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Yoga for Everyone with Dean Pohlman

January 11, 2018 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

Yoga helps us with flexibility, mobility, strength and even mindfulness. Sometimes it can be daunting to figure out how to incorporate yoga into your fitness routine. But, you don’t have to set aside time for a 90 minute class. You can do that if you wish, but there is a simple way too. And, that’s why I’m having my guest on today…

Dean Pohlman is the founder and CEO of Man Flow Yoga. Dean is also the author of the #1 bestselling Yoga Basics for Men (in 4 categories on Amazon) eBook, the creator of the top 4 bestselling Yoga Boost DVD in the Fitness & Exercise category on Amazon, and yoga trainer to professional athletes. Dean considers it his mission to show men (and others who wouldn’t typically try yoga) how yoga can improve their fitness by utilizing a down-to-earth, no-frills, fitness-centric approach to teaching yoga. In today’s interview, we talk about how to incorporate yoga into your exercise routine whether you’re brand new to yoga or you’re an athlete (and everything in between).

So please enjoy this interview…

Check out Dean Pohlman online here.

The best way to get started with Man Flow Yoga is to take the FREE 7-Day Intro to Man Flow Yoga.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Trevor: Hi there. I’m Doctor Trevor Cates. Welcome to the Spa Dr. Podcast. Yoga helps us with flexibility, mobility, strength, and even mindfulness. Sometimes, though, it can be daunting to figure out how to incorporate yoga into your fitness routine, but you don’t have to set aside a night time for a 90-minute class. There are other options. You can do the 90-minute class if you want, but there is a simple way to do it, too. So, that’s why I wanted to have this guest on today to talk about how we can, regardless of our level of fitness or our current practices, how can we start incorporating yoga into our regular routine because of all of its benefits.

So, my guest is Dean Pohlman. He’s the founder of Man Flow Yoga. He is the author of the #1 best-selling Yoga Basics for Men, in four different categories on Amazon it’s a bestseller. He’s also the creator of the top four best-selling Yoga Boost DVD’s in the Fitness and Exercise category on Amazon, and he’s a yoga trainer to professional athletes. Dean considers it his mission to show men and others who typically wouldn’t try yoga, how yoga can improve their fitness by utilizing a down-to-earth, no frills fitness-centric approach to teaching yoga.

In today’s interview, we talk about how to incorporate yoga into your exercise routine, whether you’re brand new to yoga and you’re just getting into shape or you’re an athlete and everything in between that. So, please enjoy this interview with Dean.

Dean, it’s great to have you on our podcast.

Dean: Hey, Trevor. Thanks for having me.

Trevor: Yeah. So, we’re talking about yoga today, and I’m a big fan of yoga. I don’t do it as much as I should, so by the end of this podcast, I’m probably gonna be signing up for more yoga classes. I have a feeling, right, because you’re gonna be telling us about what we’re missing out on when we don’t do yoga because a lot of people, a lot of people that are my audience get out, they do different types of fitness, but yoga isn’t always at the top of people’s list. So, why do you think that is?

Dean: I think that one big reason why is just because as a society when we look at workouts, or kind of the default way of looking at workouts is, “How many calories am I going to burn from my workouts?” And we don’t look at a lot of other statistics, or we don’t look at a lot of other parts of the workout. We think, “Well, if this workout burns the most possible calories,” like, so if a spin class does 900 calories or 1200 calories in an hour, then I’m gonna go do a spin class because I can burn the most calories in that time. What we don’t look at is, well, what are the other fitness benefits that go in with this? What about the muscle-building aspects? What about the benefits of mobility? What about the balancing aspects? Or how does this effect stress levels, and how does this reduce stress? Does this make me sleep better?

You know, so we don’t look at fitness, we don’t look at the workout in terms of, “What are all the things that I get out of it? Or what are all the different strengths that I build?” Instead, we tend to look at it as in something, you know, kind of like, Dave likes to talk, you know, Dave [inaudible 00:03:12] likes to talk about his calories in, calories out and that thing, right? So, we look at it kind of like a bank account, like, “Okay. Well, I’ve eaten 1200 calories a day, so let me do a workout that burns 1200 calories, so then I’ll be right in the middle and I’ll be balanced again.” So, I think that’s the main reason.

Trevor: Right and, but yoga’s one of those things that whatever your current practices are with fitness, whether you’re an endurance athlete, cross-fitter or functional fitness, or maybe you’re just getting into working out more regularly it seems that there are benefits for yoga, right? So, how do people fit this in with what they’re already doing?

Dean: Yeah. So, I think that the biggest benefits that yoga can provide are filling the gaps of what your other training does not, so if you are doing crossfit or functional fitness or something that’s really intense and uses a lot of weight, for you it would make sense to focus on the recovery aspects of yoga. It would make sense to focus on building strengths and end range of motion or building isometric strength, right, because in all those really quick things, you’re doing, you’re not holding the weight at all, right? You’re doing, like, up-down as fast as you can. So, the best way to fit yoga is by doing the opposite of what you’re not doing in your existing program.

So, for runners, that would mean, you know, building strength and twisting movements because if you’re running, you’re just straight forward, we also tend to have pain in the knees because we’re not working on our hips enough, we’re not working on spinal mobility, so for runners it would be adding in that different spine mobility aspect and also strengthening the hips, so those are just a couple examples, but really the best way you can get stronger with yoga is by using it as a, in my opinion, as using it as a, or I guess in the situations, is using it as a compliment to directly compliment your existing fitness routine.

Trevor: Yeah, and so if someone is working out most days of the week, doing these kinds of trainings, where are they going to fit yoga in? I mean, are they going to get the benefit from doing, you know, just certain yoga exercises once a week or what’s the best way to practically use yoga, to fit it in?

Dean: Yes, so, I like to say 100 minutes per week and you can break that up however you want so you can do three 30-minute sessions per week, you can do five 20-minute sessions per week, you can do 10 minutes everyday with maybe a 10 minute evening session and a 10 minute morning session on some days. So, but, as far as how to structure it into your workouts, yoga should be, it can be part, there’s a lot [inaudible 00:06:08].

So, the first way you can use yoga is as a warmup. So, you can use it to get your body ready for exercise, to work on muscle activation, to work on getting your hips and your core and your back active, working a little bit into mobility. You can use it as a cool-down, right, so you can use your storage structures after your workout to start your recovery, to jumpstart your recovery to release tension, to sleep better and ultimately to grow stronger and more quickly and you can also use it as a stand-alone workout, where you’re doing demanding yoga postures that challenge your strength and balancing postures or end range of motion or working [inaudible 00:06:47] while also holding up your body weight.

So, there’s a lot of different ways that you can use it. Personally, I recommend using yoga as a warm-up and as a cool-down, so it doesn’t have to be that long it could be just a few minutes on either end of your workout. And I recommend doing yoga as a stand-alone workout at least once or twice per week. So, at least have 20-30 minutes per week where your 20-30 minute session, once per week, where you’re devoting time to improving your technique in the postures and really focusing on building strengths and doing the best you possibly can in the postures whereas, you know, in the cool-down and restorative, those are more so to compliment your workout whereas the other workouts are more as a stand-alone intense form of workout using yoga.

Does that, is that clear or did I explain that well enough or … ?

Trevor: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, so what do you do? What’s your, I mean, obviously, I mean for people that are watching or that have seen your picture, you are a very fit guy. So, I mean, you don’t look like the typical yogi. I’m just gonna, you know, say that and I guess the typical yogi in our mind is just very lean and thin and not a ton of muscle tone, so, and I’m being totally generalized here, I’m sure there are plenty of yogi’s out there that are fit and muscular …

Dean: No, you’re totally, you’re totally right [crosstalk 00:08:20].

Trevor: So what are you doing that might be, you know, some people can get an idea?

Dean: Sure, so 75% of what I do is yoga. And by that, I mean, 75% of the time I spend exercising is doing yoga or some type of body-weight infused yoga exercise. In addition to yoga, currently, I started swimming a few months ago, so I’m doing swimming like 2-3 times a week, but just for 20-30 minutes at a time so that’s not that much. I do a lot of pull-ups, so I’ll probably do 2 to mostly 2 sometimes 3 pull-up workouts per week where I just go and find a pull-up bar and do 30-50 pull-ups and then I also try to do weightlifting.

I schedule weightlifting twice per week, I usually end up doing it once per week, but I’m not doing like a full 60 minute session at the gym, I’m really just doing one movement and focusing on it. So, I’m doing dead lifts one day or I’m doing squats one day, maybe I’ll throw in some sort of rowing motions, like an upright or bent over row, but for the most part it’s those, it’s the pull-ups, the deadlift and the pull-ups, the deadlift and the squats in addition to yoga.

And I think the way that, you know, cause you commented before, I do look different than yogis and the reason for that is because I focus on different things when I’m doing yoga. I really focus on the muscle activation aspects of yoga because I think that when you slow things down and really focus on your body, that’s something that you don’t do in a lot of other types of fitness, so if you can do that in yoga and really focus and really improve the muscle activation, that’s going to translate into your other workouts and make them way more efficient, so I can go to the gym and do a 20 minute workout and be totally exhausted and actually get stronger from it and see gains from it because I’m being so efficient and that’s thanks to the emphasis that I place on checking in with my body and building that muscle activation through yoga.

Trevor: And I see yoga as something that helps us with aging, with healthy aging, I should say and that when if we’re just doing, like you’re talking about, if you’re just a runner and you’re running all the time and you’re not mixing things up and you’re not working on your flexibility, your core strength, your, you talked about twisting motions, those sorts of things, as we get older we’re going to be more likely to injure ourselves, it’s just unfortunately the fact of the matter, we’re going to be more likely to fall, these sorts of things, so if you’re doing things like yoga, it seems that you’re going to prevent some of that, some of those injuries because you’re having a more balanced approach with your body.

Dean: Yeah, absolutely. You know, as we get older, the first thing to go, as far as fitness is concerned, is mobility. So, if you’re not doing something to maintain or even, for some people, you have to actually improve the mobility, you have to get back to like this level of mobility that equals our strength and our other physical attributes or our endurance if we’re a runner or for a weightlifter, you know, strength or if we’re, if we do Pilates strength. My girlfriend is a huge Pilates fan, it’s weird because I’m the guy that does yoga in the relationship, right, and she goes and does Pilates and anyway, so I try to convince her to do more yoga.

But anyways, so as far as why it’s so important as anti-aging, because number one, the mobility, again as we get older we just lose mobility and unless you’re practicing it and actively doing it and actively participating in a mobility increasing, mobility focused discipline, it’s going to go, you know, it’s just like anything, it’s just like relationships or diet or your family, if you don’t put time into it, you’re not going to get what you want out of it. Mobility doesn’t happen on accident. So, I think that’s one aspect.

The other aspect is that it’s so low stress on your body, right, you’re not jumping up and down, we’re not, people do get injured in yoga, that’s not to say it’s not injury-proof, but you’re not going to get the same types of injuries, right, you’re probably not going to tear an ACL doing yoga, you’re not going to get runner’s knee, you’re not going to wake up the next day and your lower back and your knees and your ankles hurt because you ran on pavement for two miles or three miles, so the no impact aspect of yoga helps you build muscle and maintain bone density without the stress of weights or with running.

Trevor: Yeah. And it is a good point, yeah, you could get injured in anything including yoga and that’s good for people to check with their doctor if they have health conditions or if you’re starting something new or you’re trying increase your yoga practice, it’s good to be mindful of your body, be aware of your body, we particularly, I mean, I feel like the hot yoga classes, while they can be fun, you know, your body can be more flexible, but that’s when I see people sometimes push themselves a little bit more than maybe they should, sometimes, especially when they’re getting started, they feel a little overly confident of the postures they can get into. Any other tips for that, Dean?

Dean: Yeah. A few, I can’t remember when this was, but I think a few years ago, months, years, whatever it was, I started to think of this concept of teasing your own limits. So, you know, I’ve heard people saying in other yoga circles “Oh you want to respect your limits and back off your limits,” but as a competitive athlete, I know that the only way to get stronger, the best way to get stronger is to look at my limit and face it down and say I’m going to respect you, but I’m going to challenge you. So I like to say tease your limits, right, you don’t want to outright do something that will injure you, if you know that you have limits that [inaudible 00:14:33] your mobility, don’t try to touch your head to your toes, you know, it’s not going to work and if you do, it’s really going to hurt and you could get injured.

So, it’s about recognizing where your limits are, but pushing those limits every day, you know, teasing those limits on a regular basis so that you can, you know, increase those limits. Obviously listen to your body and then one more tip as far as increasing mobility and when it comes to yoga, you want to use your breath, you know, if you’ve talked to anybody about yoga, most people will say 99.9% of yoga instructors will say that breath is the most important aspect of yoga.

I will argue and say that technique is the most important aspect, but most people say that breath is the most important and you can use your breath to work deeper into the postures. So, as you exhale, naturally your body releases, so use your exhale to work deeper in the posture, as you inhale you maintain or you get longer, right, just think of what you do when you inhale standing up in a normal position and then as you exhale you sink deeper. So, if you use your breathing as a system to help you, you know, tie it in with your body, then you will, then you’ll practice yoga a lot safer.

Trevor: Yeah, that makes sense. And I love that because it is kind of this question like, “Am I holding back because I’m being weak and you know not really pushing myself or am I holding back because I really am going to hurt myself?” And there is that that balance there and definitely I’ve noticed that in yoga a lot because I don’t go to yoga a lot and when I do, I’m just naturally more flexible because I also do stretches and things, but I will sometimes push my, I’m like, “Am I pushing myself too hard,” so there’s that interesting balance there and [crosstalk 00:16:25].

Dean: Yeah. And actually, if you want to talk about this a little more, just briefly, I think people are either flexibility-focused or they’re strength-focused. So, for me I’m strength-focused. So, for me pressing deeper into flexibility is hard, it’s like, I can’t do it, so, I mean, your body says, “Oh, I can go a little bit further,” so when I try to do that, my body’s just like, “No, you can’t do that, stop doing that.”

So, I think that if you’re strength-focused, you have to approach flexibility as a different type of strength. It’s something that you still have to, it’s something that you still push, but it’s a different kind of push than you’re used to, right, so it’s different than trying to do as many push-ups as you can cause you can grit your teeth and yell and scream and just do “raaah” and just do one more and you can do that in push-ups, but when you’re stretching and you just grit your teeth and push more, that doesn’t work, that’s not how your muscles relax. So, it’s a different kind of push.

Trevor: So, for people maybe are new that idea of yoga, maybe have tried it out or they’re trying to get more into it or maybe they haven’t even taken a yoga class, what are some ways to get started?

Dean: So, there’s a few ways to get started and it really depends on your personality type and maybe your current fitness level as well. If you, if you’re somewhat outgoing, if you don’t mind doing things that you don’t know how to do in front of other people, I would recommend just going to, you know, a local yoga studio and usually they have like a free week pass or like something along those lines and I would just go to as many different types of classes as you can.

So, you know cash in on the freebie, go to a bunch of different classes, figure out which approach you like best, try about a bunch of different instructors, because it really depends on, it depends on a number of things. It depends on what type of yoga it is, we’ve got Bikram yoga, there’s Hatha yoga, there’s Vinyasa yoga, you know, there’s Baptiste power yoga, there’s Anusara … Anusara? Anusara. And then there’s other, there’s Bhakti yoga, and there’s other yoga that focuses more on just the practice of yoga without the physical aspects at all, so tons of different yoga and it also depends on the instructor because the instructors, they’re not, for the most part, instructors aren’t following a script unless it’s Bikram yoga, so they design the classes, they figure out if they want to do an [inaudible 00:19:00] in the beginning or not, depending on their voice, you might like them or not like them, I mean, there’s so many different things and there’s so many different factors that go into how a yoga instructor teaches, so I would try out a bunch of different yoga instructors.

The second route is using online material. So, a lot of people don’t feel comfortable doing something they don’t know how to do. So, youtube has some great resources, there’s a lot of online streaming services, like doyouyoga, gaiam, I’m just giving out all of my competitors names right now, obviously what I do is called Man Flow Yoga and it’s in more fitness centric approach, which tries to teach you the technique and the benefits and what you should and shouldn’t be feeling and there’s also … I mean and Amazon has a bunch of different programs, there’s DVDs, so I would try [inaudible 00:19:56] online and don’t feel like you have to do an hour session in order to be successful, you know, a lot of people will look at yoga and say “I can’t do 60 minutes of exercise,” you don’t need to, do a five minute lesson, do a ten minute lesson, maybe a 20 minute lesson, build up to it.

And, yeah, that’s what I would recommend. You know, it’s better to start somewhere than nowhere, so set your goals low, set very modest goals, you know, go five minutes of yoga a day, three days a week, that’s it and then build on it.

Trevor: Yeah, that’s fantastic, so really, now if you’re watching/listening, you don’t have an excuse not to do yoga. If your excuse has been the time commitment because classes are 90 minutes, there’s some classes that are 90 minutes long and I just, you know, unless it’s a weekend, I just don’t have time to do a 90 minute class, some classes are 60 minutes, so I know sometimes we come up with excuses on, “Oh I just don’t have time for that.” And that’s been one of mine, is I just don’t have time to fit this in, I only have 20 minutes for my workout today or 30 minutes and if I get in 60 minutes of a workout, it’s great, but I want to, usually sometimes I want to get on my bike or I want to run or something that I typically do, but it’s, you know, what you’re talking about, there’s no excuse where you can’t do five minutes and all these online programs that allow you to do that.

And I think it’s, for me I think it’s good that I, you know, you do some classes, so you’re in a studio with people and the instructor can kind of guide, if you have a good instructor, they can remind of your alignment and make sure you’re not going to be injured and then doing it on your own, I think, can be a great way to fit it in on your own time. So, yeah, like, I have no excuse any more, none of you guys have an excuse, lets do more yoga. So, you know, there’s so many great benefits for it.

So, Dean, tell people what, because you’ve got the Man Flow Yoga, how would someone know if that’s going to be a good route for them versus all these other options?

Dean: Yeah, so, I think in order to explain this, let me say my quick back story with me and how I started yoga. I started yoga as a lacrosse player of the University of Wisconsin, I was a senior, you know, I was lifting weights, I was running hard, I mean, I was, I’m sore all the time and I accidentally wandered into a yoga studio one day, literally on accident, I was looking for a tailor, I stumbled into a yoga studio. I was actually already dressed to workout because I was going to the gym later and I told them, “Well I’m a lacrosse player, you know, I wanted to do this, I want to, I’d like to get more toned, I’d like to improve my mobility, I’d like to strengthen my knees,” and they said, “Oh sure come on in, it’s going to be great,” I said, “Okay.” And then they said, “Oh, by the way you don’t need your clothes,” so I was like, “What?” And they said, “Yeah you don’t,” and they realized afterwards that it sounded weird, but they told me I didn’t have to wear a shirt and I was sold because at that point, I was 22 and vain and so, I was like “Yeah, cool, sounds great.”

So, then that was my experience and it totally kicked my butt. I mean, it was a 90 minute workout, it was Bikram yoga and it totally kicked my butt, it challenged me and I loved the workout, but I started going to other yoga studios and there wasn’t enough emphasis on the technique. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I love the workout, but I didn’t understand why they were merging a workout with a life guidance sermon. That was how it came across to me because for me working out has always been physical, it’s always been sports or physical performance related or getting better for sports, so when I started doing yoga classes and there was this other spiritual component, it just didn’t make sense to me because, again of my experiences.

So, I started teaching my lacrosse team yoga and from that I started recording videos so that they can practice them over winter break and we could, you know, keep training and then I eventually made that public, created a Facebook page to let people know about the youtube videos and that was how the brand evolved and it was, it’s always been a way for people to learn how yoga can improve their fitness.

So, if you, if you’re already active or if you are intrigued by yoga as a physical fitness discipline, as a way to get stronger or if you want to know how you can use yoga to get better at what you’re already doing, then Man Flow Yoga would be appropriate for you. So, if you’re a runner and you want to prevent injury and get faster or if you’re a swimmer and you want to improve your shoulder mobility for swimming or if you’re, if you cycle and you want to open up your hip flexors and take care of your body, that’s your Man Flow Yoga would work best for.

But at the same time we also have, I think about 1/4 to 1/3 of our subscribers are people that love yoga as a physical and spiritual practice, but they want to learn more about the technique. So, they sign up for Man Flow Yoga so they can learn about the technique because they aren’t getting much focus on that in their typical classes. So, …

Trevor: So, now my next question is, can women do Man Flow Yoga?

Dean: Absolutely. Yes.

Trevor: Okay, I mean, it’s you know, it’s an appropriate question, right?

Dean: No, it’s a totally valid question. Yeah, actually, so, about 15% of the people that do Man Flow Yoga are women and the women that I’ve spoken with who enjoy Man Flow Yoga, they like it because it’s a no frills approach. You know, I, the videos [inaudible 00:25:47] and I say, “Okay, stand here and do this.” You know, it’s, there’s, for people who don’t want those other aspects of yoga and just want the workout, they love it.

You know, and we usually, you know, typically we associate the, I hope I don’t offend anyone saying this, but because I’ve said this now I will offend someone, but typically we associate, typically we associate kind of the airy, new-age spiritual aspects of yoga as a feminine quality at least as a society that’s kind of how we look at it and so men will kind of back away from that and say, “Well I don’t want to be emotional or spiritual in public,” but the truth is a lot of women enjoy that approach too, so when I called it Man Flow Yoga, it was meant to say like, “Hey guys, like there’s a way of yoga that’s like guy-friendly,” but at the same time it’s also for women who want a more physical fitness approach to yoga.

So, it’s just a name. It’s open to everybody.

Trevor: Okay. So, everybody listening/watching, Dean’s not trying to offend anyone. This may or may not be for you, but if it’s not for you that’s okay, if it’s for you then you want to check out Man Flow Yoga because I, I mean I think that, like we talked about, there are lots of different ways to do yoga and they’re different approaches and, you know, you just kind of talked about how women tend to do this, or men tend to do that, of course there’s always the exceptions and they’re people that like to do it.

Dean: Absolutely.

Trevor: Everybody’s individual and unique, so certainly that’s the case. Okay, so Dean, tell everybody where they can find out about you and then you also have a 20% off subscription [inaudible 00:27:31] subscription plan that you’re offering everybody, right?

Dean: Yes. I can’t remember the discount, is it Spa Doctor? Spell it out or Spa d-r? Or … ?

Trevor: T-h-e-s-p-a-d-r, so that’s the code people use.

Dean: Okay. Cool. Wonderful. So, yes, my name, the way that, the my number one training resource, the way that I help people the most is through [inaudible 00:27:57] area. And this is where I put full programs, tutorials, workouts and even diet-nutrition information to help you get the benefits of a fitness-centric program. [inaudible 00:28:08] trial is $1 and gets you unlimited access and then from there the 20% off of any subscription plan you select to get continued streaming access.

Trevor: Okay. Alright, so your website’s manflowyoga.com, right, and you also on social media and we’ll have the links to everything up on my website so people can get the information there, learn more about you.

Thanks so much, Dean, for joining us today.

Dean: Yeah, thank you for having me, this was fun.

Trevor: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dean and got some great tips on how to start incorporating more yoga into your life, into your fitness routine. I certainly am going to start doing more of it too, it got me inspired. And if you want to learn more about Dean, you can go to the spadr.com, go to the podcast page with his interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there, I invite you to join the Spa Dr. Community and you could also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss anymore upcoming shows.

And if you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend that you get your customized skin profile at theskinquiz.com, it’s free, just takes a few moments and you’ll get information about what your skin is trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. So, just go to theskinquiz.com, I also invite you to join me on social media on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and youtube and join the conversation with us. And I’ll see you next time on the Spa Dr. Podcast.

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Busting Skin Care Myths with Rachael Pontillo

January 4, 2018 by Dr. Trevor Cates 1 Comment

My guest today is Rachael Pontillo. She is the bestselling author of the book Love Your Skin, Love Yourself . She’s a Board Certified International Health Coach, licensed aesthetician; and natural skincare formulator and educator. She’s the president and co-founder of the Nutritional Aesthetics™ Alliance, the creator of the popular skincare and healthy lifestyle blog, Holistically Haute™, and creator of the online course, Create Your Skincare. She’s an avid herbalist, self-professed skincare ingredient junkie, and lifelong learner.

On today’s podcast, we’re breaking down facts from skin care myths around skin care DIY as well as other popular skin care products and practices.

So please enjoy this interview…

Find out more about Rachael’s online Herbal Skincare Summit

To find out more about Rachael, go to: www.rachaelpontillo.com and www.createyourskincare.com

Here’s a link to her free skincare class: www.createyourskincare.com/free-class

TRANSCRIPTION:

Trevor: Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. Today we’re busting skincare myths. My guest is Rachael Pontillo. She’s the best selling author of the book, Love Your Skin, Love Yourself. She’s a board certified, international health coach, licensed esthetician, and natural skincare formulator and educator. She’s the President and Co-founder of the Nutritional Aesthetics Alliance, and creator of the online course, Create Your Skincare.

On today’s podcast, we’re breaking down facts from myths around skincare, do it yourself DIY, as well as other popular skincare products and practices. You may recognize Rachael because she’s been on my podcast before. I’m excited to have her back on to share additional information with you. So, please enjoy this interview with Rachael Pontillo.

Rachael, it’s so great to have you on the podcast.

Rachael: It’s such a pleasure to be back. Thank you so much.

Trevor: Yeah. I know you’ve been on before, but I wanted to have you back, because it’s been awhile, and we’ve got some updates and exciting things going on. Just as a reminder for everybody, because you have been on before, but we talked about this a bit before, but you’re a holistic esthetician. You have more of a holistic mindset, which is not the typical thing. So, explain to everybody how you’re different than maybe a traditional esthetician.

Rachael: It’s interesting because the world of holistic aesthetics, just like the world of holistic health, or holistic medicine, it has a lot of different definitions, and when we’re thinking about green beauty or holistic, there’s obviously different shades of green. The way I personally define holistic aesthetics and holistic skincare is really working on the skin from the inside out, with positive diet and lifestyle and mindset changes. And from the outside in, with noninvasive and all natural skincare products and treatments, and home care regimes.

What I have found in the earlier days in my practice when I was just thinking about holistic aesthetics more as just the natural products and the treatments that are not zapping and poking people, you’re still working on the skin kind of from an allopathic … Which is symptom related. You see something and you do what you can to fix it. But, that’s not doing anything really to address the cause, unless it’s something where the cause itself is actually topical. Which with skin, you know that, that’s rarely the case. It’s almost always something internal.

It wasn’t until I went to the Holistic Nutrition School and got my health coach certification and started doing more with coaching and learning more about diet and nutrition, and different causes of skin issues … I know that’s your expertise. It wasn’t until I started learning about that, that I realized, oh my goodness. We really have to approach the skin with this really broad perspective. It’s so different for each person. It doesn’t matter whether you appear to have the same symptoms, or even if you’re related, lifestyle changes, and diet, and stress, and emotional things can completely change how a regimen is going to react from one person to the next. It’s not only just holistic in terms of the diet, lifestyle, mindset, and topical stuff. It’s also got that bio individual factor in there, looking at, okay, what is this person’s skin behaving like on a day to day basis? How does it react to certain things?

I have a very personalized approach in my practice where I actually custom formulate for people. I design treatments for people, and that all gets adjusted. It gets adjusted every time I have a consultation with someone, or I see someone and something changes. We adjust everything. It’s not just, here’s the protocol for this person with this skin condition, because that doesn’t help if the cause of that skin condition is different, or if that person … Something in that person’s lifestyle is interfering with that protocol’s ability to be success for them. Holistic really means looking at the whole person, and kind of matching them up.

Trevor: Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Now, we have a very similar approach to skin and the holistic mindset of that, so that’s great. Thank you for clarifying that. Definitely not always the approach you’re going to get from an esthetician, but you have a lot more training than just esthetician training. You have the health coach aspect, that training as well. That’s great.

One of the things I want to dig in today is some of the beauty myths out there, and skincare myths, so we can bust through these, because there’s so much marketing hype, and money spent on products and procedures. It can get really expensive. I want us to talk through some of these myths together. One of them has to do with oils and the skin. Let’s talk about that. I think you know my take on oils to the skin, but what do you feel about oils and skincare?

Rachael: It’s a big topic. Oils themselves, there’s kind of a misconception of what they are, because I think that the commercial skincare industry has kind of given them a bad name, over the years. Because the oils that have been used in my own products that are synthetically based, have been typically petrochemicals like mineral oil, or white petrolatum, or other industrial grade lubricants, really. They’re not anything that brings nutrients into the skin. There is a lot of concern that applying oil to the skin is going to suffocate the skin, or create an occlusive barrier that is going to not allow for any ingredient penetration, or respiration, or even detoxification. It’s just creates this barrier, which sometimes you want a barrier. If you’re healing from something or if you’re trying to keep moisture in the skin. But, if it’s not also delivering nutrients, and it’s potentially leaving trapped stuff that should be coming out, in, it’s really not going to be any benefit to the skin.

There’s this idea that oils clog the pores. That if you have oily skin, you should not be using oil on your face. That’s something that I subscribed to for a longtime. Even in my aesthetics training, I really didn’t learn about oils until a little bit later in my training when I started working with an Ayurvedic line and studying under an Ayurvedic doctor. And, they’re very big into oils in Ayurveda, all over the body, which is fabulous. I always acne and oily skin, so I was always like, oh, no, no, no. Oil equals grease, or dirt, and that’s just not the case.

There are so many incredibly nourishing oils that we use for the skin that are plant-based, such as jojoba oil, even some forms of coconut oil, rose hip seed oil is one of my favorite. I know that argon oil is really trendy these days still, hemp seed oil. I mean there’s hundreds and hundreds. Each of them is pressed, or expressed, or expelled from a seed, or a nut, or pit of a plant. Sometimes the flesh, sometimes the entire seed pods, but really most seed oils, most plant oils are from the reproductive part of the plant. They’re pressed, usually cold pressed. What that does is, just like when you’re eating sprouted vegetables, it has all of that new life energy, that creation energy, that generating energy about it. That goes into the oils, energetically. These are composed of essential fatty acids. They all have a different essential fatty acid profile. Different levels of saturation, meaning [inaudible 00:08:31] That’s kind of the layman’s term. How thick or thin, or how heavy or dry and oil is. I’m sure you’ve heard of the term, dry oils, where you put it on and it seems to evaporate right away, or absorb right away.

Then we have oils that are much heavier and more solid, like a shea butter, or a coconut oil that will be solid to a certain smoke point, and then it might liquefy, and some of them don’t. Some of them don’t at all. They stay solid all of the time, unless they’re heated to very high temperatures. That has to do with the level of saturation, meaning from a chemical standpoint, all of these carbon chains that make up these essential fatty acids, how much oxygen is attaching to the breaks in those carbon bonds. How many breaks are there, which are opportunity for oxygen to come in, which would then cause that oil to be less saturated, meaning it will dry faster.

So, for people who have a lot of oil naturally in their skin, there are definitely oils that can be really beneficial to them because they are less saturated. They’re going to absorb faster. They have a great bioavailability about them, because the skin is made up of this lipid matrix on the outside. It is designed to work with oils and actually repel water. Like attracts like. When it sees an oil that it recognizes, it sees this similar essential fatty acid composition, it reaches out to almost shake hands. Like, hey, I know you. Come on in.

It’s such a powerful way to deliver nutrients into the skin. We often see water-based products that have these active ingredients that have to be packaged into what’s called a delivery system. Usually in some for of a lypozome which is an oil soluble kind of egg that is intended to be easier penetrating, because it’s protecting that water soluble micronutrient with this oil soluble coating that helps it get into that lipid matrix. But, if we’re using oils that already have these essential fatty acids, and also have antioxidants, vitamins, and other nutrients that the skin needs in a whole plant form, it’s going to absorb that much more easily. If you’re someone with oilier skin, you can use a less saturated oil, and it’s not going to sit on the surface. It’s going to absorb, and what is not absorbed will just evaporate, which is fantastic.

If you are someone who has dryer skin where you actually do need a little more protection, you need maybe that emollient barrier, or it’s maybe this time of year, and the indoor air is very dry, because now maybe you’ve got a forced air heating system, or you’re running your fireplace. It’s just sucking the water out of your skin, which happens. That’s called transepidermal water loss, where water actually evaporates from your skin. Thicker lipids such as a coconut oil, or a shea butter, something more saturated, with less oxygen in it, is going to stay on the surface a bit longer and keep moisture in.

Oils are really important to help keep moisture in, keep water in. If you just apply a lotion or a water based product, and there’s not enough lipid inside that product, or you’re not applying a lipid afterwards, it’s going to evaporate. Oils are so important to help keep the skin nourished, protected. Even though oils themselves don’t hydrate … And that’s another myth, that oils hydrate. It’s like a big pet peeve of mine. They don’t hydrate because they don’t have any water. They’re not bringing water into the skin, but they are helping to keep water in the skin, which does then help keep the skin hydrated.

In terms of clogging, there are definitely some oils that are more prone to clog skin for some people that others. But, it really depends on each individual person’s biochemistry, the lipid structure in their skin itself. Also, what fats they’re taking in internally in their diet. That can absolutely affect how the oils on the surface of the skin behave and react with other ones. It’s kind of a little bit of trial and error necessary, but there are some oils that are known to be a bit more risky for some people with acne prone skin, or oily skin. Something like a hemp seed oil is known to be a lighter oil that is going to penetrate faster and evaporate what’s not there, and less likely to clog. Whereas certain forms of coconut oil, and certain forms of like a cocoa butter might be too heavy for that type of skin. The molecular structure might be too big. It’s not going to penetrate. It’s going to sit there and that could cause clogging to happen.

Trevor: Right. Wow. Okay. Well, that’s great. It gives us a lot of information about oils for the skin. I think it’s really interesting to point out, as you said earlier, that when we’re looking at traditional skincare products that have been used traditionally, up until more recently, it’s been a lot of these synthetic oils, or the ones that are not coming from plants. They have a very different effect the skin, and comparing the two on the effect it has on the skin is totally different.

It’s nice to see more of these plant oils being used. I’d see it quite often. Because, you know we have oils on our skin, and my skincare line, The Spa Doctor Line. We often hear from people with acne prone skin, oily skin, that that same kind of reservation in the beginning, of oh, I don’t want to put oil on my oily skin. But then once they start using the products, they realize not only does their skin not breakout, but their quality of their skin is improving. They’re generally breaking out less. It’s so great to see that switch. It’s almost as if, I think about when we went from our low fat diet phase in the eighties, to now we’ve kind of swung in the opposite direction. Sometimes people are going too far in the other direction with fats in diet. It’s great to see that it has to do with the quality of the ingredient, and where it’s coming from.

I love what you talked about with the seeds of that. The oils coming from the seed, and it’s the beginning of the growth of a plant and energetically what that means. That was an interesting little take on that as well. So, thank you for all of that. And then also talking about the different types of oils, even plant based oils. How some can clog pores more than others. I liked how you point out that coconut oil, that some types will clog the pores, but not all. I know that we use a little bit of coconut oil in our cleanser, but it is the type that is not going to clog pores. We definitely see that with coconut oil, as well, so thanks for pointing that out.

Rachael: Yeah. Coconut oil is actually a really interesting one, because there are some many different ways to source it, and to express it. Whether it’s going to be clogging, or whether it’s going to be drying, or irritant … I was actually just discussing this with one of my students who also is creating a coconut based line. She does a ton of research on it. She was saying how some of these product lines claim that a coconut oil might be more alkaline rather than acidic. For topical skincare we actually do want products to be a little bit more on the acidic side, not the alkaline side, because the skin itself is more acidic. But the varying levels of heat used to press out the coconut oil are what kind of determine the pH of the coconut oil, which can absolutely be a factor in how that reacts on someone’s skin. It also obviously depends on what other ingredients are in that formulation.

Even though coconut oil is a fairly saturated oil, it’s fairly saturated and stable, it melts at 76 degrees. But, that’s a physical change. It’s not a chemical change. It goes back and forth between solid and liquid, but it chemically does not change. The function itself does not change. It’s stable in that way, it’s just not stable in the fact that, if you’re using virgin coconut oil, and you want it to be an oil serum, but you’re shipping it to somebody and it’s cold out, that’s going to separate, most likely, or it’s going to solidify and that’s kind of a production issue that you have to deal with. Certain forms are a little bit more stable in the liquid form. And then molecularly, some of the essential fatty acids in coconut oil are a larger molecule. However, it also has a lot of medium chain triglycerides, which are a smaller molecule, and that actually does penetrate better. It really depends on the person. It depends on the overall formulation and absolutely, the quality of the coconut oil, and the sourcing.

Trevor: Right. And it was interesting, you were taking about pH, and I typically think of pH as not something you can test for in oils, because … Yeah. So how does-

Rachael: That’s hard.

Trevor: So, how do you look at the pH of certain coconut oil?

Rachael: It’s really hard to actually measure it. There’s laboratory equipment that does it. It’s not something that’s easily doable at home with strips, unless you’re making an emulsion. But, fixed oils, carrier oils, they are fatty acids. They are fatty acid chains. So, when there’s acid, there’s pH. Potential hydrogens determines acid versus alkaline. It’s something that does have to be tested on a larger scale than what we would see in a DIY product, or even a small batch artisan brand.

Trevor: Okay, okay. Cool. All right. I think we covered oils.

Rachael: We did.

Trevor: Let’s move on to a different one. Another thing people ask a lot about is, skin brushes and cleansing of the skin using different facial sponges and brushes, and the electronic brushes to try and cleanse the skin, clear out the pores, get off the dry skin. What do you think about all these gadgets and gizmos with skincare?

Rachael: It’s a tricky one, because I think that in general, in Western society, we overdo it. We have this relationship with our skin that is not actually the healthiest one. We kind of take everything out on our skin. If the skin is showing us something that we don’t like, instead of stopping to pause and think, oh well, why is this happening? What is the skin showing me? How you kind of refer to the skin as the magic mirror. Like, what can we see from what the skin is showing us? Instead of taking that pause to kind of thank our skin. Hey, thanks messenger. You’re telling me that somethings wrong here, that I haven’t already paid attention to, that my body’s been trying to tell me.

As a society we’ve come to accept so many chronic pain issues, and fatigue and all these things that are just stress related, but because we’re so used to them, even though the body might be trying to tell us something, we’re not always paying attention to it. Then the skin has to be like, hello. You can’t ignore me now, because I’m just going to show you that there’s something wrong. Instead of just pausing to try to then figure out what the issue is, so many people want to pop, or scrub, or zap. I really want people to kind of reassess that. Revisit that notion.

When we are doing some kind of skincare treatment, whether it’s cleansing, or exfoliation, we really want to be gentle. The skin is not tile and grout. We don’t need to be scrubbing at it incessantly. What’s in our pores, whether it’s blackheads, or whiteheads, or even just oil itself, none of it’s necessarily bad. It’s there for a reason. There are things that we can do to change what’s in our skin. If we have a lot of blackheads, that is a sure sign that maybe there’s something going on inside with the fats that we’re taking in, because skin cells are formed inside. They’re not formed outside. But, it is also possible that we are coming into contact with too much pollution that we’re not protecting our skin from. Or, maybe we’re using the wrong kinds of ingredients that are not actually being absorbed, so they’re kind of oxidizing and forming this debris on the surface.

I don’t have a problem with some of the more gentler, manual kind of mechanical cleansing things. I don’t personally use them at all. I’m very, very gentle. My skin is really sensitive from years of over scrubbing and years of picking and popping, and doing all the stuff I used to do to my skin before I changed my relationship with my skin. Some of the spinning brushes, if they’re super gentle, meant for sensitive skin, I don’t mind that, but I still don’t even recommend it every day. I have a really conservative approach to exfoliation in general. I believe kind of in the cornia therapy line of thought, which means that we really want to protect the epidermis. It’s there to protect us. If we are forcibly removing those cells before they’re naturally ready to come off, meaning the cells underneath are not mature enough to the point where they’re actually strong enough and healthy enough to protect us, that is going to lead to more inflammation, which can actually speedup the aging process instead of slow it down, which is what we’re trying to accomplish. Nobody wants to speed up the aging process of the skin.

I recommend to people that if you feel that you want to do something like that, use a gadget, or a brush … a lot of esthetician are using ultrasonic cleaning devices. There’s these little scrapers that are like the ion scraper things that even some of the more holistic esthetician are okay with using, that’s okay. But, I would invite you kind of from a mindset perspective, to ask yourself why you feel that’s necessary. What about your skin is so dirty that you need that? What about your skin is making you want to scrub? If you have open lesions on your skin, that’s not something you want to scrub at, because that friction is going to cause more inflammation. That’s something that needs more love and more gentleness in the approach. It’s not something that needs to be zapped and scrubbed, and even like a harsh towel, you don’t want to be rubbing really hard with it.

For me personally, I don’t use them. I don’t recommend them to my clients. If you are someone who likes to have an exfoliation treatment every now and then, I think that’s a great opportunity to treat yourself to a spa treatment and have a nice enzyme facial. Maybe if you want to use that little ultrasonic thing to kind of give the pores a good old clean out, that’s okay. I’m just not a fan of forced exfoliation on a regular basis. I really want people to be gentle and loving to their skin.

Trevor: Right. Yeah. I’m along the same philosophy as you. I believe that if you’re going to do exfoliation, which I think we do need periodically to help the skin cells turnover and to be able to actually let the products that we’re using absorb better into the skin, for it to be very gentle and using gentle facial sponges. I just picked up recently a little bamboo brush that’s really, really soft, and so I’m interested to try that out, too. I’m mean, looking for things that are soft, that are not going to be super abrasive. Like the exfoliant that we make is very, very finely ground up pearl, and so it’s like very fine sand. It’s not rough and abrasive on the skin. So yeah, I’m glad we’re on the same page as that.

Rachael: Totally.

Trevor: I try to get people away from those. All the harsh brushing and all the-

Rachael: Yeah. I just see people doing that and their skin already looks so sensitive. I’m like, oh. I just kind of want to give them a hug. Like, you don’t need to do all that. Just love up on your skin a little. If you want to do more for your skin, you can do things like cooling herbal compresses. You can do a honey mask that is one of the most gentlest forms of exfoliation you can do, and it’s also extremely hydrating and nourishing. There are so many loving things that you can do for your skin if you want to feel like you’re taking action, and you’re doing something in between facials, and in addition to your regular skincare regimen. But, I really encourage all of that to be gentle and kind towards the skin.

Regarding exfoliation, just quickly, hydration is so important because water is a catalyst for exfoliation to happen on its own. So, if you find that your skin is looking lackluster, or uneven, or you’re getting dry patches, dehydration very well could be the cause of that. I would say, look at your water intake and see if that’s something that maybe need adjusting.

Trevor: Yeah. Okay. Wow, that’s a good point. Yeah. Now, we’re talking about the face, what about the body when it comes to those kinds of exfoliation? What do you feel about the rest of the body?

Rachael: Yeah. So, excellent question, because it’s a little bit different. The skin on the rest of the body is a bit thicker than the skin on the face. It’s also covered most of the time, unless you live in a super warm climate. But, even if you live in a super warm climate, chances are you’re in air conditioning, so you’re going to be covered anyway. The skin on the body is not subjected to as much environmental contact as the skin on the face, or even the hands. The skin on the face and the hands, age much faster than the skin on the rest of the body, simply because of the fact that it is more protected.

It’s very important to stimulate the skin on the rest of the body. That can actually handle more exfoliation. I love a good sugar or salt scrub in the shower, that’s made with some of the oils that we talked about before, coconut oil, or olive oil. You just kind of scrub at it with the sugar or salt until it dissolves. Then you know you’re done, and you’re left with this smooth and gorgeous and hydrated, and moisturized skin.

But, dry brushing is also excellent to do for the body. I like a natural bristle brush, like a sisal. I recommend doing it a couple times a week. If you’re feeling under the weather, it’s nice to do it in combination with like a salt bath, so you’re kind of helping your skin with detox, and it’ll help you kind of feel better, faster. I recommend doing it gently, as well. Again, we’re not scrubbing. We’re not cleaning the tile. Upward, long, gentle but firm strokes from the extremities in towards the heart. That will stimulate the lymphatic system. You’re not doing it to scrub. You’re actually doing it to manually stimulate that lymphatic system, and also help the body release toxins that it’s storing in the fat cells. And just improve that blood and lymphatic circulation.

Other types of manual stimulation like a lymphatic drainage massage, or even other types of massage on the face and the body can give you a similar benefit if you’re worried about sensitivity with dry brushing, or scrubbing. It’s really up to you, what you’re comfortable with, but definitely, the skin on the body can handle more manual and mechanical stimulation than the skin on the face.

Trevor: Perfect. Okay. With you on that one. Okay, great. And, I love the dry skin brushing. I talk about it in my book.

Rachael: Yeah, it’s good.

Trevor: If you want more recommendations on that, you can find that in my book, under the clean body section. Lets more, shift into talking about some DIY stuff. There’s so many myths out there on DIY. A lot of celebrities will come out and say, oh, this is the new best thing. This is what I’m doing, and it causes me to look this beautiful. Right? What would you say are some of the DIY things out there that actually might be doing more harm than good?

Rachael: Yeah. So, DIY, I’m a big fan of it obviously. I make my own products. I make my clients products. I recommend that people make their own products when they can, as well. There’s kitchen DIY, and there’s kind of professional DIY. Now, kitchen DIY is when you’re using ingredients that you can find in your home to make products. There’s nothing wrong with that, if you’re using things that are not too acidic, or too alkaline.

This is where we run into issues. I’m sure your audience has seen Pinterest posts and wellness blog posts about using lemon juice for acne, or lemon juice for dark spots, baking soda as an exfoliation, or for acne. These are two of the biggest ones I see. The problem with that is that, the lemon is acidic. Now, when you ingest it, it produces an alkaline ash, but that does not happen on the surface of the skin. It might definitely cause a temporary brightening effect, but it is an alpha hydroxy acid. It can produce too much exfoliation, too quickly as we talked about before, where we kind of want to avoid that. It might temporarily bleach a dark spot that you might see, but that’s only on the outermost layers. Those dark pigment areas actually start much deeper than that. So, they’ll come to the surface if those cells are still damaged.

I find that overdoing remedies like lemon juice, actually can produce more hyperpigmentation in the long run. And it also can cause photosensitivity, or photo toxicity if someone puts that on, and then goes into the sun, or lives in an area where they’re outside a lot, or they’re exposed to UV radiation a lot. That’s a problem. That’s a big problem, because that can actually cause chemical burns, and permanent damage.

Now, baking soda is on the other side of the spectrum. It’s alkaline. It’s used frequently in DIY deodorants, because of its deodorizing effects. It’s used often times with the no pooh method for washing your hair. But even so, it’s got to be diluted, a lot if you’re going to use it topically. When I see things like, oh, make a paste. No, please don’t, because if you make a paste and you put it on, an alkaline substance is going to burn the skin and cause as much irritation as something acidic. And because the skin already skews on the acidic side, it actually can be more damaging to use something alkaline, than something acidic. So those, backing soda and lemon kind of paste things, I don’t recommend those at all.

I recommend using things like the recipes in your book. The DIY recipes in your book are all very safe, and they’re all things that are found in the house, in the health food store. Stuff like that is fine. It’s gentle. You do have to make it frequently and keep it in the frig if you’re not using it right away. But, if you’re doing that, I recommend people do it kind of like when you’re making your meal planning. Or doing your meal planning, or cooking your meals. It’s essentially cooking. You’re feeding your skin from the outside, instead of your body from the inside. It’s all the same thing. If people are like, oh, I don’t have time to do that. Sure you do. Just do it all at the same time, while you’re doing your other cooking for the week, and it’s fine.

But if you do want something that is more shelf-stable, then it gets a little bit more complicated. That’s because if you’re using something that contains water, like an herbal tea, like a juice, like a hydrosol, anything that contains water or plant matter, it’s going to have to have a preservative if you’re not keeping it in the refrigerator and using it within a few days. Natural preservation, that’s a massive topic. It is possible. It’s not a perfect thing right now. Green chemistry is advancing rapidly because demand for all natural and very mildly preserved products has increased so much. I know you found a great preservation system for your product line, which is hard to do. It requires so much testing both with the formulation itself, and then in terms of stability for shelf life.

Anytime you do have something that you make, and it has water in it, whether it is something that you want to just put in a bottle and use yourself, like a toner. I have so many people who are like, oh, I just want to use rosewater and witch hazel as a toner. Well, guess what? That can go bad if you don’t refrigerate it, or put a preservative in it. There are so many different things you can do. You can add a certain percentage of alcohol. You can get broad spectrum preservatives from online suppliers if you know how to use them. And, I recommend you know how to use them. Don’t just buy them and stick them … That’s dangerous. But also, if you’re making a cream or a lotion.

I unfortunately have seen even some herbal books that recommend mixing hydrosols with some of the oils we talked about before. And then, using essential oils to preserve, or using vitamin E, or using rosemary. It’s not adequate. It’s not adequate because you really need what’s known as a broad spectrum preservative, which protects against gram positive, gram negative bacteria, as well as mold and yeast. That’s not something that essential oils can do. Essential oils themselves are extremely powerful. They absolutely do have antimicrobial properties. However, the concentration that would be required for that action to be effective in that type of product would be too high to be able to be safely applied to the skin. I would not consider that a viable, natural preservation method on its own.

There are certainly natural ingredients that do have some naturally occurring antimicrobial properties, but you still need to add a preservative. You still need to test. I typically formulate, like for a three to six month shelf life, because quite frankly, I think we should be using products that are as fresh as possible. Just like with food, we don’t want to eat food that’s been sitting around on a shelf for months and months and months, and months. It’s going to be most beneficial to be freshest.

I think if you’re going to do a DIY, and you want to use kitchen DIY, like what you write about in your book, by all means do it. Go for it. You can absolutely have incredible skin using remedies like that, on a regular basis. I would so much rather people do that, then go to the drugstore, any day. But if you are someone who doesn’t want to make products every day, or you want to use herbs, and you want to use oils, and you want to make creams and lotions, then I recommend that you learn how to do it properly. I teach a course on that. But it’s not rocket science, because people have been doing it for thousands of years, really. But to do it safely, is so important now. It doesn’t even matter if you’re making them for yourself, or for someone else, because … I have so many people who are like, oh, I’m just making this for myself. I don’t have to add a preservative. It’s like, okay. So, you want an eye infection? You want a rash?

Trevor: That’s a good point. So what happens if people’s skin … If their skincare products start to grow mold, and sometimes you can see these things, like the mold growing on it. But, most of the time you can’t see it. It’s just natural. There’s bacteria all around us, and that’s actually not a bad thing, but when it gets in your products and it starts to overgrow, what are the kinds of things that can happen?

Rachael: Like what you just said. Sometimes you can see if contamination has occurred. Sometimes you can’t. Most of the times you can’t. It would be great if the product just went moldy, and you’re like, oh, okay. It’s done now. The skin itself does have a microbiome that’s suppose to keep out pathogens, but we can’t predict what is going to grow in that container, and how your skin is going to react to it.

The most common things that can happen when people use contaminated products is rashes, contact dermatitis, eye infections are extremely common. This is one of the reasons why with eye products, eye creams, eye makeup, you want to absolutely make sure that you are replacing those very often, and not contaminating them, because the eyes are just so susceptible. That is your vision. You don’t want to mess with your vision. It’s just not worth it. I’ve even heard some stories of blindness coming from exposure to pathogens. We’re not here to fear monger. That’s not what its about. If you don’t want to learn how to do this yourself, then there are beautiful lines, like yours, that people can trust that testing has already been accounted for.

But, a lot of people these days really do want to take all aspects of their health into their own hands. I encourage that as well, just learn how to do it right. Learn what you’re doing. Don’t put your health at risk. It’s just not worth it. I’m always happy to talk this like til the sun don’t shine. It’s my passion. But, I really feel strongly that people should know what they’re doing.

Trevor: That’s great. You mentioned, when you were talking about DIY, it needs to have a natural preservative or be kept in the refrigerator. But I wanted to … I’m sure you would have added on to this that it doesn’t stay good in the refrigerator forever. Even if you put things in the refrigerator, they’ll still go off. So, there’s a time limit on that.

Rachael: Absolutely.

Trevor: They’ll just kind of lengthen the amount of time that it-

Rachael: Well, yeah. Your refrigerator itself can be contaminated. I mean, yeah. You just gotta be careful. So if you’re only relying on refrigeration, use that within three days, and that’s it. Just make yourself a little bit at a time. Use if for a few days, and then make it again. Some people love making products every few days, because it’s fun. You can experiment. You can use different ingredients, different herbal tea mixes, or hydrosols. They smell amazing. They feel amazing. Some people just really love doing that. People who love to cook, typically also love to make skincare. There’s a lot of similarities with the techniques. So yeah, absolutely, you do not want to be relying on the refrigerator for months and months and months and months on end, because that’s going to work.

Trevor: Okay, great. So Rachael, you’ve given us so much information here. I know we could keep talking, going on and on and on, but I know you have a course on DIY skincare. You’ve also got a summit going on. I want you to tell everybody about that.

Rachael: I have the Herbal Skincare Summit, which starts on January 8th, and runs through January 12th. We have 15 plus herbalists, holistic health experts, and skincare experts who are all coming together to teach about various ways herbs can help you have the skin of your dreams, really. We talk about how to use herbs internally. You’re a guest on my summit, and we talked a lot about using specific herbs in your diet, as well as topically, and also foods. When we’re talking about herbs, we’re really talking about plants. So many foods themselves would be considered herbs. We have to talk about the inside, and the outside, just like we talked about at the very beginning of this conversation, that really is what the holistic approach is.

Herbalism does not work allopathically. It works on the whole person. It works to support the body, to help itself. It doesn’t work like, oh, see that spot? Let’s put some herbs on it. There are certainly some herbal preparations that can be used for little acute things, but that’s not really how it’s meant. It is a whole body healing system for the entire person, not just for the skin.

We have experts who are talking about oils, like we talked about today. We have essential oils, different ways to create different herbal formulations, considerations on how you want to choose your ingredients. We talk from traditional Chinese medicine perspective, as well as from an Adervedic’s perspective. We even have a couple of speakers who are in there to talk about herbal business and herbal skincare business for those who are interested in taking this to the next level, and offering it in their communities, or online. There’s just a lot of resources.

I really wanted to do this because I have always been passionate about skincare because it affected my life in such a profound way. I had such struggles with acne for so long. When I finally found what worked, it was like I could live. It really was. I found that peace and that relief through the plants. The more I work with plants, the more I formulate, the more herbal conferences I attend, and the more plant people I spend time with, the stronger it is, that the plants are just calling to us, and just collectively. For some people, herbalism is still kind of a new thing, or they don’t understand really how it works. For new things, I really feel strongly that we should be introducing them to people in a way that they can easily integrate it into their regular life.

We all wash our faces, right? We wash our face. We shower, I hope. We wash ourselves. We moisturize. We do this on a regular basis. It’s so much more logical for me to teach you how to add this to something you’re already doing, then say hey, go drink six cups of this herbal tea that tastes terrible, every single day. It’s a matter of compliance really. If you are trying to help someone feel better, and look better, they have to actually want to do what you’re telling them to do. Skincare for so many people is so much more fun than medicine, or tinctures or teas. It’s less work. It’s more fun. Let’s bring it in. Let’s bring it into something people enjoy and let the plants introduce themselves that way, and see what other amazing things happen.

I’m honored that you’re a guest. We have an incredible lineup of very knowledgeable speakers. So yeah, January 8th through 12th is the Herbal Skincare Summit.

Trevor: Okay, great. We’ll have a linkup under your interview, on my website, on the podcast page. And I’ll also include a link to your website, so people can learn more about your courses, and other things you’re up to. I do often times send people, because sometimes people say to me, I just want to make my own moisturizers. Moisturizers are not an easy thing to make, so I send people to you and say, go check out Rachael’s course. She’s going to teach you how to make your own products, and do it safely. If that’s something you’re interested in, definitely checkout Rachael’s stuff.

Rachael, you’re awesome. I want to thank you for being such a great resource for my book. When I was writing it, I would call you up. I would email you, say okay, so I need some help on this DIY thing. So you were very helpful, so I very much appreciate your feedback on those things.

Rachael: Oh, it was an honor that you asked me. It was really a pleasure to work on that with you. As I’ve said before, I love how your book came out. You did a fantastic job.

Trevor: Thank you. Thank you so much. And Rachael, thanks for coming on today. It was great to see you, and good luck with the summit.

Rachael: Thank you so much.

Trevor: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Rachael Pontillo. Got some great tips on how to improve the quality of your skin, instead of doing practices that might be actually harming your skin, to do things instead that really nourish your skin. You can find out more about Rachael. All you have to do is go to thespadr.com. Go to the podcast page with her interview, and you’ll find all the information about her, the links, and information about the upcoming summit.

While you’re there, on the website, I invite you to join The Spa Dr. community. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you go to theskinquiz.com. Get your own customized skin report. It’s free. It only takes a few minutes. You can get information about what your skin is trying to tell you about your health, and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com. Also, I invite you to join me on social media on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and join the conversation. I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

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Emotional Mastery with Dr. Joan Rosenberg

December 28, 2017 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

Sometimes our emotions such as sadness and anger get ahold of us. We can choose to ignore these emotions but there is another option that can lead to a healthier emotional state.

My guest today Dr. Joan Rosenberg. She is a best-selling author, speaker, consultant, media host and a cutting-edge psychologist. As a TEDx speaker and member of the Association of Transformational Leaders, she has been recognized for her thought leadership and influence in personal development. She is a California-licensed psychologist and has been featured in the critically acclaimed documentaries I Am, The Miracle Mindset, Pursuing Happiness, and The Hidden Epidemic. Dr. Rosenberg has been seen on CNN’s American Morning, the OWN network and PBS. She also hosts The MindStream Podcast, an influential and thought-provoking iTunes podcast. And she is the author of the #1 Amazon bestseller ‘Ease Your Anxiety’ and of a forthcoming book describing her 90 Seconds approach to emotional strength and self-confidence.

On today’s podcast we discuss what true emotional well-being is, what gets in our way of achieving it, and practical steps to overcoming those obstacles so we can achieve optimal well-being and emotional mastery.

To learn more about Dr. Rosenberg, go to DrJoanRosenberg.com

Get What You Say to Yourself, Matters: How to Change What You Say to Relieve Anxiety

You can also watch her TEDx talks:

Emotional Mastery: The Gifted Wisdom of Unpleasant Feelings:

Emotional Mastery: The Unexpected Riches of Grief (titled incorrectly on YouTube as Grief: A Pathway to Forgiveness):

TRANSCRIPTION:

Trevor: Hi, I’m Dr. Trevor Cates, welcome to the Spa Doctor podcast. On today’s podcast we’re talking about how to achieve emotional mastery. Sometimes our emotions such as sadness and anger get ahold of us. We can choose to ignore these emotions but there is another option that can lead to a healthier emotional state so I’ve invited my guest on today to talk about this.

My guest is Dr. Joan Rosenberg. She’s a best selling author, speaker, consultant, media host and a cutting-edge psychologist. As a TEDx speaker and a member of the Association of Transformational Leaders she’s been recognized for her thought leadership in influence and personal development. She’s a California licensed psychologist, and has been featured in the critically acclaimed documentaries I Am, the Miracle Mindset, Pursuing Happiness and The Hidden Epidemic.

Dr. Rosenberg has also been on CNN’s American Morning, The O Network, and PBS and she hosts The Mind Stream podcast, an influential and thought-provoking iTunes podcast. She’s also author of the number one Amazon best-seller, Ease your anxiety, and an upcoming book describing her 92nd approach to emotional strength and self-confidence.

On today’s podcast we discuss what is true emotional well-being? What gets in our way of achieving it, and practical steps to overcoming those obstacles so we can achieve optimal well-being and emotional mastery so please enjoy this interview with Joan.

Joan, it’s great to have you on my podcast!

Joan: It’s a trip for me to be on it, Trevor. I love when we get engaged in these conversations, so I’m really happy to be here.

Trevor: Good! We’re talking today about emotional health and well-being, something that we all need, right? Emotional mastery, and how we can achieve that so first Joan, I’d love to hear about what got you interested in this topic?

Joan: It started early in my career when I was working at UCLA with predominantly women who had eating disorders. It didn’t matter whether it was compulsive overeating or binging or anorexia.

I was totally engaged with them around that and certainly what I realized early on, and would talk to them also very early on, was that it wasn’t about food weight and appearance, and if they were dialed into anything that related to food weight and appearance then they were actually on the wrong problem.

What I did instead was tell them that it was really about their thoughts, feelings, needs and perceptions and their difficulty tolerating … Again, what was really true for them. Every time I said that to them 99% of them went yep, that’s true and then we could dial into the real problem. Around that time, I drew a diagram and that diagram has been the template for the rest of my work for the following 25 plus years.

The key thing for me around this, Trevor is that as hard and as difficult as what we think and how we think gets us in trouble, like negative self-talk, like I’m so stupid, that was really foolish, I’m so dumb, those kinds of things. I found that dealing with unpleasant feelings was harder so the journey has really been to try to understand two things.

One is what is it that makes it so difficult for us to deal with unpleasant feelings, and the second is how does all of that relate to self-confidence? That’s been really the thrust and the basis of my work the past two and a half decades or more.

Trevor: Absolutely, that’s great and its great awareness and that you’re able to help people in that way, bringing that awareness to people.

What is emotional health and well-being? There’s a lot of talk about this, what exactly is well-being, is there a definition for it?

Joan: Yes, there are many. There’s many ways to slice that answer, Trevor. The one that I like to use the most is from Dr. Dan Seagal. He talked about it in his book Brainstorm, which is about adolescents, also the qualities in adolescents that we want to see carried into adulthood. He actually uses the acronym ESSENCE as the basis of his definition.

ES is emotional Spark, think of that as a sense of vitality, an aliveness if you will, and the SE is social engagement so not only do we want someone to feel vitally alive and have that but we also want them to be able to be socially engaged, have friends and a close-knit community around them. The CE is creative exploration, that somebody has something that they want to pursue, that they’re totally into.

I have my letters reversed, the N is novelty. So it’s Emotional Spark, which is the vitality, Social Engagement, friends, novelty is the N so something new, I’m always learning something. And then the CE at the end is creative exploration where I have something meaningful to pursue.

When somebody has those qualities they’re probably living a life that has a good sense of well-being to it and is emotionally healthy.

Trevor: That totally makes sense and I was thinking you mentioned adolescents, I was thinking about how kids are much more, it seems like it’s easier for them to express themselves, to not hold back, to just be who they are and what happens to us, what happens to us that we lose that?

Joan: They pursue that, when they’re less engaged in judgment around us. If we get totally caught up in, I want you to hear how I say this, in what we think other people think. It’s not getting caught up in what other people are thinking, it’s actually getting caught up in what we think other people are thinking about us. As soon as we get lost in that, and that nuance is important, as soon as we get lost in that then we start to shut down and go, “Oh well, what if they laugh at me over there?” Or. “They’re going to ridicule me over here.” Or whatever it might be, we then start to close in on ourselves and narrow what we do as opposed to continue to be expressive in a way that we watch adolescents be expressive.

Trevor: That makes a lot of sense. I think there are two things that there is that we have a fear of what other people will think and then also that we assume that we know what other people think.

Joan: Right, well that’s, yes, go ahead.

Trevor: I just think it’s funny because I think a lot of times we automatically, and I’m going to stretch here maybe a little bit and say I think women are a little bit more likely to do this, the assuming of okay well they’re thinking this and that means this. I hear a lot of my girlfriends do that and I catch myself doing it too, more than my guy friends so I’m just curious if you’ve found that to be true.

Joan: Absolutely. I actually wrote quite a bit on this topic and I call it how to stop worrying about what other people think of you. What I will typically do is walk people through a series of questions around this. I do agree that women do it more than men. Men do it but women do it way more, at least in my observation. The key here is to start to think, when I’m talking about what people are thinking about you, that’s the first thing to kind of get rid of. It’s not what other people are thinking about you, it’s what you think other people are thinking about you and if you can get that nuance in and of itself it’s going to cut a lot of people out.

It’s like I will usually ask questions like what percentage of the time do you think, do you think other people are thinking about you? Somebody might say it’s kind of high, it’s actually very very low. Again, I also make that distinction that I started with a moment ago and then what I will do is ask, what percent of the time do you think they’re thinking the exact thought you think they’re thinking about you? That should go really next to zero. Once you get that you can start to move away from it.

The other things I talk about with this is not only is it often a projection, meaning we’re putting our thinking into somebody else’s head but it is also, I think, at its core a distraction of feeling vulnerable. The thing that I will try to get, once I’ve walked somebody through that sequence what I will try to get them to hook onto is any time you shift that kind of thinking just recognize that you’re feeling vulnerable and stay present to the feeling of being vulnerable like you can get hurt and then go about your business, go do what you wanted to do because that’s really what it is. It’s a though hijack of unpleasant feelings.

Trevor: Yeah, so our thoughts get in the way of emotional well-being.

Joan: Absolutely, yes.

Trevor: What else tends to get in the way?

Joan: Well, again, I think, there’s so many different things to get involved here but I think it’s what we think, so we can think negative thoughts and get lost in that and that alone, that will trip us off our balance, just totally destabilizes us or unsettles us. Then it’s how we think what we think. The way I think about that is that those are patterns of thinking. For instance, we magnify little things that are bad or we minimize the good stuff coming our way. Those are what I would call patterns, the cognitive behavioral people would call them either faulty thinking or cognitive distortions if we want to put the more psychologically jargonish word around it.

It’s that we get into these patterns so not only do we think bad, the what we think then we get lost in the patterns of thinking. All of that, again, think of all of that as being, if I’m in the middle of a spider web on each concentric circle that that spider does, think of that as another pattern of thinking and all it does is lead us to more and more, the smaller self and actually a more depressed self. What we think, how we think it and the ways we choose to behave in a world.

The other one that to me is so central to everything I do is how we experience and move through and express our unpleasant feelings because I think the experience of unpleasant feelings and the expression of unpleasant feelings is so important. I’m not just dialed into unpleasantness but that’s what I watch getting away.

Trevor: I think a lot of people take unpleasant feelings, the way they deal with them is just to distract themselves, completely avoid them and think that they’re just going to go away.

Joan: We would love, everyone of us would probably love to avoid that whole aspect of our life except unpleasant feelings, and again I make the distinction, they’re not bd or negative, they were actually evolutionary for us, there’s a reason that they exist and they exist because they were there to protect us. We got angry for certain reasons, we get sad for certain reasons, we get disappointed and most of that is to be away from that source, don’t go near the thing that’s hurting you.

The unpleasant feelings are actually very, very protective and until we learn that they have a valuable place in our life then at that point we’ll start to embrace them.

Trevor: It seems like awareness is the first part of all this, that you approach but you do have a really successful and unique approach in working with people so can you tell us more about how you do that so that we can start to work on some of this too on ourselves?

Joan: Absolutely. It is simple. Some people will say it’s simple but not easy but let’s call it simple and easy and then we can go into it that way. It was, again, something that happened over time but I call it, the formula in essence which some call the Rosenberg reset, not my name for it but is in essence one choice, eight feelings, 90 seconds. It’s super easy to remember. The one choice that I want people to make is to stay as open and wiling and comfortable with, if you will, their moment to moment experience. It’s being aware of and staying in touch with as much of your moment to moment experience as possible. That’s the one choice. Straightforward, so what that means is awareness, not avoidance. That’s the easy [inaudible 00:15:08] remember those things.

The second is to understand that all one has to really be able to manage are those eight unpleasant feelings. The feelings are sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, vulnerability, embarrassment, disappointment and frustration, just those eight. People are going to go okay, why those eight, and is it all eight at once? No, let’s answer the questions first, no, it’s not all eight at one time, it’s as they come and a few of them can come together. The second is why those eight is because those eight feelings are the most common feeling results of things not working out the way we want.

If I want to go pursue something it could be calling up a friend, somebody I’ve never met before or had just met and I want to build a friendship but I feel too vulnerable and I’m afraid that they’re going to say no to me and then again, what am I afraid of? I’m afraid of the disappointment and so I won’t take the action because I’m afraid of the disappointment. It’s just the most, in my mind those are the most common feeling reactions to things not working out the way we want so that’s why those eight.

The third part of it is the 90 second piece. For me, Trevor, everything kind of comes together around this one point. Again, I struggled, as I mentioned earlier to really understand or wrestled with understanding why unpleasant feelings got in the way. When I started to be aware of, it’s actually two or three things, again some of it coming out of Dr. Dan Seagal’s work and that in essence our body [inaudible 00:17:15] our brain so we’re like a brain on two feet. If we can start to see ourselves that way then everything that happens in the body proper, neck below is actually part of our brain function and that’s because our … Dr. Seagal looks a the brain as the brain itself plus the spinal cord running down the body so where our nervous system is.

Understand that our body’s our brain, that’s one piece. I hope I’m not being too sciencie here. Okay, and then the second is that something that Dr. Gill [inaudible 00:17:57] Taylor talked about in her book and her TED talk, My stroke of insight. She, neuroscientist who had a stroke in her left hemisphere which is where all the sciencie stuff we think typically resides. She had her awareness and her right hemisphere which is really feeling space, all the other kinds of things that aren’t language and logical and linear.

She was able to notice that when a feeling fired off from the brain, there’s a rush of biochemicals or neuro hormones, whatever we want to call them that rush through the body. When those neuro hormones rush through the body then they activate bodily sensations and it’s those bodily sensations that help us know what we’re feeling. Think of a sinking feeling in your stomach or the butterfly feeling that sometimes people describe with anxiety or again, when you get hot, when you get angry. It doesn’t matter what the sensation is is that we … It activates those bodily sensations and then those same biochemicals, if you will, flush out of the body and then those bodily sensations subside.

It’s the bodily sensations that help us, those physical bodily sensations that help us know what we’re feeling emotionally and I realized that was the key. It’s not that we don’t want to feel the whole range of what we feel, we do. We don’t want to feel the bodily sensations that help us know what we’re feeling emotionally. She said the whole rush and flush process, 90 seconds so that’s the 90 seconds. It’s the one choice to stay fully aware and in touch with as much of your moment to moment experience as possible and then being able to ride one or more 90 second waves of one or more of eight unpleasant feelings. Then you can go pursue whatever you want and you can stay fully in touch with those feelings.

Trevor: That makes sense. It seems like when you bring awareness to your physical body and make that connection between what you’re actually feeling what you might just say is in your head but actually feel it in your body that really helps us take it out of our head so much, make it real.

Joan: Totally, yes, it does make it very, very real. It’s very interesting, one of my roles is as a professor and I teach graduate students how to do psychotherapy but it’s, to your point, I ask them to notice the difference between when they, if I were to ask them a question, how do you feel, how do you feel is actually a thought question. You have to go to your head to figure out what your body is doing as opposed to just reflecting it back which actually gets us into the body experience so it was like, oh, that must have left you feeling kind of sad or bummed or disappointed, it actually put you right into your body. Yes, to your point, it’s very very important for us to have way more body awareness if we actually want to be able to handle our feelings much better.

Trevor: Once people are aware of the physical feeling in their body, do you feel like that just helps people move past it? As you were saying you have mastery over it because you have that physical connection with it or is there another step that people have to do beyond that?

Joan: It’s a great question. The awareness is the first part, the staying present to the feeling is the second part. My sense is that if we don’t stay present to the feeling and actually go through it, it’s like to feel the bummed outness, to feel the disappointment, whatever it is then we don’t get the insight that comes with moving through the feeling. I want people to stay present to what they’re experiencing long enough that they actually then are able to access the insight that can come then it’s taking the insight and doing one of three things with it. It’s either making a decision with it, it’s expressing yourself or it’s taking an action.

Trevor: Can you give me an example of insight that somebody might have if they go through this process?

Joan: Sure. Let’s think of, relationship challenges are probably the most common experience that people have and let’s say you’re dating somebody and that person says they’re doing to call and doesn’t or they say they’re going to do X and they don’t and that now that starts to be a repeated pattern and there’s a part of you that’s going I don’t trust this person, I don’t, whatever, but you don’t want to see it that way so you keep on avoiding that and pushing it aside and going oh, but I really love him or I really love her or whatever it might be and you keep dismissing the thing that you actually have awareness about.

Then it happens again and it’s just enough where you go, oh, wait a minute, I actually really don’t like this, in fact I’m actually pretty angry about it and so then what ends up happening is you take that anger and you go, I’ve got a decision to make here so what am I going to do, am I just going to cut this guy off or this woman off or am I going to say something, no, it’s important enough to me to say something so now you’re making decision with the information, you’re taking the anger that you’re allowing yourself to experience, you’re making decisions with the information and then the next step maybe to action which would be to either express yourself and go, hey bud or hey so and so, I really don’t like what’s happening here to effect change or you go, I’m done, I’m out.

You start to make use of the unpleasantness as knowledge if you will and so that’s how I would say the insight can then move into those three things.

Trevor: That’s great. I think a lot of times we, like you’re saying, you can ignore it, that’s one option but it tends, especially in relationships you just get more and more bitter or just dwell on it more or get more in this well, he must be having an affair or all these different things that can possibly go through your head, you’re making up stories instead of just saying okay, what am I going to do about this, I can’t just keep it in my head, I’ve got to move past it because it’s not a fun place to be. A lot of times you have the relationship and maybe the person actually has a really good excuse and then also it opens up a dialogue of say, oh, I didn’t realize that bothered you, let me communicate better with you about when my plans change or whatever that is and it opens up a dialogue or the person just says tough, that’s just how I am and then you’re like, okay, well I’m out.

Joan: Yeah, exactly but it takes us staying present to that unpleasantness to be able to access the rest of the information that we then need to act on or can use to act on. That’s how I would say it’s like then taking the information to apply it.

Trevor: Yeah, absolutely. It gets interesting, I want to go back to the different emotions. Can you name the eight ones again?

Joan: Hmm. Sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, vulnerability, embarrassment, disappointment and frustration.

Trevor: Now I noticed that you don’t have anxiety in that list of emotions.

Joan: I do not.

Trevor: You and I have talked about anxiety a little bit. I actually read your anxiety book. What’s the full title?

Joan: It’s called Ease your anxiety and it’s how to build confidence, emotional strength and self-esteem. I can’t even remember the ending title but confidence, emotional strength and inner peace, inner peace, that’s what it was.

Trevor: I actually, I took it with me, I went with my father to a doctor appointment, the doctor’s appointment that he had, he had to have a procedure done and I knew we were going to be there for a few hours so I took it with me and actually read it out loud to him during the appointment and it was really interesting. It was really great to go through all the different points of that but I know you have a unique take on anxiety so share with everybody why you don’t have anxiety in that list.

Joan: Okay, it’s a great question, I love that you did that and I’m curious about the end result but the, I think of anxiety broadly speaking as a cover for the unpleasant feelings. Think of anxiety as being kind of a secondary reaction and I [inaudible 00:27:57] it out several different ways. The first one is that it’s unexperienced and unexpressed feeling. What I will watch off is that people will be feeling something like anger for instance, or sadness or disappointment, the big three and they don’t want to express it the person they’re feeling it towards or there’s something going on and rather than expressing it when they shut it down now they’re covering the unpleasant feeling. When they shut it down and don’t express it it has to show up as something else. The energy and those reactions don’t go nowhere so then they start to feel like the anxious feelings in our body.

You can think of it as unexperienced and unexpressed feeling. You can think of anxiety as a cover or a distraction from the eight unpleasant feelings. I tie this idea of the eight unpleasant feelings to the notion of being capable and resourceful, feeling capable, I’m sorry. I would say that when someone moves away from those unpleasant feelings and they feel anxious then they’re not feeling capable in the world. There’s many different ways for me to talk about it.

Trevor: It’s interesting because how many times do we say that? We say, I’m feeling anxious or you hear people say, oh, I’ve got so much anxiety about this, it’s something that we use a lot and generalized anxiety disorder is a diagnosis that therapists give pretty regularly but so what does that mean then?

Joan: It means that we have a lot of people who are dismissing their true feelings. I actually think there’s two diagnosis that I would challenge and I realize this is going to be me be a little provocative today but to your point about generalized anxiety I think that most mental health professionals don’t make the distinctions that I make and as a result we have those “disorders”. Frantically I think a lot of depression is … People get identified with depression and I think most of that, a great percentage of that, there’s no way for me to put numbers on it is actually people disconnected from their true selves or disconnected from their real feelings then if they were accessing those real feelings the depression would go away. The same is true for the anxiety, that if they were accessing their real feelings this generalized anxiety disorder would disappear.

The thing that I would invite people to do based on what you said is to ask themselves just a couple of questions and that is if you were to think that based on you watching this interview or this Skype conversation that I was in your head and I said well, if I took all the words for anxiety away from you what would you really be feeling? Dial your thinking into that question and let yourself really go to that place within yourself and not let yourself just call it anxiety, instead allow yourself to go deeper and see if you can identify and use one of the eight, one or more of the eight feelings, that’s all you have to do. Don’t make it complicated and watch what happens because I think people really know the truth.

Trevor: Yeah, absolutely. To go back to your book, me reading it to my dad, it was funny because it was the book I just had put in my suitcase because I knew I was going to be interviewing and I wanted to read some of your work and so I just grabbed it on my way to the doctor’s appointment, didn’t really think about the fact that this was a very relevant topic for him and so I asked my dad, how was that for reading it to you and he said well, it’s really interesting, it’s definitely a good distraction and we created some humor around it so it ended up working out really well.

The doctor thought it was really bizarre that I was doing this but it the way I reframed it, I would read just parts of it, I didn’t read the whole thing but I read parts of it and I said here are the really practical parts of it, let’s talk about breathing and awareness so some of the things that you talk about. I don’t want to give away all the things in your book because I think people should read it but is there anything you want to share from that book since I brought it up?

Joan: Really the essence of it is that if people get the book what they should understand is when I reference the unpleasant feelings in the book I’m actually talking about those eight that I’ve named here and the other is really, if you want to cut it to the core so use the question if I were to no longer use the word anxiety and anything else that smacks of anxiety like apprehensive or scared or whatever then or frightened, because you can’t use those words either then it [inaudible 00:33:51] what they’re really feeling then stay present to the feeling, one choice, eight feelings, 90 seconds and then watch what happens because more information is going to come to you and you’re going to end up feeling so much more comfortable in your own skin and it’s like that’s what we all want. The more we stay true to what’s really going on for us the happier and healthier we become, period, end of story.

Trevor: Right, and that’s emotional mastery, right?

Joan: That is emotional mastery, yeah.

Trevor: Well Joan it’s been such a pleasure interviewing you today. Tell people how they can find you and we’ll be sure to share whatever links you share with us, we’ll be sure to share them on the website.

Joan: Sure, the easiest and most straightforward is doctorjoanrossenberg.com and it’s all one word and then I’m on Twitter with the same handle, Facebook I believe the same handle, LinkedIn, probably the same handle, it might be different on LinkedIn and then people, there’s two TED talks, there’s a TED talk that centers around this very topic and there’s a second TED talk that’s centered around what should be called the unexpected riches of grief which is something I call disguised grief so people can take a look at those on, both of those are on YouTube.

If people want there’s, on my website there’s a place for them to access some smaller portion of the book, the Ease your anxiety book, there’s a kind of an opt in if you will.

Trevor: Where can people get your book? See you have multiple [inaudible 00:35:31]

Joan: I think Amazon is probably the easiest.

Trevor: Okay, great, fantastic. Alright, thank you so much Joan, I really appreciate it.

Joan: You bet, thanks so much Trevor.

Trevor: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Joan Rosenberg. To learn more about Dr. Rosenberg you can go to the spadoctor.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there and while you’re there I invite you to join the Spa Doctor community. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss any upcoming shows. If you haven’t done so already I recommend that you get your customized skin report at theskinquiz.com. It’s free, takes just a few moments and you’ll find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com.

Also I invite you to join me on social media on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube and join the conversation with us and I’ll see you next time on the Spa Doctor podcast.

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Chinese Medicine, Your Health and Your Skin with Brodie Welch

December 21, 2017 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

I invited today’s guest on today to help you understand Chinese medicine and how it fits in with other integrative health modalities. We also discuss what your body, including your skin tells you from a Chinese Medicine prospective. My guest today is Brodie Welch, a Licensed Acupuncturist, board-certified herbalist, Chinese Medicine expert, group coach, and self-care strategist. She’s the founder of Life in Balance Acupuncture in Corvallis, Oregon.

In addition to her clinical practice, Brodie helps caring, high-achieving, women put themselves on their own to-do lists so they can trade stress and burnout for energy, joy, and vibrant health. She has helped thousands of clients improve their digestion, sleep, and mood; dial in a regular body-mind practice, and step into the next version of themselves. She’s also the creator and host of A Healthy Curiosity: the podcast that explores what it takes to be well in a busy world.

Today, we cover what Chinese Medicine is, what it can tell you about your health and skin, how to incorporate it into your healthcare and daily practices, and how to find a Chinese medicine practitioner.

So please enjoy this interview…

To learn more about Brodie Welch, L.Ac., M.S.O.M., go to https://brodiewelch.com

And here are some more helpful resources from Brodie:

Get your Calm and Centered Bundle (Includes a 5 minute meditation and standing qi gong): Click Here

What’s Your Chinese Element? Take the QUIZ

Listen to Brodie’s Podcast on iTunes

TRANSCRIPTION:

Trevor: Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re talking about Chinese medicine. I invited today’s guest on to help you understand Chinese medicine, and how it fits in with other modalities and practices. We also discussed what your body, including your skin, tells you from a Chinese medicine perspective, which is quite different but very valuable information.

My guest today is Brodie Welch. She is a licensed acupuncturist, board-certified herbalist, Chinese medicine expert, group coach, and self-care strategist. She’s the founder of Life in Balance Acupuncture in Corvallis, Oregon. In addition to her clinical practice, Brodie helps caring high-achieving women put themselves on their own to-do list, so they can trade stress and burnout for energy, joy and vibrant health. She has helped thousands of clients improve their digestion, sleep and mood, dial in regular body and mind practice and step in to the next version of themselves. She’s also a creator and host of A Healthy Curiosity, the podcast that explores what it takes to be well in a busy world.

Today, we cover what is Chinese medicine, how to incorporate Chinese medicine into your healthcare and daily practices, and even how to find a Chinese medicine practitioner for you. Please enjoy this interview.

Brodie, it’s so great to have you on my podcast. Welcome!

Brodie: I’m really happy to be here.

Trevor: Yeah, good. Today, we’re talking about Chinese medicine. I think it’s fascinating to talk about Chinese medicine. I think Chinese medicine is such a complimentary part of when you’re working with a healthcare team, especially people that have a health condition or a skin issue or whatever they’re struggling with, it’s nice to have a healthcare team of different people that compliment each other. Chinese medicine is definitely one of those things I think compliments naturopathic medicines, functional medicine, as well as even conventional medicine. That could be a nice balance approach of complimenting these different modalities.

Brodie: I couldn’t agree more. It’s really that no one lens that you look through has a monopoly on the truth. And so the more you can see yourself through more than perspective at that Chinese medicine’s real strength is just being able to look at your [inaudible 00:02:18] through the lens of energetics. Yeah, it’s totally compatible with anything else that you might be doing for your health.

Trevor: Yeah. Let’s talk about what … let’s start very fundamental basics here.

Brodie: Sure.

Trevor: What is Chinese medicine?

Brodie: Chinese medicine is one of the oldest, continuously practiced systems of medicine on the planet. Ayurvedic medicine from India and Chinese medicine are kind of like arm wrestling for the title of who’s been around the longest. But basically, we’ve got evidence that where our textbooks go back over 2,000 years, and our oral tradition goes back at least 3,000 years that it’s been practiced in China. Essentially, it’s system of philosophy that human beings are ecosystems, and that we’re connected with the ecosystem outside of us, and that basically, in order to create health, is all about creating balance in the body. A balance between Yin and Yang. A balance between hot and cold. A balance between all of the different energies of the different organ systems of the body. Mind, body and spirit with a massive emphasis on being able to prevent health problems before they turn into bigger ones.

It has a few different branches. Probably people are familiar with acupuncture as the sexiest branch of Chinese medicine. But there’s also Chinese herbal medicine, which essentially is like doing the same job as an acupuncture treatment, but something that you can do every day on your self, multiple times a day that these recipes that have been passed down through the ages are designed to correct an overall imbalance in the body, not just aim at a particular symptom. There’s herbs, and of course, on that continuum, herbs are basically the strong food, so we can use diet to get balance or take ourselves out of balance and lifestyle. What we’re doing in our daily lives has a massive effect on how we feel, and contributes either in a medicinal way or not so medicinal way to whatever imbalances are present.

Then we also have exercise, and by that, the Chinese did not mean pumping iron and running marathons. They meant cultivating the chi, cultivating the life force through practices like qigong, which is energy exercise, energy cultivation. Probably people are familiar with tai chi, and that sort of the martial arts version of qigong. Cultivating energy for the purposes of fighting somebody off is a little different that cultivating energy for the purposes of self-healing or for expanding into the energetic realms that the sages and daos masters had access to.

There is herbs, there’s body work. Basically, you can use, there’s something magic about a needle. The magic is in the point, like the body has an intelligence, and so an acupoint, a place where an acupuncturist plant a needle is like a portal of consciousness. And so if you access that portal, you can do it with yourself. You’re just like pressing on a point using thumb pressure or finger pressure; massaging the channels, the meridians that we call them where energy runs through the body like little highways all over the place. You can use that access that with body work. You can access it with an essential oil. You can access it by meditating on it. There’s so many ways of dealing with the energy of the body.

Acupuncture is kind of like if you’re pressing on a keyboard and you’re typing different letters, like you could spell a word or you can press all at once, like control + alt + delete, and that will do something very different than pressing those keys sequentially. There is something really special about acupuncture versus the other ways of accessing points that makes it particularly interesting.

But in any case, all of those are branches of Chinese medicine. Some people might even include things like feng shui or the energy of the environment having an impact on the energy of the individual, and also meditation.

Trevor: Great. These are all part of what’s used. Also Chinese medicine has a different way. When somebody goes to see a Chinese medicine practitioner, and I would love for you to explain what to look for for a Chinese medicine practitioner, but also the diagnostic tools, what you use to figure out what kind of practice to have. In naturopathic medical school, we get some Chinese medicine courses, so I know a little bit about this, so I know to ask you. I know when we did these classes, it was very different from what is traditionally done to find out what’s really going on with someone’s body.

I’m sorry, I just asked you two questions in one. You can answer them in whichever order you want.

Brodie: Sure. It sounds like you’d like me to explain a little bit about how did the practitioner know what to do with somebody. [crosstalk 00:06:54]. All right. There’s a lot of similarities between seeing a functional medicine practitioner or a naturopathic practitioner in that we ask the 10,000 questions, like lengthy intake form that we want to know about the health of every single system with the body, because things can be tied together in ways that you might not have any ability to project if you’re just looking at yourself from the Western perspective. In other words, when we assess the health of different organ systems, we’re interested not only in what we’re experiencing in that system of the body, but also in the emotions, also in the mind, the overall experience.

The more information someone can give me about she’s experiencing herself, the better I can treat her. And so the idea is that we ask a lot of question; we also ask the body in the form of we look at the tongue, and we take the pulse. We take the pulse not just for the rate to get a sense of how fast the heart is beating, but there’s actually three different positions at three different depths on each side of the radial artery at the wrist. A practitioner will feel at the wrist and will listen at three different depths of pressure. That so on the right side, we’ve got the heart and small intestine, the liver, gall bladder, the kidney and bladder; and on the left side, we have the long, large intestine, stomach and spleen, and also the pericardium and triple burner. These are sort of other organ systems that are a little less familiar.

We use the idea of what’s the quality of the pulse like. Is it tight like a guitar string? Is it wiry like it’s a stressed out, tensed pulse? Or is it just a lazy pulse? Or is it an empty pulse? Is there not very much energy to the person? Or is it beating really fast? We try to get an image from the pulse and get a sense of the relative strength and weakness of the different organ systems that we’re assessing.

Similarly, we’re probably the only people in the world who are psyched to see your tongue. So yeah, may I see your tongue please. People usually get a little tongue shy and start explaining what they had for breakfast, and really it’s okay. We’re able to look at the color, the coating, the moisture, and the shape of the tongue. That tells us … It’s like our MRI or X-ray or a way of figuring out what’s going on with the internal organ systems.

The tongue is representative in terms of where things show up. There is, like the heart, is at the very tip. The kidneys are at the back. The digestive system is in the middle. Liver, gall bladder on the side. You can just a quick sense of looking at your own tongue at like what areas might be challenged in various ways, and how you might tell us if the color is really different in that area. If it’s pale; if it’s purple; if it’s bright red. If there is a coating that’s very thick and you can’t see the color of the tongue underneath it, or if the coating is non-existent or patchy. Whether the tongue body is swollen and has little scallops like teeth marks around the edges; or whether it has a crack in the surface. All these different ways of assessing what’s going on in the ecosystem in front of me.

And then of course, we look at the person’s face. We look at the coloring of the face. We look at the shen or the spirit that shines from the eyes. We look at how they’re holding themselves. And we listen to the quality of the words behind the words, like the tone of voice that someone’s using, whether it’s introduced with laughter or singing or whining or groaning, whatever it tells us a little bit about what’s going on for that person deep down.

Traditionally, smelling was another useful diagnostic tool. We don’t quite use that so much in modern practice because people bathe.

Trevor: Right, people bathe [crosstalk 00:10:35] and we also use fragrances and different things, essential oils …

Brodie: Exactly, right. That tends to be the least useful method of diagnosis. But the most important thing is to get a sense of all the different pieces and aspects of the person’s lifestyle as well as what they’re experiencing in all different systems of their body. We put all the signs together and then we palpate the body. We’ll check for tenderness at different points. A lot of times, that also gives us a sense of where energy is too much, and where it’s not enough. From there, we go to building a treatment plan that is a suggestion about how the body might come back into balance. Usually, again, if there’s qi that’s stagnating in a certain area, you want to get it to flow freely. If there’s not enough energy or qi in a particular organ system, we want to support it or supplement it. Or if there’s too much in another area, we want to disperse that and vent it.

It’s basically like looking at a garden and thinking how do we get all the plants in the garden to thrive as opposed to just looking at them as individuals. We think about does, overall, this garden need more sunlight, more shade? Do we need to pull some weeds? Do we need to add some better quality soil? What is it going to take for this whole being to really just be its most vibrant self?

Trevor: Yes, perfect. Thank you for explaining that. And then with after your name, you have LACMSOM. Explain to everybody what those letters mean.

Brodie: Sure. The licensure for acupuncturist varies state by state, in terms of what we might be titled. I have the same education as someone who is a doctor of oriental medicine, if they happen to be practicing in New Mexico, for example, because that’s the state a word entitle. But I am merely a licensed acupuncturist here in Oregon, which is a title that I don’t really care if I’m being called a doctor or not. It bothers me that it sort of obscures. The title acupuncturist obscures the fact that I do herbs and qigong and lifestyle and diet counseling, all these other goodness that is wrapped up in the oriental medicine. Very un-PC term, but that actually is masters of science in oriental medicine is what those other letters are.

An acupuncturist who has gone to school for Chinese medicine, typically, has about a 3,000-hour master’s degree, with about 1,000 clinical hours. In some states, it’s just good to know that sometimes doctors or chiropractors or physical therapists even are allowed to do needle insertion like acupuncture with like a weekend workshop’s worth of training. It’s not necessarily the same thing as you might get from someone who has deeply studied this medicine that is 3,000 years old and has changed over time. And has obviously, a whole, like within Chinese medicine, there’s so many subsystems and deep ways of practicing that are very different from one another. And so really, just Chinese medicine alone is many lifetimes of study.

Trevor: That’s true. I wanted to explain that because I know what my … At naturopathic schools, a lot of them have dual degree programs where you can also get a master’s degree in oriental medicine, become a licensed acupuncturist. So I have a lot of friends that were going through the school. I know how much work is involved in that program, and just to be able to tell what to look for when you’re looking for a Chinese medicine practitioner. So I wanted to make sure that we mention that. If you see somebody that’s a doctor that says they do acupuncture, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve gone through the same amount of training. It’s just good to know people’s background. Ask questions. [crosstalk 00:13:58]

Brodie: It’s really good to ask questions, exactly. And a good resource for people if you are wanting to find a qualified practitioner of Chinese medicine, you can go to the National Certification Organization’s website, which is nccaom.org, and you can do a find a practitioner by zip code. People on that website, they’re either going to be certified in acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, or oriental medicine, which encompasses the bio-medicine piece, the herbs, and the acupuncture, all three.

Trevor: Perfect. All right, thank you. I want to talk about skin and the messages that you pick up from skin, because it is similar in a way to what I do in that we look at skin as giving us information about a person’s health. My followers know, my audience know as I talk about skin is our magic mirror. It gives us great information about our health. From a Chinese medicine perspective, how do you use skin as gaining information about your clients or patients?

Brodie: Well so many ways. First off, looking just at the color of the person’s face, skin color or ethnicity aside. We’re looking at is there a shine to the face? Is there a certain level of radiance? Or is there a dull quality? If there is that sort of dull quality, we might need to nourish the blood. If it’s shiny but pale, we might need to nourish the qi. If it’s very red, maybe the person has too much heat overall in their ecosystem. If there’s specific patches of redness that can indicate that there’s inflammation in a particular system; or that, just like in allopathic medicine, the skin is an organ of detoxification, as well as one of protection.

And so we want to make sure that, for example, if someone is constantly breaking out, like around their eyes, for example, that we associate the eyes with liver in Chinese medicine. We could look at like what’s their liver trying to push to the surface by giving them that redness around the eyes. Or if someone has redness around the mouth, like perioral dermatitis. The mouth is the organ that connects with the digestive system. It’s the opening of the digestive canal. We think about is there something in this person’s diet that is creating inflammation. Or if the person has a lot of acne, for example, where there is something that’s raised and red, but also something that’s postural or that has substance to it really. It’s not just flat against the skin, but there’s a raise aspect to it. That a lot of times indicates that the person is dealing with what we call dampness. Dampness, I like to think of is like this fog in the body, or it’s like residue.

Even if you’re eating totally beautiful food, like all-organic green smoothie yumminess all the time, if you are not digesting well, you’re going to be leaving behind a residue that the body isn’t sure what to do with. It’s going to try to vent it to the skin, or it might store it as nasal congestion, or it might stick it somewhere just like [inaudible 00:17:10], some sort of little useless blob that gangs up the works and gets in the way of us feeling vital; and gets in the way of us optimizing our energy.

If someone is dealing with issues that are raised or have any sort of full quality to them, that we could look at is this person digesting optimally, and are they giving themselves proper nutrition, because that’s the other thing, too. Your digestive system could be rock-solid, but if you’re giving it Cheetos, potato chips and doughnuts all day long, then it very well could be that the body is trying to put this out through the skin. Keep the internal organs happy.

Trevor: Great. And then also heat, internal heat shows up a lot on the skin, too.

Brodie: Yeah, it sure does. Anything red and rashy. Anything itchy. A lot of times, we’ll look at is there heat coming from somewhere in the body. That heat could be emotional heat like irritability or rage. We consider a form of liver heat. It could be nightmares or anxiety. Those could be more heat in the heart, heat affecting the heart. A lot of times, an easy way to tell if you have heat in the heart is just to get your tongue, and if the tip is very red, it’s very likely that you’ve been dealing with what we call … not saying that there’s anything wrong with your heart organ itself, but the things that the heart or the consciousness is responsible for. Her ability to focus, concentrate, maintain calm emotions, to get enough rest, that might be too much heat in the heart system that could be leading to inflammation overall.

Liver heat, we just see so often in our culture because we live in such a toxic world, where we’re exposed to chemicals, and we’re constantly being assaulted by chemicals all the time. Our livers and our kidneys have to filter those out. Plus we add things like alcohol or caffeine that tends to heat up our livers energetically. Or even spicy food can create too much internal heat.

Making sure that if we are exposed to a lot of toxins that we’re also detoxifying our body with lots of green leafy things, things that involve a cooling quality dietarily. Just as we think about food as containing fats, carbs, proteins, vitamins and minerals, it also contains heating or cooling properties. Those are really a lot of times very intuitive like most of us aren’t craving a hot chocolate on a hot summer day, and most of us are also not craving ice cream in the middle of winter necessarily. That there are some things that we know that are irrespective of the temperature to reserve that are going to have an overall heating or an overall cooling effect on the body.

And so making sure that we’re eating a balance of the Yin and Yang, the heating and the cooling, the building and the dispersing. All of that is something that we all need to think about. And that balance is going to look different depending on who you are, what else you have going on physically, what else you have going on in your life, what stage of life you’re in, all kinds of things.

Trevor: Yeah, perfect. Well thanks for sharing that. I want to clarify something that I think can be a little bit confusing with Chinese medicine. When you’re talking, you were talking the skin, you’re talking about the pulse and the tongue; and you’re talking about the spleen, liver, stomach, kidneys, but it is different. It’s not exactly like if you feel a weak kidney pulse, it doesn’t necessarily mean that someone’s kidneys are weak, but comes along with it, but it can mean. It’s little bit confusing, so can you help us have some understanding around that or what exactly that means, so people don’t just go, “Oh, if I see this or I feel this, that means …” I mean really what it means that you need to go see a Chinese medicine practitioner [crosstalk 00:20:50], but …

Brodie: You’re curious about that. Like what you’re talking about is that a really common area of confusion. I like to think about our internal organs as having mystical powers. Our liver that we know and love, this organ that sits under the ribcage on the right side of the body that’s responsible for cleaning our blood, and helping us digest fat and all that. That’s our liver with a lowercase l. So that’s your lowercase l liver. Our capital L liver is all that and more. It does all of the same stuff pretty much, except in Chinese medicine, it’s also connected with a taste, a season of the year, color, an emotion.

All of that relates to like, if I can explain a little bit about five-element theory, I think that this can help put into perspective for people. If everything in the body is energy, it becomes really hard to talk about it. It’s like if it’s all just qi, we need to subdivide that into various categories. One way that we subdivide it is to talk about yin qi and yang qi. Yin is like the cooling, the restful, the moistening, the nourishing. And the yang is the active, heating, warming, protective, transforming. We need both, obviously, in order to function.

And then if you were to refract light through a prism, so if the qi is light, and you refract that light through a prism, it can separate out into the colors of the rainbow. Similarly, we can subdivide qi in the body as having to do with each of the different organ systems, which we throw in under the different elemental headings. We can talk about wood, fire, earth, metal, and water as elements of nature that are also elements in the body. And so for example, we’re talking about the liver.

The liver is part of the element of the wood type, the wood phase, the wood element. In the wood element, it relates to the season of spring where new little shoots and leaves and trees are busting up out of the grounds. The direction of the wood element is upward and outward. Upward and outward energy is the same direction as anger. When we get angry, we get big. We want to stand up for ourselves. We want to be powerful. That’s what anger does. In addition to upward and outward energy, it has to do with creativity. There is that aspect of the liver that has to do with, “What do want to create in the world? What do we want to strive towards? What are our goals?”

The liver connects with the eyes. As I mentioned before, impurities that are coming out around the eyes in the form of redness. But the liver is also about the vision. What vision do we have for our lives, for our selves?

Our gall bladder is about the courage to decide. It’s actually make decisions and move in that direction. If we go back to five-element theory, it corresponds with the season of the spring. In the spring, when you taste fruit, it’s not quite ripe yet, it’s usually sour. The taste that correlates with the liver is sour, which is why like liver tonics, having a little hot water with lemon in the morning, or having a little apple cider vinegar to rinse the liver, to get it to pretty [inaudible 00:23:53], to get it to help detoxify the body. Those are such great ways of cleansing. We think about the little bit of a taste of sour is good for the liver. A lot is going to stress out the liver, so you don’t want too much of that.

For this upward/outward energetics, the energy of new, fresh life in the spring, the taste of sour, the color green that resonates with the wood elements, pretty much anything green and leafy is going to be good for your liver; it’s going to help the liver. And so we can start to see these correspondences that are not arbitrary. They’re connected with an energetic understanding of the world around us with natural cycles and with the cycles in the body. Does that help?

Trevor: Yeah, that definitely helps. Then there are also meridians in the body that helps you with the acupuncture points and body work too, working with the different organ systems.

Brodie: Yeah, exactly. If you’re wondering like how do we actually affect the health of the physical liver, we can, but we don’t stick needles in the physical liver because that would be crazy. What we do instead is that in Chinese medicine, we’ve identified the pathways of energy that run through our major organs and really through everywhere, like our shoulders, our backs, in places that we might have muscle tension. Basically, how an acupuncturist might see that is we consider, “Okay, what systems are involved here? What channels are involved here?”

If your liver is affected and you’re wanting to help your liver, we’re going to use points on the liver channel very likely. Of course, many other points that could clear heat or nourish yang, or whatever it is that’s out of balance. But if we’re wanting to talk to the liver directly, the liver has a pathway. When you go into an acupuncturist office and you can see a chart of lines all over the body, those are access points on the surface that we use, that connect deeper with the internal organs.

And so each point on the channel, there’s 365 classical points on the channels that are names through the organs. Of course, there’s extra points everywhere and tiny little microsystems, like we can use the ear, the hand or the feet, or the scalp, the face for that matter. Any system can be a microsystem for the whole body because we are fractile beings. We live in this universe where if it’s out there, it’s in here, and if it’s in here, it’s in here, that we can get smaller and smaller with it.

We can look to a meridian to find points on the channel that do a particular job, that send a particular message. Pretty much they correlate one to one, like the heart is the heart, as we know and love it. The only weird one really is the spleen, where I think they were aiming at pancreas, because it has to do with the spleen and stomach are like the captains of the digestive team. Obviously, the pancreas regulating blood sugar, and secreting insulin, keeping our blood sugar regular. That’s certainly a function that we would associate with the spleen system in Chinese medicine.

Other than that, like the lungs are the lungs. The kidneys are the kidneys. The bladder is the bladder, just these kinds of things. But there’s usually a broader conception of it as well. As I mentioned, there’s a sense organ that connects with every organ. There’s a particular layer of tissue that connects with every organ. The skin, for example, has to do with the lungs. And so having issues on your skin doesn’t necessarily mean that you have issues with your lungs, because again, we can look at it in all these different ways about what is it telling us.

What the lungs have in common with the skin is that it’s the most vulnerable to invasion by the outside world. Just like we take in oxygen, we take it directly into our nose and it hits our lungs, that any barriers in between that our skin is also likewise exposed to the outside world. And both the lungs and the skin have a process of keeping us safe from what might screw up our ecosystem from the outside. In that sense, there is a connection between the health of the skin and our immune system, and our ability to fend off things like colds and flus that are coming at us through the air.

Trevor: Yeah, perfect. I always think the bottoms of the feet, in reflexology, are a good place to get it, if somebody wanted to get a feeling for points that correlate to different areas, that that could be a good place to start. Because learning the whole, it’s a lot of points. I always feel like the bottoms of the feet, massaging certain points, it can be a safe place to start if somebody wants to start learning about this. What do you think?

Brodie: I think that the feet are really accessible way of talking to the whole body at once. At the same time, I just encourage people to do self-massage, just check out, like how does my neck feel, how does my shoulders feel. If you find a really interesting spot, that can also be a way to learn. Just go look it up. For example, we’ve been talking about the liver, so we’ll keep talking about the liver here for a minute.

The liver and gall bladder are a yin-yang pair. They’re like a husband and wife team. The main job that the liver has in Chinese medicine is the free flow of emotions and the free flow, in general, of energy around the body. The number one enemy of liver qi flow is stress and doing too much, and not having enough time to process all that we’re feeling and experiencing in our daily life. A lot of times, what will happen when the liver qi gets stagnant is that we feel it in its yang partner, the gall bladder’s area. The gall bladder goes right up through the shoulders and to the back of the head. That chronic neck and shoulder tension, the chronic migraines, the chronic, sort of like energy rising to the upper part of the body and getting stuck, can have everything to do with stress and this liver/gall bladder relationship.

A lot of times, just finding the stuff that’s sore and massaging it and working it out can be a really great way of just experiencing what channels might be involved for you. Yeah, I’m just a big fan of getting your hands on your body and getting curious.

Trevor: Perfect. Yeah, our body gives us a lot of information that we can use just like our skin gives us information. I’d love to talk just a couple of minutes about Chinese herbs. Do you have some tips on that? Because I know that there are some concerns about purity of Chinese herbs, quality, there’s such a variety, because a lot of these come from China. There are concerns about and even in California, the herbs have to have special labels on them, because of concerns about heavy metal toxicity. Anything you want to share about Chinese herbs and what to look for?

Brodie: First off, I want to dispel any unnecessary fear because everything that you’re mentioning is true of any supplement, like we don’t know where it’s coming from, it’s like then [inaudible 00:30:28]. But that said … and the thing that’s particularly concerning about Chinese medicine coming from China, it’s a total integrated system. If you go to a hospital, for example, and you have a sprained ankle, you might well get acupuncture, and then be x-rayed and sent home with whatever; or you might be given a prescription to the herbal pharmacy and that would be filled for you.

Sometimes, in terms of the pills and bottles, like they ready-made formulas that people take, that in China, it’s legal for them to mix pharmaceutical ingredients with herbal ingredients. For example, treating a common colds, you might get something that has an over-the-counter cold medicine and Chinese herbal medicine combined in one, and we definitely don’t allow that here in the United States. But that said, there’s plenty of really excellent and reputable suppliers of Chinese medicine that adhere to good manufacturing practices, who do their due diligence with heavy metal testing, and can provide you with that information.

It’s just one of those and usually somebody like me, it’s like the herbs I carry in my clinic, I don’t want anything on my shelves that’s going to hurt somebody. Usually, going to a Chinese medicine practitioner, it’s their livelihood and their reputation that is very much intertwined with the quality of their herbal products, so it’s not the kind of thing that I would buy at Whole Foods. It’s not the kind of thing that I would just pick up and self-prescribe. Again, because your colds may be different than somebody else’s colds, which is based on the fact that we differentiate everything. Literally, the right thing for you could be the wrong thing for someone else.

There are certainly, just like anything, just like with food, there’s going to be some things that are certainly beneficial for certain conditions, and just merely okay for others. But there could be some things that are actively not a good idea to do. You definitely do want to. It can be an incredibly powerful medicine. Let’s not forget that pharmaceuticals prescribes properly for the condition that they are intended for is tied with stroke as the number four killer in the United States, according to the CDC numbers. And so if we just look at adverse effects from herbs versus adverse effects from drugs, it’s just like a handful compared to this massive problem that we’re experiencing.

I really want to empower people to recognize that Chinese herbal medicine, these recipes that have been around for thousands of years. And now we have ways of … we have even more information as people are getting curious about the power of herbs to heal the body that there’s even more information out there about what these things might be good for, and who it might not be a good idea for. But always, like anything, check with your practitioner. Just know that there’s this whole world of potential support that can be available to you for pretty cost-effective rates, because just going to see a practitioner is going to be about twice as much as a month worth of an herb formula, for example.

Trevor: Yeah. One of the things, one of the big root causes behind skin issues, or one of the big things that I oftentimes see in my practice is hormone imbalances. I think of Chinese medicine as being really helpful for a number of different hormonal imbalance issues. Anywhere from fertility issues to menstrual irregularities, painful [inaudible 00:33:44], PCOS, cyst, those fibroids, those are some of the things that I have seen in my personal practice, what I’ve referred out to Chinese medicine practitioners to see some of the greatest results. I mean, I’m just mentioning this because I have seen how powerful it can be in that area. I don’t know if you want to add anything to that.

Brodie: Oh yeah, thank you so much for mentioning that. Yes, all of those things and more, especially menopause, like impairing menopause. When things start getting wonky and you don’t necessarily know if bioidentical hormones are the route that you want to take, Chinese medicine can be amazing. Plus, just remembering that there’s this amazing interplay between the stress hormones and the sex hormones. And so anytime women are feeling out of balance with their cycle or with their fertility, or with menopausal transition, that it’s an invitation to look deeper at what’s going on with adrenaline and cortisol, and what’s going on with insulin, and what’s going on just with all of our hormones in the body, thyroid, everything.

A lot of times, you could go micro and try to figure out what exactly is out of balance, and maybe if I tinker with this and I give myself a little extra of this that I’ll feel better. Or you could pan back and say, “What all of these things have in common?” If you look through the lens of Chinese medicine, a lot of times it can be pretty simple and take really just a couple of months to really turn things around that have been a problem for a while. Yeah, incredible medicine.

And then of course, things that we can often prescribe for someone to be doing on their own in terms of lifestyle or breathing, or meditation, or just these things that Chinese medicine practitioners are often trained in that we can help empower you to take care of yourself when things feel crazy.

Trevor: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. I just wanted to bring that up about some of them are [inaudible 00:35:33]. I’m glad you brought that about menopause because women going through menopause, everyone goes through differently. And so having something that’s very customized as a treatment plan I think is very helpful for us. Of course, Chinese medicine is very customized to the person and that’s great.

Another thing that I found to be really helpful when it comes to Chinese medicine is pain management. I know that if I get a headache, the fastest thing to relieve a headache for me is acupuncture. It is fantastic at helping with pain management, and then also some of the Chinese herbs that go along with it that have definitely helped a lot of people in pain. We certainly want to avoid the prescription pain medications as much as possible, because of the addiction issues, the side effects. So any time we can think of things that can compliment or help us with managing pain, certainly something I definitely want to bring up to people’s awareness.

Brodie: Oh yeah. That is the bread and butter of my practice, these people in pain, where they don’t necessarily want to take pain killers of any kinds for the rest of their life, and maybe they don’t want to have a surgery. So what’s left? It’s like what’s left is how we use our bodies, and so being able to use them, making sure that we’re getting a balance of yin and yang activities. If we’re doing all sorts of hard strength training that we’re balancing that with softening practices like stretching and opening, things like yoga and qigong.

Also, acupuncture is phenomenal at basically anything that ends in -itis, like anything that is painful, anything that is inflamed. It works on so many levels. With just a few of those ways it can help the body. It releases the body’s own neurotransmitters and feel-good chemicals. Our endocannabinoid system, are natural chemicals that are like our endogenous morphine and like endogenous marijuana. They can help us feel like we’re in less pain, and like we’re more mellow. At the same time, it can also be very energizing.

Acupuncture can put the nervous system in the state of rest and repair that needs to be, and to heal. It can also affect our perception of pain by influencing adenosine levels. It just changes how we perceive pain. It’s profoundly anti-inflammatory. It can even speed the healing of injuries and even old chronic stuff, because we’re getting the body’s attention. We’re saying, “Hey, you weren’t quite done with this. Put the energy here. Put it in the lower back. Let’s get this healed. Let’s get this, once and for all, better.” And of course, if something has been going on for decades, it may take a while. You could say like give it … if something has been going for 10 years, maybe give it a year of treating every other week, or something like that.

You could be totally done with that pain for the rest of your life. There’s nothing that is too far gone necessarily to be benefited. I’ve treated people in their 80s with spinal stenosis, for example. They are able to stop walking with a cane, and to feel the bottoms of their feet again. It’s the kind of thing where like if you were to look at that x-ray, you would say there’s no hope for you. I just want to really open that door that like yeah, there are definitely conditions. We’re not really good at reattaching tendons that have been severed or things like that. For that, yeah, you’re going to need surgery.

If it makes sense, that if it’s the kind of thing that has all this other benefit for the whole rest of your body to go and get acupuncture and an opportunity to look in the mirror and get a sense of what’s out of balance in your body, then why not do that on regular basis as opposed to doing something invasive and risky?

Trevor: Right. Again, this brings us back to a full circle from the beginning of this as being part of one of the tools that people can have to help get their bodies back in balance, and to look at things like Chinese medicine before resorting to surgery. The earlier you look at this approach, the better, because the longer you wait, it’s harder to implement these things and get the full benefit of it.

Brodie, thank you so much for your information today. Tell everybody how they can find out more about you.

Brodie: First of all, thank you for having me back, Cates. This has been really fun. Yeah, I would love to stay in touch with anybody who is interested in learning more about Chinese medicine. I have a course on the basics of Chinese medicine that runs a couple of times a year. If people want help in using the habits of the yogis and sages in their daily life, I have group coaching programs. I have an online qigong class, and a podcast called A Healthy Curiosity. These are all things that you can check out at my website, which is brodiewelch.com, that’s Brodie with an I-E and Welch with a C-H.

Trevor: All right, perfect. We’ll have up links for your website and your podcast. We’ll have those up on my website under your podcast interview, so everybody can easily access them. Thank you so much for the interview today. I really appreciate your information.

Brodie: Thanks again.

Trevor: I hope you enjoy this interview today with Brodie. To learn more about her and the information that she shared with you and the links that she mentioned, just go to thespadr.com. Go to the podcast page with her interview, and you’ll find all the information and links there. While you’re there, I invite you to join The Spa Dr. community. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, so you don’t miss on our upcoming shows. If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you go to theskinquiz.com to find out what information your skin is trying to give you about your health and what you can do about it. It’s free online quiz. Just go to theskinquiz.com.

I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, and join the conversation with us. I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast

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Emotional Eating with Megan Buer

December 14, 2017 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

On today’s podcast we’re discussing emotional eating, sugar addiction, and emotional wellness tools.

We’ve all been there – reaching to snack or even overindulge in sweets or other treats that we don’t need but just can’t stop ourselves. So, that’s why I asked today’s guest to come on today… to better understand why we do this and how to stop.

My guest is Megan Buer. She is the founder of Harmony Restored, a company focused on helping individuals heal from the stress that is at the root of their physical and emotional pain. Megan is a certified Emotion Code Practitioner, author of two books on healing, a reiki healer, and mom to 3. After suffering from years with anxiety, panic disorder, chronic stress, food intolerances, adrenal fatigue, and an auto-immune disease, she went on a journey to health – spending over 10 years researching, experimenting, and finally figuring out all the unique tools she needed to naturally heal herself.

On today’s podcast, Megan shares why we crave and sometimes overindulge by emotional eating, how to stop the pattern with a simple technique and how to go even deeper to address underlying emotional issues. The trick here is to remember, you’re not alone in this and there are solutions. And once you address these emotional issues, many other aspects of your health and wellness can fall into place. This might be your missing piece.

So please enjoy this interview…

To learn more about Megan Buer: harmony-restored.com
Here is the free gift from Megan: Click Here!

TRANSCRIPT:

Trevor: Hi, there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re discussing emotional eating, sugar addiction, and emotional wellness tools. We’ve all been there, reaching out to snack or even overindulge in sweets or other treats that we know we don’t need, but we just can’t stop ourselves. So that’s why I asked today’s guest to come on so we can better understand why we do this and how to stop. My guest is Megan Buer. She is the founder of Harmony Restored, a company focused on helping individuals heal from the stress that is the root of their physical and emotional pain.

Megan is a certified emotion code practitioner, author of two books on healing, a reiki healer and mom of three kids. After suffering from years with anxiety, panic disorder, chronic stress, food intolerances, adrenal fatigue, and an autoimmune disease, she went on a journey to her health, spending over ten years researching, experimenting, and finally figuring out all the tools she needed to naturally heal herself. Now, she’s gone on to help other people about one on one and online.

On today’s podcast, Megan shares why we crave and sometimes overindulge, how to stop the pattern with a simple technique, and how to go even deeper to address underlying emotional issues. The trick here is to remember you’re not alone in this and there are solutions. Once you address these emotional issues, many other aspects of your health and wellness could actually fall into place. This actually might be your missing piece. Please enjoy this interview. Megan, it’s so great to have you on my podcast.

Megan: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Trevor: Yeah, absolutely. We’re talking today about emotional eating and sugar addiction, and emotional wellness tools to help us with this. What got you interested in this path?

Megan: It’s such an interesting story about ten years ago. Actually, it was Halloween and I had a two-year old at the time and I was about eight months pregnant with my daughter, and had been out, we were trick or treating. It was really fun, and then put him to bed, went to sleep, and then woke up about a half an hour later. What I know now is it was a total panic. I didn’t know what was happening now when I thought I was dying, and I woke my husband up. I said, “I’m dying. I don’t know what’s happening. Wake up Seth or son, I need to say goodbye. Get me to the emergency room.”

I had no idea what was going on. My son had just been diagnosed with autism. I think looking back now, I can look and say, “I was obviously under a lot of stress.” I went to the emergency room that night and the doctor basically gave me some saline and said, “Here’s the number to a suicide hotline. This is all on your head. Good luck.” I went home and at that point, I was so determined to figure out what was going on and what that was. I went down this whole rabbit hole of the alternative health and really threw myself into healing my son and healing myself, finally realizing it was a possibility before I hadn’t realize that was even a possibility.

What was interesting though in this story was that the more I dug and the more I cut out my diet and the more supplements I took, and cutting out toxins and doing all these things, seeing doctors and naturopaths, and the more I did, actually I got worse. Turned into adrenal fatigue, turned into a full blown panic disorder, turned into a Hashimoto’s diagnosis. Again, the whole time I’m thinking, I’m doing everything right, what’s going on? It was really, really frustrating, and got to a point where I was just laying on the couch. My kids are playing in front of me and my life is passing me by, and I could not figure out what was wrong with me. That’s really when I found this emotional work.

It was the one piece of that puzzle that I had never really explored before, because I was doing the food, and I was doing the supplements, and I was doing all of that, but I was so stressed out, and I was so overwhelmed, and I was so anxious. I just thought that stuff would go away once I felt better, but I had to heal that to feel better. I found the emotion code and I started doing that, and I started doing reiki, and EFT, and all these different tools to help me release the anxiety and release the underlying reasons why my body was not functioning properly, and help my son.

Again, and this whole time, I was totally addicted to sugar. I would eat this beautiful healthy meal like salmon, and sweet potatoes, and Brussels sprouts and then I would be like, “Okay, where’s my Ben & Jerry’s?” Because that was my way of coping. That was my way of handling all the rest of the stress. Finally, once I healed the stress, then the sugar addicted lifted, the anxiety lifted, and then really after some deep mindset work and emotional work within three months, my blood work was back to normal and my diagnosis was gone, so.

Trevor: Yeah.

Megan: Yeah.

Trevor: I’m so glad you’re sharing this story. It is something that I see a lot in my practice too is if we’re not taking care of ourselves emotionally, if we’re not taking care of this emotional component, then that’s such an important key piece of our health. A lot of times, we try and look around it, overlook it, just try and keep doing things with medicine or even like you said, you tried naturopathic medicine, but if you’re not addressing the emotional issues, you’re still craving sugar. You’re still going to be eating sugar. You’re still going to be making unhealthy choices, and that type of medicine is not going to do the magic it can if you haven’t addressed the emotional issues, because it will keep you spiraling into negative thought patterns, and imbalances in your neurochemistry. Then that all impacts your lifestyle choices.

It’s really great to have this conversation, because it reminds me back to why about, I think it was about six years ago, I was working and seeing patients you know, have naturopathic practice, and I would make recommendations for a weight loss program. I noticed that there were some people, most people, they did great on it, but there were some people that really struggled. They couldn’t give up their comfort foods, or they would say, “This is just so stressful for me.” I realized that there was this emotional component that if I couldn’t address that, these people were never going to get better.

What would happen is they would do better for a little while, and then they’d rebound and they gain the weight back, or they would start just binge-eating the food that they had been avoiding. That’s actually why I went back to school and got a master’s degree in spiritual psychology, because I kept seeing that in certain people and it’s not everybody. When there is an emotional component, it’s so powerful. We’ve got to address these things. It’s part of why I included in my book the section on clean mind of what can you do to manage your stress and address these mindset issues, the emotional issues. We have to talk about these things, and because there is such a huge part of our health.

I’m really glad that we’re talking about this today. Anyway, it’s tough when we have a journey like this and we learn these lessons, but at least you’re here now to help other people so they don’t have to struggle the same way, right?

Megan: Yes, exactly.

Trevor: All right. Let’s talk about these tools. Now, you work in a doctor’s office, right? So, you’re providing support to the patients that are in the doctor’s office to help them get through these emotional issues, which I love to see that. We really need a health team of people, healthcare team to take care of us. I love that you’re part of that team in the doctor’s office. Let’s talk about what you do for these patients to help them shift out of these issues.

Megan: Yeah. Each of these people come to me with very wide range of physical, mental, emotional symptoms. Somebody can have a runny nose, or cancer, or anxiety, or depression, or whatever it is, and really the protocol is the same. My aspect of this team that I work on is the emotional aspect. We address diet with a different practitioner and movement with a different practitioner, and I am the emotional aspect of that, of that overall picture of wellness. These people, if it’s psoriasis or whatever, it’s anything, anything that walks through the door, they go through this protocol, if that’s skin issues, or autoimmune issues, or sugar addiction, or whatever, there are some emotional stress underlying that.

We can have a great diet. We can be exercising, and we can be sleeping, and we can be doing all these things, but if this one component isn’t in this bigger picture, then you’re really falling short. What I do is I mostly do the emotion code for my clients, which is just, it’s not my modality, it’s something I’m trained in, but it’s an energy healing modality that really just targets trapped emotional baggage that is triggering us. That’s why every night, people will go for the peanut butter cups, because they’re stressed out and they’re overwhelmed.

We have these patterns, these emotional patterns. When we can’t seem to get out of that, usually there is something going on in the subconscious that needs some shifting and so that’s what I do. I do that for my clients and I do a lot of mindset work, and just help them see their health journey in a different way as rather than something that’s happening to them that they have to fight against and they have to fix, but something that is an opportunity for them to dig deep and to really figure out who they are and what they value, and really help them see that this is an opportunity to radically change your life for the better. That’s the basis of how I’m helping patients in the office.

Trevor: I know there are a lot of different tools, emotional wellness tools out there, and so explain what an appointment is like with you, what you walk people through, how you started, how you complete the process, how long it takes. Then we’ll talk about what kind of results people get.

Megan: Yeah, usually that first session, it’s about an hour. I really just start where they’re at. I want to hear their story. I want to hear where they’ve come from, because I’ve been on the other side of that. I’ve been the patient and have had this story, and I would go to doctor’s and I would say, “These are all my symptoms. Here’s my laundry list.” Everybody would just say, “Oh, you must just be tired, because you’re a mom.” I felt very discounted and so I like to let that person really tell me what’s going on and how are you feeling and all this and validate that for them, because I get it and I understand how difficult it is to try and be, to be doing everything right, to be trying all these different things and really not making any progress.

After they tell me their story, then I will explain the emotion code on a little bit of a deeper level and then we jump into that. So, in one session, I’ll clear anywhere from about 15 to 20 emotions and this is just old stuff from our past. We don’t have to psychoanalyze it. It’s not therapy, so people actually really like it, because they’re not having to talk about everything, and it isn’t really heavy. We clear all that and then figure out if there’s anything else at play as far as nutritional deficiencies or if there are certain foods that would be helpful for them to add into their diet, or if there’s toxins that need to be addressed, or misalignments, or whatever comes up.

Each session is so personalized. No two sessions are ever the same. Then the coaching aspect is again very personal, but I teach them to do EFT so that they have this tool that they can use in their day to day life to help heal emotions as they come up in the moment. Then again, I do a lot of the mindset coaching. Then we go from there. I think the beauty of this work is this is not like a never ending process where it’s just like, “Let’s do another session and another session and another session for the rest of your life.” It’s more like, “Let’s get in there and let’s clear this stuff. Then let’s move on.”

Most of my clients are with me for anywhere from three to ten sessions and at that point, they’re feeling much, much better and that’s it. I know if I’m doing my job right, they’re not going to keep coming back.

Trevor: That’s right. Great. Can you explain to people what EFT is?

Megan: Yeah, so EFT is short for Emotional Freedom Technique. It’s a really simple tool that people can learn that really combines ancient Chinese medicine energy healing with modern psychology, where you’re tapping on specific meridian points on the body. The psychology aspect is you are narrating what you’re feeling at the same time that you’re tapping. What you’re doing is on a mental level, you’re acknowledging and validating what you feel. Then on an energetic level, you’re giving your body the signal that were safe to release this.

Say you’re a mom and you’re trying to get your kids out the door, and you’re feeling really overwhelmed and rush. You can take a minute to start tapping on these certain points and say, “I’m feeling really overwhelmed right now.” I feel like we need to hurry. I feel I’m frustrated with my kid not getting a shoes, whatever, just start narrating how you’re feeling. Then it’s really interesting to see how that can start to shift. I have lots of EFT scripts for my clients. Things on food anxiety, anxiety in general, panic, depression, anything, emotional eating. There’s tons of EFT scripts out there online that you can find for free, but also just the way to do it in your day to day life is to, it just gives you that moment to pause, and to breathe, and to acknowledge what you’re feeling, and just get grounded and centered, and then move on, so.

Trevor: Okay, let’s talk about emotional eating a little bit more. What you find in your practice with people with emotional eating and sugar addiction, it is such a huge issue. A lot of us, it just programmed in us and I think part of it is our society and like, “Oh, you don’t feel good? Here, have some ice cream.” Ever since we’re a little kids, “This will make you feel better. Just have a little sugar.” Then as adults, then it just becomes automatic that immediately we start feeling emotional, we go and see what kind of sweets we have. Then we’ll overindulge. This becomes, because we know how sugar works, sugar is an addictive substance.

There was a RODIN study looking at rats could choose between cocaine or sugar and they chose the sugar over cocaine when they were exposed to both. We know that sugar and there had certainly been a lot of other studies, and I’ve seen it in my practice of you start eating sugar, and then you crave more, and then you crave more. It goes does this ups and downs in your blood sugar and you get caught in this visual cycle. Then we know the long-term consequences of this impact our skin, speed up aging, there’s so many different issues that not to mention weight loss, right?

We know we don’t want to be eating sugar or the emotional eating, but yeah we get so stuck in it. What are you finding with people that is first of all, that gets them into this and then what kind of solutions are you finding?

Megan: It’s definitely, it’s a pattern that starts in childhood and then it’s really the emotional connection. I think where in my journey and what I noticed with my clients is that most people that come to me already know that sugar is bad for them. They don’t need to be told that they read it, they have all the diet books they know, but that’s not enough to get them to stop eating it. Obviously, more education is not going to work for these people and it didn’t for me. This was my life was alternative health. I was so into this and I could not stop eating sugar.

It didn’t matter how much I knew up here and I had to realize, I realized when I started doing the emotional work that this is my coping strategy. I think where a lot of times we’re presented with, “Well, here’s this list of foods that you can’t have,” but the thing that we’re not talking about is what is that list of foods to that person? That might be their comfort. That might be their best friend. That might be their joy at the end of the day. That might be the only good thing in their life. If we’re telling people, “Just cut this out,” and then all of your problems will be solved, that’s totally missing the mark.

What I had to realize for myself and what I tell my clients is, “Go get a notebook and write down everything that sugar is for you.” This can be sugar. This can be anything else that you feel addicted to. What is that for you? Is that again your way of comforting yourself? Is that your way of finding variety and joy in your life? Is that your companion? Is that your best friend? What is it? Write down all the needs that it fulfills for you and then realize that if you really want to cut out sugar, you have to find a way to fill those needs in a different way.

If that is going out and being social and finding a friend, or if that’s writing, or drawing, or playing the guitar, or going for hikes, it doesn’t matter what it is. What brings you joy and what brings you comfort so that the sugar doesn’t have to do it for you. That I think is just the awareness that sugar is not just sugar. Sugar is a comfort to people and they use it to cope with their stress, so we have to deal with the stress.

Then the sugar will just lose its appeal once your stress is gone and you’re able to … You have joy in your life, you’re changed your life in a different way then sugar is just sugar and it doesn’t matter. I’m to the point in my life where it’s like if I’m at a birthday party and I really want a piece of cake, I’m going to eat it. I have no physical reaction. It doesn’t bother me at all. Then I drop it and it’s done and I don’t think about it again, and it’s just not a big deal. I think that’s where and if we have to find a balance with it, because when I was trying so hard to not eat it ever, then I would not eat it ever and then I would binge on it.

I had to come to this place where it’s like, you know what, if I dealt with my emotions, I healed a lot of my stress, I created different self-care practices that provided what sugar used to provide for me. Now, it’s like whatever. If I want a piece of cake at a birthday party, I’ll eat it and then I’ll move on with my life and it’s just not a big deal. I think that’s where really coming to a healthy relationship with food, you have to get to that place of balance and that’s usually figuring out what sugar really is for you in the first place.

Trevor: Yeah, I really like that idea of yeah, what is sugar? What is the food that you’re craving? What is it for you? Because most of the time, when we’re snacking or we have sugar cravings, it’s not because that we’re eating because we’re hungry or we’re trying to give ourselves more fuel to get through the day. It’s because we’re missing something or we feel a need for something, and maybe we don’t even know what that is. Sometimes it could be hard to identify. I imagine that’s when it comes working with you comes in handy to help people identify that.

Sometimes they could sit down with a piece of paper and they’re like, “I don’t know what sugar is for me. I don’t know why I crave these things.” Then doing some of these emotional wellness tools probably really helps people pull that out of themselves. Do you find that to be the case?

Megan: Yeah, absolutely. That’s where a lot of it, people will heal to a point and then it’s like, “You know what I need? A little bit of more support in this,” and so then we can talk through it and I can give that person tools. Then I can work on that subconscious level, because again, we can try to mentally figure all this out, but if we’ve got subconscious stuff that’s triggering us and keeping us stock in these old patterns, there’s only so far we can go with that until we hit a wall and so that’s where I can come down in and break that wall down. Then that person can just really thrive.

Trevor: Let’s talk more about the EFT specifically with emotional eating. Can you give some examples of what that would look like? Yeah, specifics, because I think that would be really helpful. I’m not super familiar with this type of technique, so I’m really curious about it.

Megan: Yeah, so I have depending on what you’re feeling, I’ve got a script on my blog for free that’s about food anxiety. I know a lot of people in alternative health that have anxiety around food, and so that’s been really helpful for a lot of my followers, a lot of my clients use that script a lot. Specifically around emotional eating and sugar cravings, that’s where using EFT and going through and tapping through the points, and just narrating. If you’re sitting down and whatever your, it’s 3:00 and you’re done with lunch and all of a sudden you’re feeling tired, and it’s just that time of the day, and so we want to go grab a candy bar.

Then there’s that beast bear inside of you that’s like, “I need the sugar,” rather than just jumping up and getting the sugar, just take three minutes to start tapping through the points and start narrating how you feel. That’s where we’re just acknowledging, “Right now I’m really craving sugar. Right now, I would do anything to go get the ice cream. Right now, I feel a lot of anxiety and I’m trying to use food to settle it.” As you start talking, it will start to uncover like as you’re narrating what’s going on, all of a sudden you’ll think, “Oh, actually I’m feeling depressed and I’m looking for joy, or oh actually,” and it just starts to trigger once we start talking about it and acknowledging it. It’s really interesting how all of a sudden you’ll get these little insights of like, “Oh, this is why I’m doing it.”

Then after you have that insight, then you can continue to tap and just say, “I now release my need for sugar. I now find joy in a different way.” Just positive affirmations, giving yourself that support, and it’s really cool to see how once we can just jump out of that like, “Oh, I’m just going to go get sugar right now.” If we can just pause and breathe for a minute and just see what we’re actually needing and acknowledge ourselves and give ourselves that little bit of self-care, all of a sudden the sugar is just like, “Maybe I don’t need it.” Then we can go do something else that makes us feel better. Usually, the EFT makes us feel better, so it’s yeah, it’s a win-win.

Trevor: That’s fantastic. I’m trying to picture somebody being at work and doing this. Do you have to do it out loud or can you do this quietly?

Megan: No, you can do it quietly. Definitely, if you are not in a place where it’s socially acceptable to be tapping all over your body, just run to the bathroom for a second or jump in your car. You can definitely do it quietly as well. A way that I do tell people, if you’re in the middle of a grocery store, and you’re having a panic attack and you don’t want to tap all over, just right here, like right on the collarbone and start repeating what you need to, but just do one spot. That’s not the full effect, but it’s going to help calm your nervous system down. It’s going to still send that signal to the amygdala to, “All right, let’s chill out. We’re good.”

Even just finding one spot to tap on, when I always just say, “Go right to the collarbone is a nice easy place.” You can pretty and conspicuously tap on your collarbone without everybody thinking you’re a crazy person, so yeah.

Trevor: When in actuality we are crazy people. No, I’m just kidding.

Megan: I thought we really are.

Trevor: No, I mean I think these kinds of tools are fantastic. Partly, it works as a destruction and gives us a moment of thinking, “Okay, what is really going on here? Do I really need a sugar?” A lot of times, even if we just wait a take a few deep breaths, that can be a great thing, but having a technique that helps you shift out of that is fantastic. Having tools like this I think are so valuable.

I imagine then, if somebody is practicing EFT and they’re doing it regularly at home when they can and they can do it out loud and do it fully, that when they’re in the grocery store, if their body is used to that, the second that you remind your body and your mind, “Okay, I’m tapping and I know what this means,” and it brings, it’s like this, everybody whose familiar with the Pavlovian response of the Pavlov’s dogs, of the bell rings, and they’re fed with and they start salivating. It’s like your body just automatically when it has a signal, a queue, it will respond.

Megan: Yeah, absolutely. That’s where this quick thing in the moment is helpful, but going home and doing some of the longer scripts to really help heal some of that stuff that’s, because acute, the acute work is good too, but doing work when you’re not in the middle of a trigger is very, very helpful as well, because then it’s more effective when you are in that trigger moment of I’m having anxiety, I’m feeling depression, I want sugar, whatever it is. It just makes it easier to get to that place of stillness again.

Trevor: Right, because these kinds of things usually don’t show up when we want them to. They usually happen when we’re driving or what you were saying, when you’re out with your kids, they don’t usually happen at appropriate time. I’m using air quotes here for people who can’t see. Tell us, when could people do this on their own and when do they know that they need to see someone like you or to get outside help?

Megan: There’s a lot of free resources online, again that you can get online. EFT is pretty popular at this point. You can find EFT scripts on YouTube. There’s a ton of free resources on my blog. I always tell people, try it, but if you’re still not really feeling a lot, then it’s probably time to dig deeper. For me, I use EFT and I teach my clients to use that as their day to day stress relief, but to really dig into the old stuff, into the old patterns, into all the old traumas, that’s what I use the emotion code for. I always tell people like, “If you’re just having some little bit of stress here and there, then EFT is great,” but to really dig into the heavier stuff, I think working with a practitioner, doing the emotion code, doing some depot work like that is really beneficial.

Then the EFT is great for just let’s release the stress of the day. Let’s get rid of our stuff so that it doesn’t become baggage. That’s what EFT and that self-healing is good for, but I think it’s always great to have support team behind you in this journey. If you’re dealing with something physical, mental, emotional, it’s always good to have people behind your back and supporting you, and offering advice and helping you heal. The doctor I work for always says that healing cannot happen alone, that healing happens in a community, which is why he’s created this community of practitioners to help each of these people.

They have this whole team of support behind them because we can’t do it solo. That’s okay. We’re human beings and we’re hardwired to need support and community, so I don’t think if there’s any shame in needing help working through some of the stuff.

Trevor: Yeah, fantastic. Okay, so Megan, well, I know you have a free gift for our audience and we’ll have that link up, but explain what it is that you’re sharing.

Megan: This is a free video series that I created to basically help that person who is on the health journey, they’ve done the diets, they’ve done the supplements, they’ve done all of the stuff and they’re right where I was, feeling like I’m still stuck, I can’t figure this out, anxious, depressed, autoimmune disease, whatever you’re dealing with at this point, just feeling really stuck around it and needing help with the emotions, with the mindset, really understanding. In the videos, I really talk about how the body creates health and how it creates disease and how to stay in what I coined thrive mode and get out of stress mode.

I explained that, I really explained on the biochemical level what’s happening in the body when we’re healing and when we’re degenerating, and how to support healing, and how to keep your body in a place of a thriving and really simple tools that I provided. I talk about a lot of ways to support emotional wellness and how that ties into your physical health, so.

Trevor: Perfect. Thank you so much, Megan. Again, I’ll have that link up below your interview on my website. Megan, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing this information. It’s been great chatting with you.

Megan: Thanks so much for having me.

Trevor: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Megan. To learn more about Megan and get the free gift that she mentioned at the end of the interview, just go to the spadoctor.com. Go to the podcast page with our interview, and you’ll find all the information and links there. While you’re there, I invite you to join the Spa Doctor community. You could also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss anywhere upcoming shows. If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you go to theskinquiz.com so you can get a free skin assessment, find out what your skin may be trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com. It’s a free online quiz.

Also, I invite you to join me on social media on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and join the conversation. I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

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Better Brain Solutions for Memory and Focus with Dr. Steven Masley

December 7, 2017 by Dr. Trevor Cates Leave a Comment

On today’s podcast we’re talking about how to have better brain health to create solutions for memory and focus. Do you want to have better memory, focus and concentration? It will help you perform better in work and in life. And, as a bonus to all this, when you follow the tips in this interview, they’re also great for your skin!

My guest today is Dr. Steven Masley MD. He is a physician, nutritionist, trained-chef, author, and the creator of the #1 all-time health program for Public Television, 30 Days to a Younger Heart. He helps motivate people tune up their brain and heart.

Dr. Masley is a fellow with three prestigious organizations: the American Heart Association, the American College of Nutrition, and the American Academy of Family Physicians, and is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of South Florida. His research focuses on the impact of lifestyle choices on heart health, brain function, and aging to find solutions for memory and focus.

Dr. Masley is a best-selling author and has published several books: Ten Years Younger, The 30-Day Heart Tune-Up, Smart Fat, and his newest book, The Better Brain Solution. His work has been viewed by millions on PBS, the Discovery Channel, the Today Show, and in over 500 media interviews. He continues to see patients and publish research from his medical clinic in St. Petersburg Florida, and he offers weekly blogs on his website.

In today’s interview, Dr. Masley shares his 5 steps to a better brain to create solutions for memory and focus. We delve into each of these so that, by the end of this interview, you’ll have great tips for your diet, nutrients, exercise and other techniques to help you find solutions for memory and focus.

So please enjoy this interview…

To take the Brain Symptom Score Quiz, go HERE

TRANSCRIPTION:

Trevor: Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re talking about how to have better brain health. Who doesn’t want to have better memory, focus, concentration? It will help you perform better in work and in life in general. As a bonus to all this, when you follow the tips in the interview, they’re also great for your skin. My guest today is Dr. Steven Masley. He is a physician, nutritionist, trained chef, author and creator of the number one all-time health program for public television, 30 Days To A Younger Heart. He helps motivate people, tune up their brain and heart.

Dr. Masley is a fellow with the American Heart Association, the American College of Nutrition, and the American Academy of Family Physicians, and as a clinical associate professor at the University of South Florida. His research focuses on the impact lifestyle choices have on our heart health, brain function and aging. Dr. Masley is a best-selling author and has published several books, Ten Years Younger, the 30-Day Heart Tune-Up, Smart Fat, and his latest book The Better Brain Solution. In today’s interview, Dr. Masley shares his five steps to a better brain. We delve into each one of these, so by the end of the interview, you’ll have great tips for your diet, nutrients, exercise and other techniques to help you be sharper, more focused and have better memory. Please enjoy this interview with Dr. Masley. Dr. Masley, it’s so great to have you on my podcast.

Steven: I’m delighted to get a chance to talk with you.

Trevor: Today, we’re talking about how to have a better brain, have a better functioning brain. I know that we all want to be sharper, more focused, have better memory and certainly as we get older, it’s something that it comes up a lot. It comes up a lot with my patients. They walk in the room and they can’t remember why they were there or like, “What was I was looking for? What was that person’s name?” At the same time, we want to be sharp because we want to not only are we wanting to live longer, but we want to have that quality of life and our brain is a big part of that. I’m so excited to talk to you today about how we can have all these things.

Steven: There are some simple steps we can take that will really improve our brain. It’s not hard, five easy steps to be sharper, quicker, more productive, less forgetful and feel better at the same time. Many of these steps, not only are they good for our brain, they’re good for our skin too.

Trevor: Perfect. I always love it when we can tied in the skin and you’re right. So much of the time when we address root causes and we really focus on the foundation of good health, it’s going to help our body in a number of ways. Our brain and our skin included in that. Let’s go through these steps. Which one do you want to start with?

Steven: I like starting with food, but I should say as maybe an intro to that. When we think embryologically, when babies are forming in the womb, the neurologic tissue and the skin tissue, it’s really intimately related and they develop simultaneously. It’s not surprising that the things that would be good for your brain are really good for your skin. If we were to start with food, I have foods I want people to add and a couple of things I want them to avoid. I don’t think you’ll be surprised by the avoiding, but maybe some of the adding ones. Maybe I should just start with the number one food to add would be green leafy vegetables.

We know when people eat one cup of greens a day, their brain is 11 years younger than someone who doesn’t eat them, 11 years. That’s pretty dramatic from just a cup of broccoli or kale or spinach or something like that. Those green pigments protect our son when we’re outside. Beets increase blood supply to the brain. They’re awesome. Dark chocolate and cocoa are really good for your brain. There’s actually studies that people who have mild cognitive loss that they start having cocoa more often, their brain improves and even gets better. Then, tea, some catechins and tea. All those pigments protect our brain from damage and give us a better brain.

Trevor: Awesome! Of course, those are also great for the skin. You mentioned those. Let’s talk about the ones that are not good for us. What are the ones that are absolutely the ones we must avoid?

Steven: Right now, we face premature memory loss, accelerated memory loss. Alzheimer’s rate is going to double in just the next 12 years. 12 to 15 years, we’re going to have 200% increase and the biggest reason for that is sugar. That people are eating too much sugar. It’s making them inflammation. We know when we eat too much sugar, we not only do we gain weight, we probably have accelerated wrinkling in our skin when we have sugar craze all the time. When you have too much sugar, it injures the brain.

Let me try to see if I can explain this simply, but if we eat too many refined carbs like sugar and flour and other refined carbs or drink sodas, our sugar soars, our insulin soars and the cell stop listening. It’s like, “Hey, we’re full. I don’t need your message anymore. I’m full of energy. I’m not going to store anymore.” They become insulin resistant. When brain cells become insulin resistant, they’re paralyzed. Do functional MRI and you actually do a PET scan, brain cells are like dead quiet. They’re starving for energy at the same time the blood sugar levels are elevated. It’s really ironic.

The second feature is when you’re eating too much sugar, the same enzyme that gets rid of insulin, gets rid of beta amyloid. That’s the pigment with Alzheimer’s disease. Literally, when people are having sugar binges, they’re growing more beta amyloid and causing inflammation. Sugar and flour are the number one foods you want to get rid of if you really want to protect your brain.

Trevor: That’s so great to hear those issues. I talk a lot about skin with glycation issues with people who eat too much sugar. That creates glycation issues in the body and speeds up the aging of the skin and creates issues of acne breakout or something. It’s really interesting to see how it impacts the brain and that inflammation part. Inflammation is one of the big root cause issues with a lot of brain problems, right, is inflammation.

Steven: It is. Of all aspects of aging, for our arteries, for our heart, for our brain, for our skin. All inflammation just accelerates all aspects of aging. To me, the worst aspect would be to lose your brain, not only do we lose our identity. We have the potential to become a burden on people we love and nobody would want that. Who wouldn’t want to be quicker, sharper, more productive, less forgetful? Feel to get more done when we take the right steps. We’ve done randomized clinical trials and we’ve shown that when people follow our program, their brain performance, their brain processing speed improves by 25% to 30%. It’s pretty amazing that we can really improve. It’s like getting a better computer. Your brain actually functions that much better.

Trevor: That’s so great because, again, I think a lot of times people think that once their brain stops working as well since they started having these feelings of, “My memory is not as good” or “I’m not as sharp as I used to be.” They just think, “I’m just getting old and this is how it’s going to be for the rest of my life.” It’s so great to know that that’s reversible to a certain extent from what you’re saying with changes in lifestyle and like the diet changes. We’re talking about step one and that’s the diet, right?

Steven: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Plant pigments, healthy fat, and avoiding sugar. I’m sure like for your skin, if someone is on a really low fat diet, their skin doesn’t have the same texture consistencies. Like our skin, our brain also needs healthy fat. Smart fats for your brain, more pigments and cut out the sugar. Those are the keys to the better brain solution for food.

Trevor: Perfect. I know you’ve talked about cardiovascular health too and those kinds of things also protect your heart, right?

Steven: Absolutely. The same program we use to help people shrink their artery plaque by 10 years improves brain performance by 25%. Just like there’s a connection, there’s also a heart-brain connection and the same things that are good for your skin, help your brain, help your heart. It isn’t too surprising when the body is all interlinked. I completely agree with you.

Trevor: Great. What’s the next step?

Steven: Nutrients. There are some key nutrients we don’t want to miss out on. Vitamin D, a good quality multi that’s got mixed folates and enough B12. We want magnesium. Between every brain cell, there’s all these synaptic connections and they’re dependent on magnesium. 70% of people are magnesium deficient, and fish oil. If I was just to pick a few things, I guess one more, I’d say a probiotic to support our gut and that lowering inflammation. There’s a gut-brain connection too. A probiotic, good quality fish oil either from wild fish or from a supplement, a good multivitamin for B12 and folate, vitamin D, and magnesium. Those are key. Our research have shown in people who don’t get those needs, their brain speed drops. They actually have a sluggish brain and you replete those key nutrients. Wow! It’s pretty amazing that it helps significantly.

Trevor: Great. You mentioned the gut-brain connection and probiotics. I just want to remind people and I talk about this too. There’s a gut-brain-skin connection. More research is coming out about this too. It’s really interesting how this all ties in and goes. A lot of it goes back to the gut and improving our digestion, our microbiome and all of that. I’m glad you brought that part up. When it comes to our brain, can we talk for a minute about what happens as we age and why people start to notice a difference in their cognition, memory, and things?

Steven: With skin age, we lose collagen and the skin wrinkles and [inaudible 00:11:08] increase for skin cancer. With brain aging, it’s a little different. There are some similarities and maybe there are some slight differences, but in the brain, it’s all about can the brain keep making energy in a clean way that allows the brain cells to stay healthy? When we are inflamed or when our blood sugar levels are too high, the brain cells stop making energy properly and they don’t have much supply of fat source into use. They die pretty quickly.

As we age, when we don’t eat well, we should be able to maintain our brain function into our 90s. There’s no reason we can’t do that. It’s not getting older, it’s the choices we make as we age that age our brain. If you had an awesome lifestyle, you ate the right foods, you meet your nutrient needs, you are fit, you manage your stress, you avoided brain toxins, if you did those five things, you’re going to be sharper, quicker, more productive and prevent heart disease and memory loss. Your skin would look great too.

Trevor: It’s great. I love that and so with these nutrients that you mentioned. What is it about vitamin D, for example, that is so important for the brain?

Steven: Vitamin D is really a hormone. We call it a vitamin, but once we absorb it, it acts like a hormone in every cell in our body. Our DNA production process is impacted by vitamin D. It tells the proteins to rebuild and replace themselves. When our vitamin D levels dropped, a brain cell might just say, “I might as well just die. I don’t have enough vitamin D.” Literally, they stop doing the protein synthesis that keeps the brain going and functioning. For our bone, we lose bone mass. We grow more plaque. Our brain literally shrinks. Our skin were more likely to get skin cancer when our vitamin D drops. It’s essential for DNA repair, production, and synthesis and cancer risk. Wow! I was just in a meeting and we were talking about we should be able to prevent 60% to 80% of cancer today if we get people’s vitamin D to the right point, super, super important.

Trevor: Great. Thank you. That’s a great point about vitamin D, such an important nutrient or hormone. You mentioned magnesium. I think that might surprise some people because people think of magnesium more for like muscle cramps, muscle spasms, or headaches. There are certain things that magnesium is thought for, but not many people think of it as a nutrient. It’s not one of the first things that comes to find for the brain. Can you explain why magnesium is so important for brain health?

Steven: Between each brain cell, you’ve got this synaptic connection that’s like wiring in a computer world. These circuits go back and forth. The brains use magnesium for that synaptic connection. Without it, your brain speed plummet and drops. We need it for the heart to contract. We need it for muscles to contract and relax. People get migraine headache. You said muscle cramps, constipation. Their blood pressure and blood sugar are dependent, but brain function, the connectivity between brain cells is dependent on magnesium.

Trevor: Perfect. Thanks for sharing that. You mentioned multivitamin as really important because there are a lot of nutrients that are important for the brain and for those synaptic connections and things. With that, you want to just make sure that you’re not missing out on any of those nutrients, those micronutrients that you need.

Steven: Dr. Cates, you’re making a really good point because there’s like 15 or 20 critical nutrients that could come if you take the right multi. I’m not talking about just anything you buy at the grocery store. When you buy the right one, you’re getting mixed folates, not just folic acid. Folates are essential for protecting the DNA, the cellular part of your body. We get cancer without them. We get abnormal growth. In my study from my clinic shows that if your folate levels are low, you have decreased brain speed and performance. Mixed folates instead of folic acid, one point. B12, if your B12 level is low, you can get permanent irreversible dementia, memory loss. That’s awful or other nerve damage. Nobody should ever be B12 deficient. That would be really regrettable.

When we think about chromium for insulin sensitivity, we want good blood sugar control. You need chromium. For your thyroid, you need enough iodine. To convert the hormone from T4 to T3, the active thyroid hormone, which gives you mental function, you need selenium. There’s this long list, that long you can get your vitamin D and a multi. You can get a lot of things from a good quality multi that are really essential. You’re not going to find magnesium because it’s such a big molecule. You have to take that separately. You’re not going to fairly find fish oil in a single pill. You won’t get a probiotic. If you have a really good multi, probiotic, fish oil, magnesium, yet there’s other. Could you take other things like curcumin? Absolutely, but I think you’d have the main essential nutrients for your brain covered.

Trevor: I think those are really great points. I know that, in my practice, my patients will come in with all those different bottles of supplements. I remind them if you take a really high quality multivitamin, you can get a lot of what you’re getting in all those different bottles. You can minimize the amount of pills that you’re taking every day. Like you said, there are certain ones you’re not going to find in a multi or you’re not going to get the right amounts that somebody might need, especially depending upon if they have particular health issues. A really high quality multi is important. Let’s talk about that for a moment. How do people know if they’re taking a high quality multi?

Steven: You can look at the ingredients. It should say mixed folates. There should be at least 100 micrograms of B50 or 100 micrograms of B12. You could get your vitamin D separately, but if you want to get it from the multi, I think you probably need at least 2,000 international units of vitamin D. The minerals are really easy way to look at quality is look for protein bound minerals like not magnesium oxide, but magnesium glycinate or zinc glycinate or chelated minerals. Looking are they salts or mineral or really important point for your brain is copper. If you have inorganic copper, that increases your Alzheimer’s risk and diabetes risk. You want organic copper. Some protein bound source of copper. Some people could say no copper and I’d be fine with that because you can get it from nuts and seeds and green leafies. Inorganic copper is absolutely something you want to avoid. If you see like copper sulfate, I usually try to avoid that.

Trevor: Perfect. Thank you for pointing that really great information. Thank you for sharing that. You mentioned as one of the five steps, you ran through them pretty quickly there a moment ago. You mentioned exercise as being one of them. What kind of exercise do we need for good brain health?

Steven: The studies from our clinic show you get double benefit, it’s independent benefit. When you’re doing aerobic activity, you can get your heart rate up. That has a clear benefit. You want to get sweaty and raise your heart rate and that improves brain speed. When you do strength training, you build muscle mass, you get these neurotropic factors and your brain actually enlarges. Even 80-year-olds have been shown when they do a strength training program with weights, their brain gets bigger, especially the hippocampus, the memory center. We really want aerobic and strength training. Now, I don’t know if I should share this, but you and I go to … I see you at meetings and you and I are always there in the gym in the morning. I love the fact that you do what you preach. You’re there working out. I don’t know if I’m outing you or not because I’ve always been a big fan of yours because you eat healthy food. You take care of yourself. You look great. You exercise.

Trevor: I love that you and your wife are always in there. We are always in there in the morning right before we get ready to go into a conference or something and I’ll see you in the gym.

Steven: You are too. I noticed you’re doing aerobics and you’re doing strength training. That’s what’s good for your brain is you really want both have benefit independent of the other. You get the maximum benefit you want both.

Trevor: Perfect. Again, it goes across so many different spectrums, protecting your heart, protecting with healthy aging and all of that. It certainly goes across. Let’s talk about stress because you mentioned that one too. What do you suggest? What role does stress play on the brain?

Steven: We have good stress like we are preparing some launch or product or we’re doing a talk or something. That gives us purpose and challenge. That’s great. The challenge with stress if you have every day stressors that stress you out and it’s chronic and we don’t proactively manage it, our cortisol goes up. Cortisol is not a friendly hormone. It’s fine when we are being chased by a burglar. We are trying to get out of the way or a lion was chasing us and we try to climb a tree to get out of the way. That gives us a survival mechanism, but when it’s every day, cortisol, it grows artery plaque.

You know it’s bad for bones. It shrinks your bones. It’s bad for your skin and it shrinks your brain if you have high cortisol. Literally, the hippocampus, the memory center of your brain shrinks. We have to take steps proactively to manage our stress. The three big tools for me would be, one, I work out, sweat. Two, get a good night sleep and, three, schedule 10 minutes a day for like meditation, do HeartMath, something that brings the cortisol down and makes this more peaceful and calm.

Trevor: Perfect. You mentioned HeartMath. Explain to people what that is for people who don’t know what that is.

Steven: There’s a great deal of connection between the heart and the brain and you can see it in your heart rate. Your heart rate should go up and down and up and down in a nice smooth variation as we breathe. When we’re stressed out, our cortisol is up, but our adrenaline is up and our heart rate just tends to stay a little bit slightly elevated and flat without variation. I can see it in my clinic. When we do these clinic evals, we do like 100 markers of aging and HeartMath is one of those. When people who have a flat score, it turns red instead of blue or green. Green being calm. Blue is okay calm. Red is agitated. I have people who are trying to meditate, and they’re all red. They’re still agitated. There’s no heart rate variability. They’re all stressed out. Their cortisol levels are surging.

When I do their blood work, I can see they have low DHEA. We know that’s bad for your skin too. You’re going to wrinkle more if you have low DHEA. Stress not only does it shrink your brain, it impacts your adrenal gland. You make less of this hormone DHEA, which we need for bone health, for skin health, and for our brain and energy. Unmanaged stress has all these aging aspects that cripple us. They make us look bad and then we can’t think well, which even makes it worse. HeartMath is this connection where you can measure, you get biofeedback. [inaudible 00:23:34] you’re good at being calm and 10 minutes a day has had amazing benefits in my patients.

Trevor: It is something that a lot of people have to work their way up to. 10 minutes isn’t easy for everybody. I certainly have had patients that, “I don’t know how I can do any of that for 10 minutes.” What do you suggest for people if they’re just starting to get into some meditation or breath work, some stress management technique? What’s an easy way to start it if it’s not part of your daily routine?

Steven: The two helps because it gives you feedback. It just tells you what state are you at and then you’re just trying to think of a calm, happy place. I’m thinking I’m on a mountain top in the summer time when the flowers are out or I’m at the beach in Florida. I’m somewhere calm. I’m grateful and can I change my coloration, look more green. I don’t have to worry about my heart rate pattern. That would be way too complicated, but this idea of red, blue, or green. That’s pretty clear. You can do it while you’re at work. You can actually do it when you’re typing. Are you in a calm focused state or are you in an agitated state? You’re not very productive. In some ways, you could practice it during daily life and then you could take a few moments to try to think of something peaceful and calm to get it green. The challenge is how can I make it green longer. It’s actually a really easy useful tool.

Trevor: I love that. I think that’s fantastic. I think that that is such a good tip because it’s so quick to get into that state if you can think of being in that calm, peaceful place. I think that’s powerful and I want to talk about that for a minute. For me, one of the things that I do because a lot of people will think of maybe being on the beach or on the mountain top or a place. For me, one of the things that really helps me is I think about my youngest daughter sleeping. There’s something about seeing her sleeping. A child sleeping is one of the sweetest things for me.

Steven: I know. It’s like heartwarming just the thought of it.

Trevor: Right. If I’m having a stressful moment or when I’m trying to fall asleep at night sometimes too and my mind is racing or I can’t calm down, that is one of the things that I do is I picture her. I really think about how I feel when I look at her when she is sleeping. It works for me every time. I encourage people to find that thing because it can be so quick to help you shift into that state. I’m glad you brought that up.

Steven: With your permission, I’m going to use that tip. I think that’s really smart because sleep like a baby it’s like this … That’s actually really neat. I’m going to share that more often.

Trevor: It’s a great one. I think if people just start gradually they can work their way up to 10 minutes and then hopefully maybe even more than that. Some people can meditate for sure longer than 10 minutes.

Steven: I think there’s benefit to longer, but you get a big benefit at 10 minutes a day. When you get good at it, at first … Here’s the thing. I have people meditate and they’re all agitated. Their mind is just roaring the whole time that they’re sitting there in this ohm-like position. It’s about teaching them don’t waste your time trying to meditate if you can’t do it. Get some feedback so you can get to a proper state.

Trevor: That’s great. I love that. We’ve talked about diet. We’ve talked about nutrients. We’ve talked about exercise, stress management. What’s the fifth step?

Steven: There are some key brain toxins out there we want to avoid that are bad for us. Obviously, smoking, it’s terrible for your skin. You’ll wrinkle up more. It’s bad for your brain. It’s bad for your heart. I don’t think I need to go on. We shouldn’t smoke. Alcohol in excess, yes, one or two glasses of red wine a day are actually good for your brain, but more than that is not good, so beware. There are some surprise ones out there like people who eat a lot of tuna, big mouth fish, grouper, tuna, bass, swordfish. They get mercury. A third of my patients in my clinic have high mercury levels and it slows their brain speed. It’s hurting their brain and very high levels are associated with serious neurologic harm. We either need to cut back on big mouth fish.

We learned in our clinic if people are eating tuna, grouper, snapper, bass, swordfish more than two to three times a month, they’re at risk and they should probably check their mercury level and if it’s high, cut back. Another one is maybe the surprise one, not food groups that you’d probably recommend, but on this process meats, sandwich meats, bacon, ham. Most of them, they sprinkle nitrosamines on them to preserve the shelf life. Nitrosamines, we’ve known for a lot of times that they cause cancer. Now, recently, we’ve learn when we give them to like lab animals, they get a blood sugar jump and they get neurodegeneration. They get brain cell death.

We are learning that these nitrosamines they put on bacon, for example, cause blood sugar elevation and death of your brain cells. That’s really bad. Who would have thought? I grow up and have some bacon. I’m killing my brain cells when I do it. People need to be eating clean protein. If you’re going to eat any of these proteins, it needs to be organically, but pasture-raised and they’re not sprinkling nitrosamines on them. That’s a serious brain toxin that’s very common that we’ve got to avoid.

Trevor: Nitrosamines are not in all pork products or sandwich, meats or bacon, right? That’s something that’s added that’s what you’re saying.

Steven: Exactly. You are totally right. It’s an additive they put on to extend shelf life. Make a bigger profit for the company at our demise. It’s not that the animals products are bad, it’s how they treat them. It’s very important to buy pasture-raised and nitrosamine free.

Trevor: Absolutely. That will help us reduces those toxic elements that are going to worsen brain function. Great. Those are the five steps.

Steven: Five steps and if you follow them, your brain speed improves. You’re quicker, sharper, more productive, less forgetful and you’re protecting your heart, you’re protecting your brain and you’re helping your skin at the [inaudible 00:30:16].

Trevor: Perfect. You have a PBS special. Is that coming up soon?

Steven: The new book, The Better Brain Solution, comes out in January and then we have a PBS show that comes out in March.

Trevor: Great.

Steven: That’s a little bit off, but it’s coming soon and something we’re offering right now to help people get interested is a quiz to measure how’s your brain, a brain symptoms score. How’s your brain doing? Two-minute quiz, someone could easily take and get some information. If they take the quiz, we’d like to offer like a better brain shopping guide. What are the 12 foods you should buy for a better brain and the 12 foods you absolutely should avoid?

Trevor: I love that. Now, I want to tell everybody there are a lot of quizzes out there. You and I have talked about your quiz. Yours is more comprehensive than the typical quiz, although a lot of quizzes out there that are short. They don’t really give you a lot of information, but you spend a lot of time creating your quiz and making sure that people are going to get a lot of value out of that. It’s not just some sort of number that means nothing. It’s actually going to give them a lot of great information, right?

Steven: It’s pretty significant. There are quizzes out there like the mini-mental study examination. What year is it? Who is the president? Can you subtract 3 from 100? If you can’t answer those questions, you’re already demented and it’s too late. That’s what they use in the hospital and doctor’s offices, questions like that. What city are you in? If you don’t know what city you’re in, you’re in really bad trouble. This is much more like things … I’ll give you a couple of examples. Can you [inaudible 00:32:04] a seven-digit phone number long enough to dial it? You certainly should. There’s geographic memory where you lose locations. There’s brain functioning like, when you get interrupted, how quickly can you get back into your activity? That has to do with your processing speed or your geographic memory or your number memory. Can you verbally remember it? We are trying to do something more advanced, areas where some … You may not get all the answers right, but that’s not necessarily bad.

Some people have never been good with names and they never will be. That’s not a problem. Trying to identify 10 different aspects of brain performance that are easy to … A two-minute test that’s really quick and then give you an idea of what’s your brain score. If you’re missing several of those, we’ve got a problem. I would actually then would suggest testing that you might want to do with your doctor because early we can make a difference. If you wait until your brain is shut and it shrunk from a grape to a raisin, that’s really hard to deal with. It’s so easy to prevent memory loss and improve your function. I don’t want people to wait until they’ve got a really bad score. As a bonus, we put in the shopping guide to really make sure that people get those 10 foods to every when they go to the store that are really super good for your brain.

Trevor: Awesome! That’s so great. We’ll have the link up for that quiz on my website so that people can take that and they can get the shopping list and all that great stuff. Your book is coming out when again and where can people find it once it comes out?

Steven: January 2nd, wherever books are sold. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Millions, wherever you go, the book [inaudible 00:33:55] everywhere. The book will be there.

Trevor: The name of the book is?

Steven: The Better Brain Solution. I’m going to reach out and grab it. I should have thought about it and had it closer. There’s our cover right there.

Trevor: Perfect. Fantastic. I’m excited to read it. The Better Brain Solution, awesome! Dr. Masley, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing this information, your five steps. It’s really valuable. Thank you.

Steven: Thank you.

Trevor: I hope you enjoy this interview today with Dr. Steven Masley. I hope you get some great tips on how to have better brain health. To learn more about Dr. Masley and to take the quiz that he mentioned, which I think is a great tool to learn more about your brain and also you’ll get those that shopping list that he mentioned, to do that, just go to the thespadr.com. Go to the podcast page with this interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. While you’re there on the website, I invite you to join The Spa Dr. community. You could also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend that you take the skin quiz also.

You’re taking quizzes. You might want to take the skin quiz too. You can go to theskinquiz.com. It’s free and it will give you great information about what your skin maybe trying to tell you about health and the root causes behind it. Definitely, there’s a great brain-skin connection. Both of these will be valuable. Again, just go to theskinquiz.com. Also, I invite you to join me on social media on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube and join the conversation. I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

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