view, what you can do, what you've done personally, what you'd prescribe to people when there seems like there's no hope medically. So if people want to hear that conversation, leave a comment below if you want to hear that.

And I really appreciate all you do. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please spread the message of greatness to a friend, a family member, or post it over on social media to someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. Click the subscribe button over on Apple media to someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. Click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts to stay up to date and leave us a review of the part you enjoyed the most about this episode or the part that was inspiring for you

the most. And again, I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.