Functional Medicine & Natural Healing Podcast
Functional Medicine & Natural Healing Podcast
New Year New You - Embark on Healthy Habits
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Hi guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Dr Ranish and this is Dr Gabe. How are you doing today, dr Gabe? I'm doing well, good, good, good. So today, uh, we are gonna do kind of a new year's podcast. Uh happy to be back on the podcast and uh hard to get him out, but uh, you know, holidays and everything like that obviously took a little bit of a break, but hopefully we can be more consistent this year and give you guys some information that you haven't heard before. Um, so today, just so everyone knows, we're gonna go off of actually an article on Dr Gabe's website. So highly recommend his blog because I kind of stopped blogging Maybe two, three years ago. Um, I know that you have some more recent blogs than me. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:More, recent, but I haven't. It's like maybe a year now.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Okay, everyone's gonna want to get this work to write something. Yeah, yeah, oh, why I? My patients always ask me like why, how do you, uh, how do you develop your love for blogging? And I said I don't. I just get really mad and I got a vent some way. So when I want to like, argue against the system, that's when I blog. So otherwise I must be more easygoing these days, so I don't get as obsessed, I don't blog as much, or something.
Speaker 2:That's okay. Where I'm at on the blogs, I kind of do the same thing. I just hear something and it annoys me enough that I have to say something Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:Um so, um anyway. So this one is on his blog and you guys can go to his website. What's the website address? Drreachucom.
Speaker 2:So no game in there, dr Reachu Yep.
Speaker 1:A-R-I-C-I U. You said sorry, yeah, drariciucom, all right, cool. So, um, go there and look this one up, and If I look at it, it is titled 12 tips to stay healthy during the pandemic. So it's an old article, right.
Speaker 2:And you can probably tell by the title of it. It was also when I was annoyed.
Speaker 1:Annoyed by the pandemic, right, but we thought that it was, you know, if we were going to go over anything for the full year. The thought was more like and I want to include some Goal strategy stuff like that, things that I've seen patients do. Um, everyone, yeah, wants to lose 152 pounds this year and, you know, be the fittest they've ever been. But I think that I would like to, you know, keep some of these things more simple, and I thought that your article did that really well. Yeah, so, without further ado, um, the first thing on the list is diet. What do you think, doc? What are we thinking for diet for 2024?
Speaker 2:Well, you know I would have to go off of maybe some recent cases that I've had where people I mean it's really common for them to ask how long do I need to be on this diet? I'm like you misunderstand. It's a lifestyle change. Like you're misunderstanding, this is how you got to that spot in the first place. You've got to clean up your diet and things are getting worse, like when you look at the food, what we're getting in the store, what the I mean.
Speaker 2:Thankfully, several companies like natural grocers and Costco and others are going against the whole appeal thing where they're putting that on the fruit and veggies and stuff. But that's one of the newer things. And so really being aware of your diet, where your food is coming from, eating whole foods and staying away from the junk, like it is so, so important. If you have a new year's resolution, that should be the top of the list. I think Diet is so important and if we do not eat healthy, it doesn't matter what I'm doing. When I throw at somebody. It's just going to be water in a leaky barrel if you never fix your diet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. Diet's got to be one of those biggest things and I think every podcast we've ever done together for sure. We discuss not only just clean eating but food sensitivities. So food sensitivities are something that create a ton of inflammation. Some of us have really bad ones. Some of us have less bad ones. I had a go ahead.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I just disagree. Yeah, I had a patient yesterday actually she was back in and I kind of told her maybe she was sensitive to dairy in the office visit and like she had a whole like raw dairy delivery system at her house and everyone came to her and she was like the raw dairy lady right, and I felt bad obviously taking her off dairy, but I can't remember whether it was a couple days or two weeks, but like all of her joint pain went away right, or the majority of it, in such a short period of time, whereas she was chasing it with all these other means. And you know, it's not to say everyone has a food allergy. But my biggest thing I was thinking for New Year's resolutions is allow yourself to question your dietary choices.
Speaker 2:No, I love that because I mean you, I think, see a populace who are already trying to be healthy from a diet standpoint. It's relatively rare for me, most of them are still kind of standard American diet in my area or something similar. But one of the things that I'll get coming in are people eating maybe kind of like a Western price way, which I love. Western price, like it's really good info. But just because it's sourdough doesn't mean you're still avoiding gluten. You're not. Like if you're gluten sensitive, sourdough is going to wipe you out just as much. Yeah, like it's still a problem for people and we have to be careful.
Speaker 2:It's still a problem for people and we have to address that, and I love some of the guys that are coming out talking about just human history and what humans develop. Like I just listened to I probably share it to you Ancestral Health Podcast just interviewed Mickey Bindore. Have you ever listened to Mickey Bindore? I don't know who he is so fascinating guy, economist for most of his life, made his wealth off of that, retired at 50 and then decided to go back to school for archaeology and so he wrote a PhD, got his PhD and everything, and wrote a paper in 2021 on the trophic level of humans, essentially in the ple-. Pleasocene.
Speaker 2:I can't ever say that dang word, but during this period of time, essentially he was saying for 2.5 million years, humans got the vast majority of their calories 70% from animal foods, and it is the most cited paper of that year, which is like everything when it comes to research citations and just a fascinating guy to listen to and he's not like advocating carnivore or anything like that. What he's advocating for is look at human history, look at what we've done to prepare foods and if you're going to eat a food that way, prepare it that way, but otherwise you may need, like you were saying, question the thing that you think is healthy for you, if you're still feeling kind of terrible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, when you mentioned sourdough I you know I, whenever people say whatever they do I was thinking like, oh, there's always a possibility of a problem. So sourdough once again. Like if you have a blood sugar imbalance, okay, and you eat a bunch of sourdough bread, okay, maybe stimulating that. If you already have a candied infection, yeast infection, right, and now you're adding a bunch of fresh organisms to your system that's already overloaded. Even with SIBO, cfo, viral infections, all that can be too much infection. And then, obviously, you mentioned the gluten story. So those three alone could be three problems of why your magical sourdough bread that you got from some magical starter from who knows where you know has been raised since you know 1700s and you stole it from your great, great, great grandma's garage or something.
Speaker 1:I respect that and I respect how that food is processed and the diligence that went into it. But definitely there can always be a possibility. So, yeah, question it. You wrote your article about variety. What do you do, or what do you think people should do, to incorporate variety into their diet?
Speaker 2:I grew up not eating variety. I grew up not liking a lot of things and as much as my parents tried when I was younger and by younger I mean under the age of five, because I don't remember Most of what I did was eat whatever I liked, and my parents kind of allowed that to happen because I just wanted to eat. So if I didn't like any of them I didn't have to try it again If I didn't like certain things. So it took a long time to for certain things. And there's certain things I still don't like, partially because I had that genetic issue where things are much more bitter for me than other people and so a lot of greens like arugula is absolutely atrocious to me, like there's just certain things like that.
Speaker 2:And so variety is try something new, maybe once a week. I'm not huge personally in my own home on a lot of variety. Our varieties more for meals. We try to not do the same meals every week so we'll throw in something different, like we'll try new recipes here and there. And I mean during the winter it's kind of harder to get some more fresh fruit and vegetables, so we will just do whatever during the winter, but we do try to expand a little bit, but overall try to make your plate a little less.
Speaker 2:Monday have some meat have some, maybe some fruit or a starch, if you can handle that, and you can have some greens too. I don't do greens at every meal or anything like that. I'm not like crazy about this side of things. I'm more crazy about whole foods and getting your protein more than anything. So variety is good, but it's lower on the list, I think, now than when I wrote this article.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so I do two things on that. So there's two things. I tell my patients that a lot of people want a multivitamin, and if you eat pretty healthy, I don't like multivitamins too much. So I often tell people to go find their favorite green drink. So if you're not eating cabbage and asparagus and arugula because you don't like it, can you find a green drink that has it. And I realize that that's not a replacement for fresh food, but if you're not going to eat it, so that's the first one for greens. And sometimes I'll tell them to go get a reds ones. The reds are more sweet, fruit based ones, so most people don't need a reds.
Speaker 1:But those, once again, simple things that you could add in this year that you haven't been doing. And then I actually because most of the really healthy stuff is bitter I say vary your herbs. So when I prescribe herbs, people are always like, oh, is this safe? I go this is a food Right, do you eat food? Is food safe, you know? So I really want people to vary their herbs throughout the year because that's an easy capsule, there's no flavor to it, and obviously you and I are doing that as we treat ourselves and go through supplements.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times patients and the meeting way you cook too, like, depending on how you cook, like we cook a lot of international food, so you're like throwing in herbs and spices just right there, not even from, like you know, a capsule form, but I mean, like yesterday we just had stuff with rosemary and sage and other things in there that are going to have certain additional properties, but they're also going to have a lot of micronutrients too, like you're not going to crazy amount on it but still.
Speaker 1:No, but for sure. I mean I have more patients than I would like to admit that say they don't know how to cook at all. Right, and that makes it really hard to know what spices are getting into your stuff. So something there. My last kick, which is, you know, in my goals as a practice and as a practitioner this year, is I do want to preach macronutrients more this year. People need to know how important protein is, and I think that they hear me and they listen to me when I tell them to eat more protein, but I don't think they understand the value or the critical nature.
Speaker 1:What was that? Or how much you're meaning yeah, well, protein to get. Yeah, everyone that says they protein, I swear they're like oh, yeah, you protein once a week or every other week.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh, specifically red meat, not protein, but red meat. I was like, oh well, that's like the best kind. So it's up to you how often you want to eat it, but think of it as broccoli, you know. So we definitely are eating a lot more red meat this year and it's costly. I got five kids right, so we go through a lot of meat every week, but it is what it is.
Speaker 2:And you can get like bulk from.
Speaker 1:We do. We can buy quarter half cows and I have one on order right now, but oftentimes we are actually I mean I call it in between and we're going to the Costco frozen section and buying the beef patties that are grass fed.
Speaker 2:And I don't think.
Speaker 1:I don't think they're grass finished, but like it allows us to always have one, because that's one of the hardest things about meat is like how do you always have some ready? And due to the thinness of the beef patty, we can cook it up really quick. So strategy right, so that one's more of a strategy lifestyle combo. We do the same thing, we got one in order.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we use those grass fed patties from Costco. I mean it takes three minutes per side, frozen yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty easy, right, so? So you can't really complain about that, so I will. I'll get into that a ton with social media and just maybe even a real blog this year We'll see. On macro nutrients, just to make sure that people are getting their proteins, healthy carbs and healthy fats. And on the fats, the only thing I'll say for this year is I want people to really focus on eating animal fats, because everyone's stuck on the plant based fats. I mean, who doesn't like obsessively eat coconut oil these days? I don't know, everyone seems to do that right, so I do.
Speaker 2:I love that you brought the macros, because for the longest time I was focused on the micros and I think as time has gone on, I've shifted over to the macros a lot more, mainly because if your macros are in a good ratio and with the right amount of protein, you don't have to worry about most micro nutrients 100%.
Speaker 1:That's what I've always said. I go. Macros are like your building blocks, your base, your walls, and then micro nutrients are like your decor inside your house, like you need it. It's not quite right without them, but you have to have the house first. And even on those micro nutrients, a lot of them are coming from your macro nutrients, right? I just saw some meme the other day that actually went through all the vitamins and minerals that are inside a piece of beef, right, it's like, oh, it's most of it, right. So if you get it in there, you'll be okay.
Speaker 1:But I just think we're often missing those macros. The other thing is, just back when I was competitive bodybuilding, one of the hardest things, I mean, you're always dialing in your macros. So the hardest thing is for micronutrients is how do you dial in ratios of micronutrients, right? So like, oh, how many polyphenols do I need from this plant per day and how many from that plant? That's just it's really impossible to dial it in, but it's really easy to dial in your macros, you know, and change the ratios and to either lose weight or feel more energy or put on weight, whatever your goal is. So I think about that.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to lose a little bit of weight that I've gained over the years. Um, but macros is where you're at it as well as going to the gym, like you got to do both, but we'll get to the gym later if I look at the gym next, we're going to gardening, though.
Speaker 1:Tell me about, tell them about your gardening in the winter over there. Uh, whole lot of nothing.
Speaker 2:Um, I mean, we just got a house so we're excited to go to garden. Like I have these like large plans in my head. I'm like, no, I can't do that. I'm just going to do like two raised beds. I'm not going to go nuts, um, but gardening.
Speaker 2:I put that on there for a couple reasons. One, yeah, you can get your fresh fruit, fresh fruit and vegetables and you know where it's coming from and you know what's going into it, um. But two, there is something absolutely stress reducing and beautiful about being in your own garden, being in your own space, being in nature. That is going to be really helpful for just your immune system. You're off your phone, you're off, uh, you're outside of your house, you're in where you're designed to be, and so when you're just outside working through the garden, I mean, and that's the great place, so you can be like, if you really love cucumbers, grow them, whatever it is like, and it's also as difficult as it can be, and you'll likely fail. Like there's no way that you cannot fail at gardening. You're going to obviously fail.
Speaker 2:Um, you learn something from it. Like we have plans for, I think, doing like butter, lettuce, okra, I want to do a passion flower, because we can actually grow that here. I didn't know that we had a variety that grows here, but, wow, we have some. I want to do that and just a few different things, just so that we are outside a little bit more. We're digging in the dirt, we're learning some things that we haven't been able to do before because we haven't had a home, uh, where we could do it at, and then, on top of that, you get to reap a harvest that Costs you a very minimal amount of money, yeah no, I, I love that.
Speaker 1:I think, uh, I. I looked at your article and said you know it's therapeutic. I thought, yeah, you know, you don't see many angry gardeners out there, right? You don't see someone like just like, you know, even if you're, even if your crop doesn't, doesn't produce very much water, melons or grapes or apples that year, whatever like it's not like you go and chop it down in anger or anything like that. You know, you rethink the process, you go through it. You say, oh, maybe I didn't take good enough care, so kind of teaches you that how to take care of your stuff pretty well, almost like we're kids again, which is, you know, sometimes some of the lessons we need to go back to right a little 100%, like we even got our own comp compost bin now.
Speaker 2:So I'm working through that. And then we also have family that are only like 10 minutes away that are raising coonie coonie pigs and things like that, and so that's really fun and we're excited like they just had Three, four months ago, a litter I guess that's what you call them with pigs, I don't know what you call that a bunch, and I mean those things. I didn't know how many they can have, like two litters a year or something like that, and it's like six to 12 Pigs. It's crazy, like the amount that you can get. The only difference is is it takes 18 months to get them to uh maturity for uh, taking them to the slaughterhouse. Yeah, so they're slower than huh. Yeah, they are, but they're. They're almost Like you can almost purely pasture, raise them. They. They love grants, they love going through forests. So you, when you get a good routine in and it's springtime you don't have to feed them near as much as other pigs, not even close.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had a patient that had a couple pigs here in the city and uh yeah, they were telling me how much they eaten a day and I was like 50 pounds a day of food. It was insane.
Speaker 2:That's what's cool with the cunei cuties like they can mow your lawn for you.
Speaker 1:I'll take two, please. Yeah, all right. The next one we're gonna talk about for this year, which I think is pretty important, is movement. Um, did you ever go to any move mat training doc?
Speaker 2:I did not. I wanted to for a while, but like they're always either too far or I didn't have any money during school or something like that, yeah, the closer thing I did was original strength. I did one of theirs. I'm not moving.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean, um, I just a shout out to move net for what they teach, and it's I. I don't even care about the company, I hate to say that, but I, but I, I love that they just kind of get you back to like crawling or climbing or bending and stooping and ducking under things that are that are really basic human movements. Um, and I'll let you talk about moving more, but I think, as far as movement variety, I think that's important. If you go to yeah, I don't care what you do.
Speaker 1:If you go to the gym and do bench press and squat every day and that's all you do, well, the squats pretty good, but the bench press isn't a full shoulder movement, right? Um, and you didn't necessarily bend over and pick something up off the ground. If you're doing yoga every day and you're doing the same 32 poses because it feels good and your hip flexors, they're always tight, so you just do that same hip flexor stretch or whatever you know. Once again, it has a name and yoga, but whatever your yoga pose is, and and you get stuck in that over and over and over, we end up with mobility restrictions. So I'm big into Excuse me this year. I'm big into uh, let's get some movement variety into your life Instead of, you know, kind of like your plate, but movement variety instead of just doing the same exercise that you did all the time.
Speaker 2:Now I love that. Um, I got a couple of things one, what I'm doing currently, and then two. Um goes back to something you said earlier about children. Um, a lot of what move nets, principles, are. It's what children are doing naturally, and so it's getting outside of maybe even a slight embarrassment and just acting like a kid again.
Speaker 2:And If you have kids it's a lot easier because you just play with them. But we have like, we just want to like we walk around our little town all the time when we go on walks, which is a great way to increase your movement this year go on daily walks. We're not really doing that right now because we almost have a nice storm and I don't want to go outside. Uh, but when we went walking and we went to like one of the intermediate schools here and they have this awesome playground in the back, like I want that in my backyard because it's like all sorts of monkey bars, all sorts of like climbing and cool little things, but yeah, just things you can have fun on and just enjoy, and that's what little kids thrive on, and if you're playing with your little kid or you just learn to Come back to play, that's really, really helpful.
Speaker 2:And then the second thing for me is I'm finally back in the gym.
Speaker 2:Like Um, I took a hiatus for a long time probably two or three years, with intermittent Things within, like maybe I'm doing push-ups at home, but it's inconsistent, or I go to the gym for a little bit, but then I get tired or something came up, or I got sick and it threw off the routine, but for the longest time I couldn't because of headaches that I was dealing with Due to something that the gym actually helps with.
Speaker 2:Um, I figured I had the I can insulin issue, but I couldn't figure it out, like none of the blood work showed it, um, but I couldn't grasp what was going on. And finally, over the last little bit of getting treated, it got my answers. And now I'm back in the gym and I'm like, ah, finally. But now I'm like so deconditioned, like I'm surprised how well I'm doing on deadlift, like I'm back up to 275 again, um, but like bench and everything, I've lost all that. Like I'm barely doing 155 now, um and well, I mean I guess I did 185 this week, but still, uh, yeah, it's just one of those things where for me it's just being in the gym and getting movement moving again and hopefully I can lose a little flat tire that I gained around my midsection there happens.
Speaker 1:It happens with stress, a lot too right, just busyness and and stress and, uh, trying to manage too many things. So, um, which I think is one of your other points, but no, I think I love that. I I will once again with macros. I don't know why, but this year I'm focusing on macros and actually exercising. I want to put out content related to that.
Speaker 1:I know that's not popular in the functional medicine space or the holistic space, um, and it sounds silly because everyone's like, oh, no, no, we like to exercise. It's like, yeah, but you don't, you don't really focus on exercise. You exercise, but focus on you know a lot of my patients, but focus on avoiding toxins. I love avoiding toxins, but we might have forgotten to actually hit that gym and and that was going to sound about the ways, even if you're just a runner, but have you pushed yourself recently or are you just logging? You know and that's my only, my only pet peeve with walking a lot of my patients like, oh, I walk three miles a day. I'm like exactly three miles a day, every day, with no change, no variety, no hiking, no elevations. It's, it's like your body's just used to that. There's no benefit to that anymore for your body. If you're trying to get healthier and they're only calling me if you're trying to get Healthier, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you're right that's. That's what we've proven with the, the, the hodds of tribe in africa. They do five to ten miles a day, depending on the day. They have a lot of leisure time and a lot of other things are carrying things. They're doing a lot of different movements, but they are efficient at it, so they're burning the same amount of calories as you're burning sitting in your chair at the office Wow, they're very efficient at it and so. But they're also eating very healthy. They're doing a lot of things.
Speaker 2:That keeps the weight off, for them that we're not doing, and a lot of that is variety. A lot of it is they're out in nature. There's a lot of this. What we're talking about today, um, and that's something that a lot of people just aren't doing, and, yeah, I would love to actually have in the future, we do a podcast on just lifting and that sort of thing. I would love to like even hear your thoughts on lifting, your thoughts on resistance, training and it's benefits, because, from anything and everything that I read, it's one of the top things that you should be doing, and Doing it to like one of the things you said in a previous podcast to the point that you are sweating enough to take off your shirt.
Speaker 1:Hey, yeah. Just feel a lot of good in the gym or whatever, and we don't do that Like I.
Speaker 2:whenever I started up in the gym again, I was just doing starting strength um Program, but I would never get to that point I would. I I definitely worked out, my muscles were kind of sore, um, I couldn't lift anymore or anything, but I never got to the point where I was actually really feeling like I got a full body workout Interesting, I mean it was even that sweating.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's one strategy, right. And then for you, you were getting sore. Um, I will ask all our listeners today how many of you guys got sore in the last week from doing anything. And I'm not talking about joint pain, I'm talking about actual muscle soreness where your Legs or your chest or your shoulders or your back felt like you really gave it a good work. Um, and and it's harder for some than others, and if you're there, there is caveats to like the.
Speaker 1:The guy who's been at the gym every day for the last 20 years Doesn't get sore very much anymore. Um, but he can add variety to create that soreness. Um, so just kind of. Yeah, it's fun to talk weightlifting. I think there's a lot of theories, but I often think that, um, a lot of the patients in my office, which are mostly female, are kind of Rejecting weightlifting, oftentimes because they're like, well, well, look at that person, they got all those muscles popping out everywhere and that doesn't look good you know, I hear you yeah yeah, and once again, like I hear, I, we all have different ways we want to look.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, the getting to where you saw 300 pound men, then made out of straight muscle, like that's a. That's a whole journey that none of us are taking right now in my office, right and and we don't need to, but it's just knowing like you're not gonna turn into, you know, a fitness competitor in a week. You know like that's not happening. So get to the gym and stop complaining about it. It's kind of my story Outdoors. I do need to get more outdoors. I remember last year I think we kind of it's actually horrible. Someone sent out one of those things on Instagram was like spend a thousand hours outdoors, or something like that, and I was like near impossible.
Speaker 1:It was near impossible. We tried to fill that out and I was like we're gonna have to spend like nine hours a day outside on the days we can actually go out. This is impossible, right. So we did fail at that. We do try to get outside, but we can do better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, even with, like, the curriculum that we're going to start implementing for grace for homeschooling and stuff, their recommendation is six hours a day outside. I'm like holy smokes, like I can't do that because I'm in the office, like I literally can't, and like I and I'm in the office during the prime time that the sun is up, which stinks, but it is what it is, and so you just have to find what works best. But, yeah, getting outdoors, getting in nature, going on hikes, especially if you're in the city, like you got to get out of the city, you got to get out of that Like and as much as, like, there are some city people that are just used to it and they can't even imagine what the country is like.
Speaker 2:I think it's time to set the goal of figuring out why the country is so, so beneficial. Like, if you don't get it, take the time to try to get it, because as soon as you do, you're going to realize there's a massive difference between that city life.
Speaker 1:That's one of the huge things about everyone's vacations. Rarely do you go to vacation like New York City and go to a bunch of wonderful plays and stuff like that Great entertainment but oftentimes that may feel like more stress than anything else, whereas when you go to like the beach or the mountains or something like that, it really does feel like an escape and it does reset a lot of those. You know everything from grounding to. You know EMF avoidance and things like that. It really does get people to feel better and they actually come back healthier. Rather than, like I said, going to a big city and kind of grinding at the city things not to take away from New York City. They'll have plenty of visitors this year, I'm sure, but we definitely prefer for health to get out of the city and see what we can do outside of yeah, just the concrete walls we live in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, get some vitamin C, S-E A.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I honestly I don't think I've been to the. I've only been to the ocean in a long time. We do run into rivers and streams but, yeah, probably been like four or five years since I've been to an ocean. I need to get out there, but been to hot springs and stuff like that, but still something that we all need and everyone seems to feel better when they go to the beach for what you know sunlight, salt, all of it, right, yeah, minus the sunburn we leave with. All right, let's go on to the next one herbs.
Speaker 1:I talked a little bit about them already. I'm obviously an herb guy. I do have a goal this year to educate. I don't know if I'll do a weekly herb or I'll just throw one out in the podcast and like throw a discount on Fullscript where they can get it, but I want people trying more herbs. I think people come in and they've got their, I'll say, their popular functional medicine stuff, their NAC, their vitamin D, their probiotic, their multivitamin, zinc. You know all the things that everyone took for COVID remember and it's like no herbs in there at all.
Speaker 1:And, like I said, unless you're literally eating bitter food all day long just for fun, you need some herbs, probably in your diet. So that's my take on it.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's awesome. Yeah, I love herbs. I take them fairly often just depending on needs. Just kind of depends on, yeah, pretty much the needs Like I'm taking. Right now I'm taking some of the hotunia because I got some age pylori infection a little while ago. Just woke up one night and we'd like just a pain in my stomach. I was like what is going on. I thought it was my gallbladder or something. Since that's partially what I've been dealing with with the headaches and stuff, but nope, nope, not at all.
Speaker 1:It was age pylori as soon as I took the hotunia and went away so I was like, oh, thank goodness, I didn't know you use hotunia for that Is that what you use it for Oftentimes and stomach showed up.
Speaker 2:I'm assuming it's age pylori, but it was bacteria and it was hotunia, the stragglers, that was the ones that tested, so I pretty quickly resolved it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, yep, and even you know I get it. Like you know, I might be obsessive about herbs compared to other people, but I would say that all of your patients, just like you like, can have herbs in their cabinet, can often treat themselves. If they can catch it day one, or right as some nausea sets in, or right as some discomfort sets in, they can treat it and get that home run really quick. And it's a lot of times when people ask me for advice via email, like my patients, it's sometimes just like hey, try this herb. They're like well, I cooked that last time. I'm like, yeah, but you weren't taking it in the last six weeks, so get back on it and try something out. You can need the same herb and I do teach my patients a lot about herbs.
Speaker 1:As far as your body can have a favorite herb it's not always 100%, but maybe 80% of the time your body might respond to that same herb because you have the same genetics, you have the same environment. You didn't change that much in your life. You often have the same problems. So I often say like, try and see which herbs treat you well. A lot of times and those are the first ones you try, and then if you can't because often with us you can't get in the same day with us most of the time so then you've got to give yourself your own little treatment and see how it goes, and there's a million ways to go over that and maybe we'll come out. Probably not the next couple of months here, but maybe sometime this year we'll go over some self either testing, mobility, trial and error, stuff that people can do at home, so you can kind of I love it for my patients to take control of their health.
Speaker 2:So yeah, no, I love that too. That's. One of my goals is for you to be individual in your own health, like take care of it, like how often I get treated, like obviously it would be nice to get treated a little bit more because I don't have anywhere near me, but generally speaking, like I don't take stuff on a day to day basis unless it is like a supportive need.
Speaker 2:That I'm currently doing. But I mean it's like a multi vitamin is what I'm doing, like I'm doing like how to be in zinc because I need those right now, but at some point I'm not going to need those Otherwise, and they're all whole food based ones, so it's just things I'm not getting in my diet, which is liver yeah, a lot of liver, but otherwise we should not have to take a ton of supplements every day. It's just as needed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'm probably only different from you because I do tell my patients there's nothing I take every day and there's nothing. I mean there's a couple I take, probably every other week. I'm just like I should probably take that. It's been a while, but I do do experiments pretty much every day, every week. I'll just leave it at that. Every week would be a low aiming number, but I probably try out new supplements weekly, if not more.
Speaker 1:My budget for wasting on random supplements that I find on the internet is probably over $1,000 a month, which is crazy, but I consider it part of my job and obviously part of the AMG company is I'm always trying out new things and my patients always say like, oh, what'd you try? I was like, well, I tried this. They're like, oh, I tried that. I'm like, yeah, but did you try 27 pills in a day? And so that's my next thing is that's why I love to teach people to experiment is there's some herbs that you could take one of a day and that's enough, and there's some that you need to take 12. And what do you dose your merinda supreme at doc 12. Oh, merinda, yeah, yeah, 12. 12 a day, yeah, right. And so I think the bottle really doesn't matter, but I think it says three a day.
Speaker 2:I think it said three, three times a day on the bottle. Or maybe supreme says three, three times a day, but otherwise the bottle says one, three times a day. Yeah, something. And that's why I think it's one, three times a day, whereas like chrysanthemums, also like that vital guard, that's another one that'd be like 12 a day, otherwise you're just way under therapeutic dosing.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and so a lot of times people will come in and tell me that I can't, I don't feel any better even taking merinda Like how many one a day? Oh, you're only 1200% low, but yeah. So sometimes it's about dosage. Hence, you know, doctors do have use. We aren't just, you know, there to complain about patients all the time. Now we're there to actually kind of dial in what the dosage is, and those are the experiments that we're running all the time.
Speaker 2:So those are good ones. What was that? Some of us are guinea pigs for that. Yes, the guinea pig thing. I tried one that was a new one that came out recently and well, as I didn't even know what it was doing to me, I was just taking it just to see what would happen. And then I had West and I was, I saw West and whole whole thing or doctor, whole thing, or do we both know and had him test me and I was like all hyper, that's me. All my muscles were jacked.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, fun to take. But yeah, no, I, and once again, that's, that's a huge one. Some supplements aren't that good for us. Some of us can feel things, some of us can't. I always say I don't react poorly to many things, like I don't have a detrimental effect, so but but I do feel changes, really subtle changes. So I'm just lucky that I don't like die from taking too many pills, because then I wouldn't be able to test as many. Okay, let's move on to cleaning up our home environment, work environment, things like that. And that's what we've got on that, doc.
Speaker 2:Really it's just, we often think about dye, we think about exercise, but then we continue to use Dawn dish soap or something like that, not to throw out a name of a company or anything. It's whatever. You can make your choices there. But this is where I'm very much like choose your battle Laundry detergent. What I tell people to do is go to EWG's website like search their category or a database on different things. If you're concerned about laundry detergent or your shampoo, your conditioner or even what you're using at home to clean the counters, go there, see what is clean. Especially if you know you're prone to endocrine disruptors or anything of that sort, or if you're just allergic to a lot of things or sensitive to strong smells. You can go there and find really good ones. We just found one at Costco's, a laundry detergent that's like grade A, which was awesome and it was not crazy expensive. Because some of them are just crazy expensive. I'm not spending that much per load. That's not worth my wallet. Whenever I do not notice a difference, it really comes down to make sure you got some clean things.
Speaker 2:I'm not one of those guys that are a germaphobe. I think we need to live amongst some of this stuff, and I do realize we live in a fairly toxic world. I think you need to pick your battle. Mattresses what you're exposed to for a long period of time. You probably should think a little stronger on Mattresses I'm going to be a little stronger on. You should get a clean one that's not going to off-gas on you. We have an organic one from Avocado. That was good, but I'm also moving towards the idea of just getting rid of mattresses all together and throwing down a bunch of comforts. We can sleep directly on the floor. That's just our craziness and what we're doing. We're trying to sit more on the floor. There's just certain environmental things that we're doing to help with the way that we move in our own lifestyle.
Speaker 2:But I do have something that has changed from this article. As Berkey, I'm no longer using a Berkey system. We switched over to clearly filtered. If anyone wants to know why I'm no longer using a Berkey, just reach out to me. I don't want to bash them or anything like that, but we switched over to clearly filtered. We're pretty happy with them and it's been pretty good. That's who I'd probably recommend. I ended up getting a HydroViv as well. Those are neat, but the unfortunate thing with them is they don't filter fluoride because it's hooked directly to your sink. It really will reduce the amount of water coming through if you have to put in fluoride filtration.
Speaker 2:Those are some things that you can do. Water is probably number one. If you want to clean up your environment, get some pure water, then start looking at the cleaners you're using and just go one at a time we use. I'll just name drop the different ones that we're using. I use Force of Nature for cleaning counters. I don't know if you're familiar with them.
Speaker 1:I have not used their products now.
Speaker 2:I like them. All it is is you take essentially vinegar. They give you little vinegar packets and you put it through an electrolysis process and it turns into hydrochloric acid. It has a bleach smell to it, but it's more of what your body creates. It's not like bleach in the sense that it's very, very caustic. You can get it on your skin without it really burning you or anything. But it kills everything, absolutely everything, and it's just a nice little product that you can use. I use it at work too. Then I don't know what our laundry and shampoo and stuff, but I just try to get the cleanest product out there. That's probably the craziest extent that I go to at home.
Speaker 1:I'll tell my patients that they won't die from using bleach if they're using it twice a year for their spring cleaning stuff like that. But yeah, just paying attention to what do you use the most, what's happening the most? What are your reactions? Yeah, just cleaning up what you can, because I realize that that's expensive. In fact, I get a little bit weird on this because I'm a diet exercise fix your gut guy before I'm going to clean up your house guy, which is like the opposite of all my Instagram moms that come in. The reason why is because I see a bigger home run from cleaning up your diet than changing your laundry detergent. I'm just being straight honest with that.
Speaker 1:But it's still the step. It's still in there. We still got to do it. If you're still sick, then you might need to make more steps, or if you still fatigued, you can't get past whatever symptom it is. Then, once again, new Year's resolution find something that you haven't cleaned up that you can eliminate, that's toxic and get cleaner, whether it's the bed or the detergent. I mean, those are big ones, right? I'm trying to think what else would be huge that people always do If you're repainting your own home.
Speaker 2:You can do low VOC For sure, things like that. It depends because, like you said, it gets really costly. If you think eating organic food is costly, clean it up your entire home. It is crazy expensive. If you try to get non-flame retarded furniture, all of it it gets really expensive. I don't know that many people that can handle that expense. If you get a sofa that's non-flame retarded, you're getting it once for however long a sofa lasts a long time. But still can you do that upfront cost compared to changing your diet.
Speaker 1:Can you find one that your wife likes? Yeah, so no, I think, dialing that in, obviously, with the new stuff, just letting it off gas, or if you're getting new furniture, new cars, new things, like that are you doing. Lymphatic detox is additional detox support. Once again, just being aware, I think, is this environmental one of like, what are you really putting yourself in? Including EMFs, right? So just being aware, like, oh, do I work right next to two cell phone towers in a substation? What is your exposure level? And I think that's the biggest thing is whatever your exposure level, let's drop that down this year. I think that's a pretty good one. Anything else on that, Doc?
Speaker 2:No, I think that's it. I don't really have anything else I can say there.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to sleep. Then let's talk about sleep. I know it's one of the biggest complaints of my patients is that they can't sleep, but for those of us that that's not our specific problem. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I mean, the general thing is make your room dark, be off the lower the lights, be off your phone, watch the screens. The general advice are really important. Now, to what extent that I do it, it doesn't seem to affect me that much. If I'm on a screen or anything, I lower the lights and stuff. It's also just my downtime at night where I'm finally winding down. I don't watch a ton of TV or anything like that, but it just depends on the day. If I'm tired I'm not going to read.
Speaker 2:I am back to reading a whole lot than what I used to in the past. Like with the hiatus from the gym, I was not reading hardly anything at all. Reading is huge for me, but now I'm back to reading. I'm reading a ton, which I'm grateful for, but I'm doing most of that in the morning. So when you're getting down to sleep, if you're struggling, try to get to sleep. Do the typical things Lower the temperature in the room, make sure it's completely dark A couple of hours before bedtime, do a little bit of a routine where you're turning off screens, lowering the lights, maybe even blue light filter if you absolutely need it. I think a lot of that's just like icing on the cake. But fix your diet would also come in there pretty strongly, because if you're waking up or having a struggle getting to sleep, blood sugar probably is the top one of that list For sure.
Speaker 1:And then I'll say this to the listeners out there, because I know that you know, once again, different patient bases. But a lot of my patients are pretty dialed in on this stuff and you may hear me and Dr Gabe like poo, poo, something, like you know, maybe turning your phone blue light off isn't that big of a deal and I would 100% agree that it's kind of like that icing on the cake. But don't think for a second that we don't know that it has value. What we're trying to give you guys is what's going to take up 90% of that value. So, like he said that, insulin, blood sugar, cortisol response, stress during the day, caffeine intake, irregular sugar, you know stability. So I say blood sugar, but really like highs and lows throughout the day. Then come nighttime and you're hitting your lows. So say we dinner at six, then you're high for two hours, then you're down, down, down and you're like crashing at 11, right, when you want to go to sleep, and you're like I have energy at 11. Well, that's obviously because your cortisol is up and your blood sugar is low and it's going to be hard. So you got to figure that part out. But yeah, don't let us poo poo some of these basic things, some of these little things, because we definitely appreciate when our patients are trying everything that they can.
Speaker 1:But I definitely find and I'll say this, you know, probably until I stop practicing one day is that I'm a guy that doubles down on the basics. I double down on the basics because it seems like that works the most and the best. Everyone comes in and says they have their basics locked in and they need something special from me, but the reality is they just need me to tell them what basic they were missing. That's most of them, you know. So, yeah, get your sleep. I know it's variable for everyone, man, I think seven hours a night right now for me is good. It's hard to say. When I was younger I needed like 10. But I don't know if that's because I was unhealthy. So seven is a good number, yeah, I think seven.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'll do like six and a half and I feel completely fine and I'm like I don't know if that's just the caffeine flowing in me. Yeah Well, I'm also a little girl that helps me to sleep super well. It is what it is there. But yeah, usually seven hours is probably typical for me now and it is no big deal. Like that's pretty good. I'm not tired during the afternoon unless I like stupidly do a bunch of carbs or something like that. Otherwise I'm pretty good on seven hours, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean definitely listen to your body, and if you're sick you might need more. But other than that, just try and get it. Try to dedicate it to it. Don't be afraid of taking naps, if you can. I know a lot of people have a hard time falling asleep in a nap. But if your body says you need a nap, find a way to listen to it. There's nothing wrong with a nap either.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean that anything's wrong with you. There are cultures around the world that have done that for thousands of years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was like I said, it's just about listening. I remember I don't even know what happened the other day, but I dropped my daughter off at volleyball and practiced about two hours and I was like I'm exhausted and I literally slept for an hour in my car, like that's so homeless of me. But I was like this is what I need and I'm going to do it Because otherwise I'm not going to. I can feel my body crashing from whatever it was, and I was like I just need it, so I will. Everyone else would be like you slept in your car. That's weird. I'm like I don't care, because I've been in the chronic fatigue state before and that's one of the things that I'm super aware of. It's like the last thing I want is to have to go back to taking a three hour nap a day just to exist, and so I'm very careful about my sleep and my fatigue level. You agree? Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And the thing I have to pay attention to is because I'm still battling an insulin issue and, if anyone doesn't isn't aware, insulin issues do take a long time to fix.
Speaker 1:Like they're the long ones.
Speaker 2:But I mean, if somebody comes to my office and it's just an insulin issue, it's not something I have to see them all the time on, it's just one of those things you monitor. But insulin issues very much if you're not eating every five hours. So the three meals I'm talking three meals.
Speaker 2:I'm not doing anything more than three, eating about approximately every five hours with a lot of protein. You bet your butt you're going to crash, yep, and you've got to help that. And sometimes I do whenever I get home, because I just ate a weird pattern at work because that's just how my schedule was and, sure enough, if I don't eat some protein or something as soon as I get home, I'll sit on the couch with my little girl and before I know it, I'm like dozed off. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1:But that's not such a bad thing with kids. I miss those days. So let's go to de-stressing then. So we did sleep, we did some insulin. Let's talk about ways that people can de-stress, or just let's just mention that they need to.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we need to. It's American culture. We are Absolutely driven, and we're driven to the extent that it hurts our health and Sometimes we go well, no, we got to make it big, otherwise I'm not gonna make money, I'm not gonna get ahead in the world, and that sort of thing, and it's just like. Does that really matter when, when you're finally ahead, you've lost everything that's important in your life, including your own health, and so Doing good breathing exercises, great prayers, great if you pray, if not, some sort of meditation along with it, fantastic scenic walks, going outdoors that we talked about already, gardening those types of things how about just listening to calming music?
Speaker 2:How often are there's a guy that I, but he always cracked me up like it would not as a nursing school, even on the days that we had a test. He would come in, listen to the death mouth and you could hear it glaring in his headphones and you're just like, how like, and he did really well on the test. Like I don't know how he did it, but he just was able to do that while listening to death metal he would study. I'm like what the heck? But for me, I listened to calming music like most of the time, like, especially as time has gone on, like growing up, yeah, I listen a lot of metal and other things punk but now, if you probably look on my Pandora station, the two state or the three stations that are by far the most hours played, is like classical Hawaiian and Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 1:Like you, just got a little young for that mix, doc, but I'll give it to you. I mean, his grace is favorite for the longest time.
Speaker 2:We couldn't get her to go to sleep when I put on Frank and she fell asleep to it, so she listened to him for a long time, and so we love Sinatra and the rat pack and everyone. But I mean, there's just so many things like you can talk to family if they're not causing the stress, yeah, but being around family, being around good friends, journaling there's just so much like trying to change your life, reading good books that influence you in such a way to Try to like promote virtuous living, like so often we're thinking about. People can't change. I can't change. That person's always gonna be a jerk, say, if they choose to be. Or they can start smiling at somebody every day and work on being not a jerk and Work on actually serving and loving somebody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think one patient gifted me a book that was, I Know, I think it was some Buddhist monk or something like that. I don't even know if those two go together, but essentially I was like hold on a second here I'm live podcast. I'm not sure what I'm saying, but anyway. So the book was like I can't remember something about Zen was the title, and it went early on.
Speaker 1:It mentioned that all of our moments in life that have the most value are the ones that completely Separate us from, from our stresses and other experiences. So, like true love, like when you're, you know, falling in love, you forget that the rest of the world exists. So it feels like, oh, that's so magical. And once again you get married and you realize that the world still exists and you start to pay bills, and that's when the magic kind of disappears. They mentioned, you know I once again, not that magic, but I'm saying the the weird. Like you literally forget the world exists when you're falling in love, right, you can sleep one hour a night and never like worry about it, right, yeah, yeah, that kind of phase. So once again I've been married, you know, 14 years, happily. So I know how that transition goes. It's great, but it's just they're different, right, if I.
Speaker 1:And then they mentioned like, sporting events. Right, when you're really focusing on, like, hitting the baseball or making a shot for a game winner, you're not like, oh yeah, I got to pay a bill and then you know, swinging at the baseball, you're focused, you're in a moment, you appreciate that, and then going back to the gym, one of the things I love about weights is that when I'm in a yoga pose, I can 100% be stressed out. When I go and put 200 pounds on a bench press bar, like, if I don't focus for at least a little bit, then it's likely that I'm gonna hurt myself, and so the fear of hurt takes you away. So it's like you do get this isolation that you may not get from a lot of other events. That's one of the reasons why running is always hard for me, because it I don't run fast enough or hard enough to Release all my stress. It's like I'm thinking about it and I don't want to think about it. Right, like I want exercise to be my, my release, so jogging is my stress.
Speaker 2:If I was we're jogging I'd be coming my stress because I just do not enjoy.
Speaker 2:It like because it feels so Purposeless. I know that the gym can feel that way, but I will notice an immediate feeling afterwards where it's like I never get that runner's I may never ran far enough. I just never have enjoyed jogging, like sprinting for, like, if I'm playing ultimate, I totally enjoy that. I don't mind that of playing games Totally fine. But like jogging endlessly, especially how long you have to jog and, like you said early on, it becomes efficient, you don't notice any more what you're doing.
Speaker 2:That's like hiking totally different for me because I'm not. It's not a grueling pace and You're out in nature and you're enjoying absolutely beautiful sights. Like hiking is my number one if I was going to do any cardio type thing, but I know it's way low level compared to jogging, like your heart rates not going to get 130 or anything like that. This is like really steep, but I don't have anything at steep near me.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think you Interesting that we you know we both mentioned definitely exercise as as a stress relief is something that we can. We can go to to de-stress, so that's important. So make sure that you are focused on your exercise enough to make it that stress relief, whatever it is. I'm ripping on yoga today but whatever and you could do yoga if you're trying to get better, if you're actually trying to meditate, if you're trying to do your thing I know everyone loves yoga, so I'm not. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying a lazy yoga at home while you Make dinner and hold your poses is just not the same as going all in and making space and time for it so you can escape the daily kind of conundrum that we're all stuck in.
Speaker 2:Love that point too real quick? Yeah, we have to. We no longer live in the time that, like the hodza currently live it. You no longer live in the wilderness with your family and friends in a small unit, in a small community that takes care of your, of itself. So, in other words, you have to supplement and exercise as a supplement, and if it's not done right, it will not actually take care of what you need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the next one on the article is simplified, but I'm not. I'm gonna skip that on my end. Do you have anything you want to say on that? It's a really simpler simple, other than the picture that I have there.
Speaker 2:We live with a loha right.
Speaker 1:Live with love yeah, yeah, going back to too busy of life. Okay, I like that. You have number 10, a spiritual life. I, from a completely agnostic standpoint, I like to tell all my patients that I find that people have that, have religious beliefs, are healthier. I'm just I don't know that I've ever seen that study, but I find that people have a firm religious belief and I'm not. I'm, once again, from a not choosing a religion, not choosing a standpoint, not choosing any kind of, but once they actually have that Whatever form of belief system that is, you find that they're able to maintain health better, and I would guess it has to do with the beliefs having to mitigate stress. But I just say have a belief system. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I am going to go look for a book that I know on this. Where is this book? Might be under my. I'm looking on my Amazon, but I heard this person talk Absolutely amazing thoughts. Oh, I can't remember where it is. Think it's like.
Speaker 1:I'll let you keep looking for that. Well, one other thing you put in there is the higher purpose, and I do think that that's a huge thing. I think so many people lack energy, la, you know, are fatigued all the time, stressed all the time because they're they're doing what they're doing and they're doing it Well, but what are they striving for? And there's a weird balance between, like you said before, striving so hard that you lose other things in life and then not striving enough that you just become complacent and not that much of an awesome person. So I do think we need to find, like, what is that higher purpose? And it can be that just your regular things, it could just be taking care of yourself, but the higher purpose matters, and oftentimes spirituality of some sort gives that to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't find the book off hand. I think it was like called awakened mind or something, but essentially somebody who's a PhD studying Spiritual life and the need for spiritual. And it's hard because a lot of people, as soon as they hear spiritual they think like orthodox religion and they may have an off-putting feeling about that. But there is a massive need from study, from research, that shows that having a higher purpose Drives us. So when we look at the blue zones and the blue zones have a whole lot of issues on the way they were instigated, in the way people promote them it has nothing really as much to do with their diet, more to do with their culture and community.
Speaker 2:And so Malcolm glad glad will had a great section of one of his books and he talked about this group of Italians who moved over to, I think, in Pennsylvania, and they essentially Transplanted their community there, and so the center of the town with the church, and what the some doctors in the region noticed was people from that young had way lower heart disease and other Chronic issues that were killing them. So they're like, oh, they must have transplanted their diet. No, they didn't transplant their diet, they were eating the standard American diet.
Speaker 2:What they did notice is they had a strong community with a religious presence that united them and they took care of each other and they lived in multi-generational homes.
Speaker 2:All of those things were the factors that drove them, and in the blue zone but they actually say something rather interesting, because he said well, if I take this diet, I can make people healthy and that sort of thing One of the people he talked to said no, you can transplant this diet to an apartment in New York City and you will have the same problems. Everyone knows and that was the funny thing because the blue zone still, in the end, talk about a diet and and it has nothing to do with how these people actually live their lives, and so spiritual life ends up becoming super, super important, whether or not we actually attend a church or some sort of organized thing. But I will say this in order for this has also been studied in order for a Spiritual connection or anything like that to last, it needs to have certain tenants that are somewhat difficult to live by, because you need to actually have Certain rules. If you don't have any rules and it's too loose, likely you'll stop doing it.
Speaker 1:I. So, yeah, I'm one of my pet peeves right now and this is probably this year because it's become so hot that, like Organized religion might be a bad thing and that is just. You know just a bunch of cults out there and things like that. So I get a lot of that feedback from my patients and let's go. We're not having religious discussions all the time, it just pops up. But I but I will say I always say you can, you can hate religion, my religion, any religion, any Structured organization for religion. But what I want from you is I want you to find me some and not find me, find you Something better. Right, don't say like, oh well, you know, if I go to church, that's just a bunch of people trying to pretend like God is real, but I just sit at home and do nothing and watch TV, right, like I Show me your higher purpose that you're chasing and I'm cool with that. Right, that's why I say I don't, I'll have us from.
Speaker 1:From the non-choosing kind of agnostic standpoint, I'm gonna say why don't you choose Something and go for it? Just like you said some tenants, some rules, some guidelines, you know who cares if you go to a church right now, like you still like, from the health perspective. We all have different religious beliefs, but from the health perspective you better go and find some tenants to live by. What are your morals? What are your morals you're teaching your kids? What are your morals you're living by? And if you don't have those morals, then once again you don't have the higher purpose, you don't have the what, what's right and wrong, and what should I do? Today? You end up in kind of that blah range and you just you will never have energy, you will never feel vitality, you will never stand up for something if you don't know what you're standing out for.
Speaker 2:So, because I think those are really yeah, I mean it goes along with what Simon Sinek says all the time. What's your why?
Speaker 1:Yep, I love it. What's your wine? Once again, every you know for religion that's. It gives a simple one for a lot of people. But I think outside of religion, yeah, you can have other wise too. Your morals or your values could be family without religion. I get it.
Speaker 1:But sometimes when you know, like you said, the, the religion gives a formed Experience where people can get into it and don't have to think as much kind of like almost going to a Bootcamp you could, you could work out by yourself all day long, but a lot of people enjoy having a personal trainer because they don't want to put as much like oh Well, let me spend all this time discovering it myself. So there's a lot of benefits. I think you know still exists with organized religion that a lot of people poo poo but they don't think about from a logical standpoint of like wait, so I have to do my own religious thing X amount of hours a week and you know like what am I studying? How am I connecting with whatever higher power I believe in? So anyway, I it's my pet peeve last year and this year that everyone wants to throw everything under the rug without a better solution.
Speaker 2:And that's, that's not. That's not. We like to question everything that we've seen Without, like you said, bringing something new to the table, or if we bring something new to the table as Opposed. The other day just cracked me up, it was just a generic Post on like social planning oh, I can figure out everything in the world, but then they can't figure out their own tax situation. And it's like, if you can't figure out your own life, you can't figure out anything else that's more complex in the world.
Speaker 2:But this brings us to the next two points, which is connections and family life. Yeah, you can have your own spiritual life on your own. Having that community is so essential. And family life whether we like it or not and whether we have a good family or not and Is kind of central family's been central throughout the ages, and when we talked about families multi-generational and it's broad too we're including cousins and stuff like that in there and We've lost all of that in modern society we talked about the nuclear family only and that's not what family meant a hundred or two hundred years ago, and Maybe your family isn't great I. So you got to find family with friends, you got to find family elsewhere or you're creating your family with your, your spouse and children, or whatever it is. You got to find something that fits that term family, because it's those people who are closest to you who are going to be there for you whenever things go to pot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and once again, I mean don't, don't forget the guys are listening to the podcast and isn't about health, right, but like, yeah, those family connections, those, those connections with friends, the spirituality, all that for your individual health. Right, I'm not sitting here preaching anything, I don't care if you like your family or not, but I'm telling you, when you go and make connections, when you meet with other people, when you actually have a friend group and that can be the hardest thing, I mean I've seen people struggle in the last, you know, 18 months with just developing that friend group, or maybe you leave your friend group to get a new one, and those are hard times. But once it reestablishes, once you put in the work, your health improves, you improve and you can make those next steps. The old business saying is you know you're the sum of the five closest people to you.
Speaker 1:You know who are those people. Who are you connecting with? Are they positive, are they uplifting? Are they, you know, helping you or are they bringing you down every day? And we all kind of know. It's funny. I've seen this year a lot of people where a certain, maybe a gentleman, in one group setting lifts everyone up and then that same gentleman, another group setting lowers everyone down. It's interesting. It's like, oh well, you don't want to be part of his friend group over here, but this other friend group he plays a different role and it's you know. So we can just calculate, I guess, our relationships in an optimal way and in a loving and kind way to everyone else.
Speaker 2:So it's interesting, yep and that's kind of the overall things for health. And that latter section, which is social health and spiritual health, are probably the ones no one really likes to talk about, because I mean social health a little more. Spiritual health. They don't like to because it feels like we're about to step on someone's toes, feels like we're about to cross a boundary that shouldn't be crossed. But it's a boundary that has to be crossed because if you do not actually address your spiritual health, it doesn't matter everything else going on. There is an epidemic of loneliness in this world, especially in America, especially since COVID and along that there has been a growing dearth of spiritual, a lack of spiritual health and, like we said, it does not have to be like Christianity or anything that needs to be a higher purpose.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that you say, like often times we don't want to step on it people's does for religion, but just say take your health, talk to your religious group. You know, I don't want to talk about health in my religious group. I don't want to talk about religion to my health group. It's like, look, we're once again, we're real self-sufficiency for my refreshment, which is once again. I'm not saying we have to like fight back against everything in life, but I do think that we should be able to talk about what we're doing and what makes us feel good and what we've seen make our patients feel good, whether it's in a religious concept Context or whether it's in a in a health context. But yeah, you know what is it? Politics, religion and health, or the three things you don't talk about with anyone, and it's like everything that and money, right, it's everything that matters, right.
Speaker 2:It's because we can't talk about it. Look at how divided we are. We can't talk to anyone About any of these things without somebody getting mad. And it's like just set aside those feelings. You're not trying to convert the other person or anything. You're just gonna have a nice discussion, that's all it is, and just have a nice discussion and be like okay, that's where you're coming from, this is where I'm coming from. Okay, cool, you're done.
Speaker 1:Exactly no, and I think that's pretty solid there. So 2024, we will make the Resolution to at least get a few more podcasts out this year.
Speaker 2:And if this won't be probably weekly, like we were doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably not weekly, maybe bi-weekly and maybe maybe we'll squeeze in a couple extra episodes. I think what I think what a lot of people would like is some some focus podcast this year on maybe a condition you know how about just jumpers knee or tennis elbow or something like that, and we can address some of the inflammatory concerns with it as well as the structural concerns. Something that we do as applied kinesiologists that a lot of people don't do is we're we're diving into both worlds right. We have the best treatment for structural and chemical Oftentimes when you know your PT is not gonna talk nutrition to you very often some will don't get me wrong, I love those pts, but very few will. So I hope we can bring some of those new thoughts to people.
Speaker 1:I Mean I had a lady actually in this week. She's been out of surgery for four months now the first time she emailed me. She's been two months on ibuprofen and Percocet every six hours, right and like, which is just intense and they're like always just inflamed. So literally I sent her an email. I was like, hey, try red light combined with this oil that I used for pain. The next day she stopped all her drugs, literally 24 hours, right, 100% cool, pains, pains better. But then she I was having a hard time squeezing her in with her schedule, my schedule, and so it took a while to get her back in and she didn't update me, but anyway. So she came in the other week and she's perfectly zero pain, but can't put weight on it, like it hurts too much still, like she can move it, no pain, just laying there, doesn't have to take drugs. And so what do we do? Reactivate the hamstrings, release a hip flexor, check a nerve or two here and there, and Two days later she's like I'm walking upstairs, my PT doesn't know what happened, you know, and it's like we have some of these secrets.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying I'm the best, I'm just saying I'm happy to open up my scope to look into new things. When what you're doing right now has already failed. And in fact that would be one of the things that I think Dr Gabe and I are best at is, when you've already seen a couple people right, you've already tried a few things, let us think outside of the box for you, and once again, those are sometimes a lot of people don't understand the value of phone consultations. Sometimes phone consultation is simply the fact that you're, you're gonna, I'm gonna give you a new idea that that seven, those 17 other functional medicine doctors haven't thought of. Because I just read a few more books, because I've had a few more trainings, because I have an Open mind to a lot of different things and just a different approach. And the same goes for Dr Gabe. So you still have time for phone consults on your website, doc.
Speaker 2:I do, I do like being the beginning of the year. It's always kind of a interesting thing with the schedule, like sometimes you get really busy, sometimes you don't, just kind of winter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so and and for me, I've been having last-minute cancellations this year, so it's like, hey, if you see one on, if you see one on there, take it.
Speaker 2:And After the holidays. I think that's really just what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me get tight. I get it, but I then my office, dr Dono, does have more openings than he did at the end of the year, so easy to get in with a lot of us right now. But but yeah, we hope to see you guys this year in 2024, with some new resolutions and and some goals and some action steps that you've done. Final words, doc.
Speaker 2:I'm excited for the year and oh and it's snowing, so that's exciting. So but yeah, no, I'm excited for the new year. I'm excited for the goals that I have set. I have set kind of several different goals along my life exercise goals, diet goals, similar to what we were talking about earlier, the macros and stuff like that Just kind of overall physical health goals, and then some intellectual goals of just how many books I want to read and what types of books I want to read. So we're all setting goals, we're all doing something to improve our life and and improve the way that we're living. So that's what I'm excited for this year and just everything that's coming like. Each year brings something new, each day brings something new, and we just have a lot to look forward to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I love that final positive statement and there's a lot to look forward to, and that it's not all. You know, regardless of the politics this year and the crap going on in the world, we still got good out there. We still have, you know. So some of it, some of a lot of things to look forward to. Don't be a pessimist in 2024, because it's gonna be pretty amazing just like every.
Speaker 1:Just just just look at interest rates are going, yeah. Just look at everything you've been able to. Every year in the history of time has been a great year for someone. So, you know we can focus on that. All right, guys, we'll catch you on the next podcast. We appreciate you listening and once again, reach out to us on Instagram if you have any questions. Comments concerns both of our websites have ability to schedule and we'll link those in the notes below. It was thanks again for listening to us. Take care, doc.
Speaker 2:Take care Bye.