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The mindbodygreen Podcast
640: How to unlock your body’s innate healing system | Victoria Maizes, M.D.
00:54:28
Victoria Maizes, M.D., is the Executive Director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and co-host of the Body of Wonder podcast. She's a leading voice in integrative medicine and author of the new book Heal Faster, which makes the case that modern medicine has been so focused on treating disease that it's largely overlooked the body's most powerful asset: its innate capacity to heal.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the MyBodyGreen podcast. I'm Jason Wakab, founder and co CEO of MindBodyGreen and your host. This podcast is sponsored by Abdokare. Some days demand more from you, whether it's a workout, back to back meetings or just staying present with your family. Spark Energy and Focus Provide stable, functional energy Mix it up before a workout or even mid afternoon when you feel that dip coming on. It's so easy. Shake, sip and within minutes you feel more dialed in. Not wired or jittery, just clear, focused and ready to power through. The drink has a well rounded and balanced formula that goes way beyond just a quick energy boost. You get 120mg of caffeine paired with amino acids and taurine so the energy feels steady, not spiky or jittery. It also includes choline for mental focus and clarity plus B vitamins and L carnitine to support energy metabolism and vitamins C, A and E help support your immune health and everyday wellness. There's also zero sugar which makes a real difference on how you feel later on when you right now Spark Energy plus Focus is offering 30% off and free shipping. Go to drinkspark.com and use code MINDBODY GREEN at checkout. That's code MINDBODYGREEN@drinkspark.com Two people, same injury, same treatment. One heals in weeks, the other still struggling years later. Have you ever wondered why this happens? Today's guest is Dr. Victoria Mazes, executive Director of the Andrew Weil center for Integrative Medicine and the author of a new book, Heal Faster Faster, which makes the case that modern medicine has been so focused on treating disease that it's largely overlooked the body's most powerful asset, its innate capacity to heal. Dr. Mazes calls the recovery reflex, and she argues that almost everything we do, from how we eat and sleep to how we think about and talk about our symptoms, either supports it or gets in the way. In today's show, we explore why trauma is one of the most under recognized barriers to healing and how a chronically activated nervous system keeps the body locked out of the very state where recovery happens. We discuss the vagus nerve, the longest nerve in the body, and the surprising, simple tools that can help shift you from fight or flight into rest and repair. This isn't about blaming yourself for getting sick or injured, it's about recognizing that you have far more agency in your recovery than you might think. Let's dive in. So what exactly is the quote unquote recovery reflex? And why don't most People know they have one.
- [02:29]
B
Yeah, it's such a great question. So your recovery reflex is the innate healing system of your body. And we all have it. And if we paid attention, we would notice it. So for example, when you cut your finger, you know, you're opening that envelope, you cut your finger, it may get tender and it may sting, it may be a little warm, a little red, even a little swollen, and then three days later, it's completely healed. That's your intrinsic capacity to heal. Same thing. We catch a cold, we're really uncomfortable for a few days, but we don't have that cold forever. What happened to it? Our immune system got turned on. It did a variety of things with white blood cells and other kinds of antibodies and immune responses, and you're fully better, Even something big. You have surgery. Now, of course, most surgeons are going to sew you closed, but how does that wound really heal? The body has an innate healing system that moves in blood clots and increases blood flow and starts to build collagen and fully heals that wound that was created by your surgeon. So we do this all of the time and we really only pay attention when it goes awry.
- [03:56]
A
And so what I like about your message, you mentioned surgery. So you are not anti medical interventions. You know, surgery, medication, they save lives, they matter, they play a significant role in healing. But what I really love about your message is outcomes. Also. Surgery alone can save a life. But if you really want to give yourselves the best chances of an ideal outcome, there are other things that matter. It's not just sewing the wound. So can you talk about that, the intangibles beyond surgery, beyond the medication? Because you could take two people, they have the same surgery, the same medication, same DNA, same everything. One recovers, one doesn't.
- [04:42]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And later maybe we can delve into the things you can do to set yourself up really well for a good surgical outcome. Because I spent about a third of the book Heal Faster, specifically talking about surgery, since people are so unfamiliar with the things they could do. But in a more general sense, we notice that all the time. You know, we notice that person A seems to just bounce back so easily and person B really struggles. And why? Why is that? Well, I mean, there's some mystery. We don't always have a full explanation, but there are things we do know. If you are well rested, the critical importance of sleep. And the research keeps growing in terms of how important sleep is for metabolic health, for immune health, for laying down memories and brain health. If you are well, nourished Some of the people who don't do well from surgery. We know that up to 65% of people going into surgery are malnourished. So they're missing some of the nutrients that they need for an optimal recovery. And when people are well nourished, they do better. Things that are absolutely invisible, like environmental toxins. Sadly, we're exposed to a lot of them. Sometimes we can smell them, but mostly they're invisible to us. And so these toxins can hijack our hormones. And we know that we need insulin, cortisol, thyroid hormone, male and female hormones. We need these to be working appropriately for healing to and stress. You know, most of us deal with a certain amount of stress, but what can we do to self regulate? Do we have a practice so that when we are really agitated, we can quiet our nervous system? Our body heals better when we feel safe when our nervous system is quiet.
- [06:41]
A
So a couple things I want to unpack. So you mentioned well nourished. Unfortunately, I think we have an overnourishment problem. Although I do think with GLP1s being becoming so pervasive, I think we run the risk of actually becoming malnourished with significant weight loss and losing muscle mass and so forth. Maybe I think the problem may swing the other way. We're not there yet though. But with that said, how do you define, well, nourished in your view? And again, if you had to generalize, because we're all unique, what does that look like? How should I set myself up for success in terms of nourishment going into any sort of procedure?
- [07:22]
B
Again, if we're talking about surgery, there are some very specific things that we look for. We look at someone's body mass index, which is, you know, the weight height comparison. We look at whether they've had unintentional weight loss over the past three to six months. We look at how many times they've been sick, and that can give us a sense of people being malnourished. More of the people having surgery are older and a lot of folks as they age, don't actually consume enough protein. Protein becomes critically important when you're having surgery because surgery puts you in what we call a catabolic state, which is when you break down more of your lean body mass and so getting extra protein before surgery. Because, you know, I'm not talking about cataract surgery. I'm talking about an orthopedic surgery or a heart surgery, an abdominal surgery, you know, the big surgeries that can put you potentially for a Little bit in ICU or in the hospital for a number of days, those break down muscle. And so you wanna do everything you can to be strong going in because that is actually part of the body's healing response. It is what is going to occur. And you wanna minimize how much you lose, but you also wanna maximize how well nourished you are going in. The more average person you know, not going to surgery, we're beginning to figure this out. So for example, there's a really good lab test that I sometimes order that's called an omega 3 index, which is a way of telling how much inflammation versus anti inflammation. Now inflammation is one of the physiological underlying mechanisms of your healing response. So when I mentioned that finger cut, I said it was gonna get warm and swollen and a little tender, that inflammation, and that's your body increasing blood circulation, increasing white blood cells to generate a healing response. So acute inflammation is actually quite necessary. The same thing's going to happen after a surgery. But chronic inflammation, when we have non stop elevated omega 6s in our blood, elevated C reactive protein, all of these other unhealthy responses, and we see this, anything that ends in itis, itis. So rheumatoid arthritis, arthritis, ulcerative colitis, allergic rhinitis, these are signs that you have inflammation in a more chronic way in your body. We now know that heart disease, much of it in its underlying mechanism is inflammation. The same for Alzheimer's. So that kind of blood test can tell you how much inflammation you have. Same thing for CRP or C reactive protein. So there are now a growing number of lab tests that we can do to learn something more about your underlying state. Albumin is a measure of how much protein is in your system. I think everyone should have an albumin before they have a major surgery, because if you know that you're low, you could be supplementing with protein before and also after the surgery.
- [10:38]
A
So if we zoom out beyond surgery from the everyday finger cut, in your view, why do some people recover faster than others beyond age? So, so like age, for example, that's a factor in that if my 9 year old daughter gets like a, a brutal scrape, it like disappears within like a couple days. Whereas if I get the same brutal scrape, it takes me probably like a couple weeks, probably due to collagen production declining with age. But aside from age, you know, age is not. As you age, recovery generally becomes slower. But with that said, there's a lot we don't know. So. So you tell us what separates those who recover faster from those who don't really recover fast at all. Maybe perhaps slow or never.
- [11:31]
B
Well, this is, I think, the million dollar question, what are the impediments? So maybe I could answer with a couple of clinical examples of things I've experienced with patients in my practice. So in the introduction to heal faster, I tell about patient of mine, all the names are changed. He had Guillain Barre, which is this autoimmune disease sometimes comes on after a viral infection. And in his case, he had terrible chronic pain related to the inflammation of the nerve endings. And. And he was going on a few years of this when he saw me. So why didn't he heal? That's the question as you're sitting across him, because most people get Guillain Barre, it could be really devastating. You could end up paralyzed for a while, you could be in the hospital. But usually people do actually bounce back and recover. So as I was sitting across from him, that's what I'm thinking about. Why hasn't he recovered? And I'm taking a careful history and really searching for anything that can help me figure it out. And as I talked to him, it seemed clear that he had ongoing inflammation. And one of the triggers for that can be your diet. So I asked him to do an elimination diet. Now, an elimination diet can be quite extreme, where we have you eat only a very few kinds of foods, or it can remove gluten or dairy or soy foods. You know, just one category of foods. He did this elimination diet, and he found some very specific things that he was sensitive to. And one of them was black pepper. Now, black pepper is interesting. It's a spice. We don't really think about it that much, but it actually can lead to what we call leaky gut, where large molecules move outside the intense intestine into your body and they wreak havoc. They're not supposed to be there. Your gut is supposed to be impermeable to those kinds of large molecules. But if it gets leaky, if it becomes more porous, then things that shouldn't move outside the gut move into your systemic circulation, your overall blood circulation. So this happened to him. And when he eliminated the foods that he was sensitive to, he got dramatically better. So for him, he was sensitive to certain foods that created this leaky gut that didn't allow him to heal. Microbiome. I'm always thinking about the microbiome. Let me give you another example. I had a patient in her 80s, very healthy, a hiker, a cycler, vigorous. And she, about four months ago, developed fatigue and Dizziness. And she went to see her cardiologist, who said, well, we should do a cardiac workup. And she went as far as having a cardiac catheterization that showed that her arteries were okay. And her doctor said, you just have an old heart now. I wasn't satisfied with that because.
- [14:37]
A
What type of an answer is that? I'm sorry. Sorry. Your heart's just old, you know, have at it. You know. Thanks, doc. Right.
- [14:44]
B
I mean, she was hiking. Like, what do you mean now? She was an old heart. And so I encouraged her to be a detective. And I just want to say, often people have to do their own detective work. And as she spent time thinking about it, she realized that she had been put on a different glaucoma medication. So eye drops, those eye drops, a little bit of them, are absorbed through the whole body systemically, and they have what we call an anticholinergic effect that led to her dizziness and her fatigue. And as soon as she got off those eye drops and onto a different I drop for glaucoma, her symptoms resolve completely. So she was misdiagnosed. But she had a side effect to medication that was creating this whole set of symptoms. And because of her age, it was easy to say, well, this is aging. You know, you've gotten older, and now you can't do the things you used to do. This happens all the time, you know, that we blame aging, you know, and
- [15:45]
A
I think that's an example. I think you're right. It does happen all the time. I think this is an area, and AI is far from perfect. But leveraging AI can actually help with interactions, whether it's multiple supplements or medications or combinations of all sorts of things. Because the reality is there aren't studies on combinations of medication, all sorts of medications, supplements, foods, et cetera. And I think that's where AI can help. I think you mentioned leaky gut. How does one know if they have leaky gut? What are the. In. In your view? What's the. Is there a gold standard in terms of lab work or tests that one should do?
- [16:28]
B
No, unfortunately not. I believe there will be. You know, this is where science is really evolving. But here's the challenge. Your microbiome changes from, you know, moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day, and getting one spot test. Well, how well do you. Did you sleep the night before? What was your last meal? You know, there's just so many things that can alter the. You know, obviously, if you took antibiotics recently, so many things can alter it. And so if you have unlimited money. You could be doing a baseline and following your microbiome test very, very regularly and then perhaps you would be able to know. But for the average person, we don't even know what a normal microbiome is. We just don't know yet.
- [17:17]
A
You know, very consistent with everything I've heard. On a personal note, so my doctor, our listeners know, this is Frank Lippman. He's, you know, functional medicine trained. We do all the testing and Franklin and so and the criticism some people have of functional medicine is, you know, they over test. And so I've done a couple like the microbiome testing and even Frank said this is just a waste of your time for all the reasons you outlined. And if you feel pretty good and everything's like there's no need to do it and the numbers just vary so greatly. And without question, the microbiome plays a significant role in everything, but we don't quite yet know how to measure it. In the same way we can say, all right, concerned about heart disease, what's your APOB and LP like? Okay, we've got an answer versus the and exciting.
- [18:17]
B
But so the fact that we don't have a test doesn't mean that we can't think about it and evaluate it and do things about it. So for example, we know that you can enhance your microbiome by eating a greater diversity of vegetables and fruits. And we believe that greater diversity is akin to greater health of the microbiome. We know that fiber supports the microorganisms in the microbiome. We know that fermented foods can support the diversity and the healthier organisms in the microbiome. We know that avoiding antibiotics, which doesn't mean you should never take them. I am not anti medication. Modern medicine can be life saving and you know, people used to die of infection, so we should not throw out antibiotics. But we probably prescribe them more often than is necessary. So avoiding artificial sweeteners which do a hit on the microbiome, gardening, eating organic food, time restricted eating improves your microbiome. So we have all of these recommendations that we could make to people to create a healthier microbiome. And then if someone comes in, like my patient, who has chronic pain and fatigue and just is not feeling well, if someone has brain fog, if somebody has eczema, that just won't go away, well, we could say, let's do an experiment with an elimination diet and figure out if there's something that you're sensitive to that's contributing to these symptoms so
- [19:53]
A
you Mentioned the patient with chronic pain. Do you have a view on the difference between managing disease or managing an illness and actually healing?
- [20:06]
B
Yes, I absolutely do.
- [20:10]
A
Yeah, let's talk about that.
- [20:11]
B
So I didn't actually title the part of Heal Faster that deals with what some people call chronic. I called it long standing. Because I think even in that language of calling something chronic, we are hexing. We are creating an implication that this now is gonna be here forever. And people do get over long standing pain. They get over it. Not everyone, but for a variety of reasons, in a variety of ways. So one is there's a difference between acute pain, which serves a purpose. I mean, we all know you put your hand on the burning stove, you immediately pull it away. You know, you have those nerve endings for a reason. It's a danger signal. It tells you to stop. But the long standing pain, there's often nothing structurally wrong anymore. The wound has healed, the injury has healed, the burn has healed. And yet the brain continues to say, warning, warning, there's pain. So what can you do about that? Well, one is we can address the brain. For people who are doubtful, one of the best examples of this is that someone who's had a limb amputated often still has pain in that limb that doesn't exist. That tells you that the pain is not coming from the limb, the pain is coming from the brain. And so what can you do? Well, with long standing pain, the brain is over sensitized. It develops what we call central sensitization, where it's almost as if, if you remember from, you know, when you were in high school and you had that, you know, homunculus of the brain, you know, the whole body in the brain and how the thumb had much more space attached to it than like the middle of the back because it has more nerve endings. So it's as if that part of the body is enlarged in the brain. All right, how do you now shrink it? Well, you could shrink it with mind body practices. So, for example, there has been a lot worked on, on mindfulness and that with mindfulness you can shrink that area of the brain. There is the work of John Sarno and his disciple Howard Schubner, which is about the narrative. Like, if my narrative is, oh my God, when I go outside and there's a wind blowing or a breeze, that's going to set off my migraine. Well, the mind body connection is really potent. I go out and the breeze is there and I get a migraine, I can change that narrative. My narrative can be something more health Promoting there may be a breeze and my skin, the muscles below the skin, the skull, all of that protects me and my body knows how to handle being outside in a breeze without developing any symptoms. So we can change the narrative and many people have done work there. We can take medicine like low dose naltrexone, which also reduces that central sensitization. So we are developing more and more tools to reduce that brain message that is no longer useful because there is no more danger. There's just pain without a reason.
- [23:39]
A
Let's say it's such an important topic, narrative, we all do it. Can you speak more about language specifically and in your view what we should just like non starters in terms of language and how would you reframe it? Whether it's a simple injury or something a little bit more traumatic. How do you think about language?
- [24:07]
B
I love that question because I care deeply about the language we use and I think that it is incredibly important. I'm going to give an example around anxiety. We all feel anxiety at one point and another. It's part of the human experience. But there are times that we are feeling anxious and it's really something that is positive. Like say you're preparing for a big job interview and you're anxious, but you're anxious because this is something you care about. You want that job, it matters to you. So what if you could reframe your language to I'm excited when you're anxious, right. And you say I'm anxious. That's a negative state. Nobody wants to be anxious, but we all want to be excited. We all want to anticipate positive things in our life. And so there was actually a psychologist who researched this and she had three situations where she researched. She had people sing karaoke, she had them give a public talk, and she had them solve math problems, all of which tend to be anxiety provoking things for people. And she had them either three groups, they either said I'm anxious, I am excited, or they didn't say anything. And the people who said I am excited before they sang karaoke, they had better pitch, you know, when they were listened to by a group of, you know, people reviewing the practice. They perform better on their public speech and they perform better on their timed math test. So we can't say I'm excited when we're waiting to hear about the results of our MRI and we have cancer. That's really ridiculous. But there's a lot of situations where we might be able to reframe I'm anxious into that same valence that same high energy state, but something we think of as positive instead of negative.
- [26:09]
A
This podcast is sponsored by Abdocare. Some days demand more from you, whether it's a workout, back to back meetings or just staying present with your family. Spark Energy and Focus Provide stable functional energy. Mix it up before a workout or even mid afternoon when you feel that dip coming on, it's so easy. Shake, sip and within minutes you feel more dialed in. Not wired or jittery, just clear, focused and ready to power through. The drink has a well rounded and balanced formula that goes way beyond just a quick energy boost. You get 120mg of caffeine paired with amino acid acids and taurine so the energy feels steady, not spiky or jittery. It also includes choline for mental focus and clarity plus B vitamins and L carnitine to support energy metabolism and vitamin C, A and E help support your immune health and everyday wellness. There's also zero sugar which makes a real difference on how you feel later on. Right now Spark Energy plus Focus is offering 30% off and free shipping. Go to drinkspark.com and use code MINDBODY GREEN at checkout. That's code MINDBODYGREEN@drinkspark.com I have to say this because this literally happened last week. So on the subject of turning, I'm anxious and do I'm excited. Our nine year old daughter, she is very athletic and very competitive and she can sometimes run anxious because she she wants to perform. So like it doesn't come from us. We always try to like praise and reward effort but not outcome. We always say you can't control the outcome but like always control your effort. And so there was a we have a big field day at her school which is like a mini Olympics and at the end there is a race and it is the I think four or five fastest girls in the grade and it's a big deal. There's parents there and not a big deal but like there's parents there. It's big to the kids. And she was in the race and she really wanted to win and she was very anxious about it and she works with a coach who's fantastic and she said exactly what you're saying. We have to flip the script. We have to say when I'm anxious, let's turn that into I'm excited. And that's where the anxiety was from. She really wanted to win. Like she didn't say it and we kept on saying like look, whether you win or lose, if you win, we'll go out and celebrate. If you lose, we'll go out and celebrate. Like just put forth, put forth effort, which you always do. And she really struggled with it. But sure enough, the race came and we could see her and she was very quiet, like in her zone and ended up racing and winning. And we were so proud of her because, not that she want, she, she, she, she figured it out and she literally didn't verbalize that, but you could see it on her face. The anxiety went to excitement and energy and she channeled that and got through it. And so she's created. Our hope is here's a rep, here's something I can draw on in the future. Hey, remember this situation where I was really nervous and anxiety and if you would have said I didn't have to do this, I would have said I'm out. But I did it. And so again, not a cancer diagnosis that we're awaiting or an mri, but a real world performance anxiety. But she got through it. And so that framing, when I heard her coach say this to a 9 year old, I was like, that's just, I think we can all learn from that. How do we turn anxiety into excitement and lean into it, not run away from it?
- [30:00]
B
Yes, when it's appropriate. And you know, behind that also is that kind of curiosity. So you know, when we're experiencing something unpleasant, when we're anxious about something, you know, often what we want to do is move as far away as possible. But the curiosity, in your daughter's case, it's this great story, was it mattered to her, it was important to her, she wanted to do well. This is something she loves to do. And so yes, like can it be something you're excited about and how does that help you? And now going forward, you get to build her self efficacy. Cause you get to remind her, you know, you experienced this last time you raced and you were able to turn it and I trust that you can find that again.
- [30:51]
A
It is flipping anxiety. Anxiety is good in that it matters so much and for so many of us, if you don't care, that's kind of the problem. And that's also okay.
- [31:02]
B
Right? And we don't care about everything. So it is okay sometimes totally okay.
- [31:07]
A
But anxiety often.
- [31:09]
B
And by the way, that's another reframe. I mean like one of my reframes is when I'm, you know, 80 and I look back, will this have mattered? And if the answer is no, then I'm letting go of it now, you know, then I don't have to stew in it right now. So that's the opposite. Reframe, it doesn't really matter.
- [31:27]
A
Yes. And so coming back to, you know, you mentioned trauma, and in my experience, I'll use another anecdote. A very dear friend of mine, very healthy, does everything you can possibly, possibly do to live his best life. A lot of his health issues have come in the past year after, like, weird things. And he knows that he's very sophisticated after a traumatic snowboarding accident, which there was no neurological essentially in his ankle. But like, it was very, very traumatic and extraordina painful and a lot of weird stuff started to happen after it. And so let's talk about, like, I think we need to. Trauma. There's this downstream effect. How do you think about that? How do we overcome that? How do we. How do we manage that?
- [32:30]
B
Yeah, well, a few things. I, I think that we have completely under recognized trauma. And you know, in your friend's case, it was an acute physical thing, obviously. It can be emotional, it could be sexual. I mean, there's a lot of different reasons why people have trauma. Sometimes it's what we call, you know, the big T, where it's something really devastating. Anyone would say that's devastating. And sometimes it's an accumulation of smaller things. And I think we have in medicine completely under recognized that the way that impedes healing is that you have a nervous system that's now turned on all the time. It's always in fight or flight. It's always the sympathetic nervous system pumping out cortisol, pumping out adrenaline. And that's not a state we heal in. We heal in the quiet side of the nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest. And so how do we get there if we've experienced trauma and in heal faster? I talk about a really wide range because I want to make it clear it's not a one size fits all. Different things work for different people. I also really wanted to bring to people's attention the newer things that we're learning about. So, for example, I'm really disappointed that MDMA did not get approval by the FDA for PTSD because it went through its, you know, phase three trials and they were positive and the FDA asked for more research. But MDMA looks very promising for ptsd. Vagus nerve devices. Now, you don't need a device to quiet your nervous system, the vagus nerve, your cranial nerve, longest nerve in the body, and it touches essentially every organ in your body. It is quieted through practices like breath, work free, always available you know, extend that exhalation to activate the vagus nerve. Sometimes people tell me, I can't take a deep breath, I'm too anxious. Well, often they could still hum. They can chant yoga, meditation. All of these things will activate the vagus nerve. But here's another thing. You can get a little device now that are being more and more studied. They are external stimulations either right over the vagus nerve as it runs through the neck or on the ear, sometimes put over the chest, sometimes worn peripherally on the wrist or the ankle. And what these do is they either directly activate, if you're putting it as electrical stimulation, like with gamma core or Truvaga, right over the vagus nerve, or they work more indirectly to tone the vagus nerve and they shift you from being in that sympathet state where it's much harder to heal, to the parasympathetic state where you can activate your healing system. And I think that's something that affects many people in our society. We are constantly in that high valence negative state called stress. Chronic stress, chronic disautonomia. And if you cannot, can teach people and help people quiet their nervous system, that can then help activate healing.
- [35:58]
A
And in terms of. I just like to measure everything if we can. HRV is something that could measure high HRV better in terms of our stress response overnight.
- [36:09]
B
Yes. And it's your own hrv. So like many wearables, you know, it's not like your friend John, you know, who might be 20 years younger than you and have a different HRV, but
- [36:19]
A
you have a baseline. That's why I love I, you know, I've got, I'm wearing my whoop and my aura and I love that. So I love that we talked about language, you know, a little bit flipping anxiety to enthusiasm, if you will, excitement. Can you talk about mindset?
- [36:36]
B
Yeah.
- [36:37]
A
What role mindset plays, Whatever we're faced with, again, whether it's a cut in our finger or serious surgery, again, surgery first.
- [36:46]
B
There is evidence that people who have a positive mindset going into surgery recover faster, have less pain, have fewer days in hospital. So mindset really, really matters. There is evidence that people whose expectation is that they will do well from their treatment do better than people who have a negative expectation. And so their. You could say, well, can you change that? And there actually are classes that they offer, especially to people going for heart surgery, that help shape an appropriate expectation. You can now do virtual reality where you experience the surgical suite and you see what's going to happen and you understand and you set an expectation for the best possible outcome. Guided imagery for many, many things allows you to experience yourself in a quiet place, a safe place, a place that is in your memory as a place you've enjoyed going to. Or maybe a place you've wanted to go to, a beach in Hawaii, you know, wherever it is, the forest, you know, wherever it is for you. And then to experience yourself having a very positive outcome. And there are studies of guided imagery across many conditions showing that you can impact your outcome by creating this mental imagery. You talked about your daughter's performance. Many athletes use guided imagery before performing to enhance their performance. Because if we can visualize it, we often can impact the course of it.
- [38:38]
A
Visualization. I can't help but think of Louise Hay. I'm sure you know Louise Hay.
- [38:43]
B
Yes. Not personally, but yes, yes, sure.
- [38:46]
A
I've never met her personally and she's been passed away years ago. But you know, in her view, I think the criticism of her, she took things to the extreme as you know, literally her best selling book of all time is you can heal your life. And so her thought process is everything. Every disease, I think she breaks it up into two, like hyphen dis ease is due to mindset to some degree or limiting belief or anger or trauma. And I think there's some. It plays a role, but I don't think it's everything. And I also think it puts a lot of pressure on someone to say, like blame, exactly, shame. Like, oh, this is your fault. Like the cancer came because you're angry. It's like, no, maybe this stuff just happens. And so like bring this full circle. In my experience, when, when you're faced with a health issue, guided imagery, being positive, all that stuff matters. But I also, in my, again, in my experience, letting go of the outcome also plays a role. And I, and I go back to my daughter too with her, you know, much smaller scale, you know, a third, third, a third grade race. It was just give your best. Whatever happens, happens. And so on a personal level, my essentially the founding story of Mind Body Green. I almost had back surgery. I had two extruded discs in my lower back. L3L. I was at L3, L4, L5S1. It's been a long time. It's been 17 years. Couldn't walk, excruciating sciatica. Was going to get back surgery. He went to a doctor and orthopedic surgeon. He said, yeah, you need back surgery. And I have nothing against surgery, but I generally back surgery. The success rates are not exactly where you would like them to be. So I sought a second opinion. And that doctor said the same thing, you need surgery. And he said, you know, maybe you should try some yoga or therapy that, that could help, but you probably need surgery. So I, from a mindset perspective, even though it was absolutely brutal, I couldn't like walk and I'm a walker. If I don't get 12,000 steps, I am a very grumpy dinosaur, as my children would say. I had the attitude as, you know what, I'm going to try this yoga thing. If it works, amazing. If it doesn't, I'll get surgery, I'll be okay. Turned out the yoga actually did work with a lot of other things. That was the inspiration behind MindBody Green. But I keep on thinking about it was the letting go where I let go of the, where I just had, you know what, I'll be okay. Surgery, not surgery. I'm just kind of letting go of the outcome of this yoga. And I think that played a role. What's your take on letting go of the outcome in general as we face with a positive letting go, but with a positive spin.
- [41:43]
B
Right. There's a beautiful book called the Fourfold Way, written by an anthropologist, Angela Aryan. And she says the secret to a successful life in every society she's gone to is show up, pay attention, tell the truth, don't be attached to the outcome. I love that. So I just threw that in. But I want to say, I think this is one of the really challenging parts of what we call mind body medicine. Because implied when you talk to people about the potential to use your mindset, to use guided imagery, to use hypnosis, to use breathing practices, that you might be able to augment a healing response by activating your mind body connection. Is the implication that by not doing that you helped create the condition you're now facing. And I think that one of the worst things we could do is blame someone for having cancer, for having heart disease. And we do it. We go, well, of course you have lung cancer. You smoked cigarettes. Right? It's not like we don't do it. But you know, then they say, yeah, but my uncle, you know, smoked cigarettes his whole life and he lived to be 95 years old. He didn't get lung cancer. I mean, it's, it's complex, it's multifactorial. And I've taken care of people who have pristine lifestyles and still had something bad happen to them that is part of the human condition. We all die, most of us get sick at some moment or another, and that is just a reality. At the same time, we can participate in our recovery. We have agency. There are things that we can do to have a better outcome, and they include things that we know. Eating more vegetables and fruits, moving, you know, getting movement every single day, getting good sleep every single day. Finding a way to center ourselves because life comes with stress. Having good relationships, having people we love and care about. These things set us up to be healthier and to recover more quickly and more completely when something bad happens to us, which, you know, in a life, almost inevitably we will experience at some moment.
- [44:18]
A
How do you think about the mystery of long Covid right now, which I think we are all, not all, many of us are experiencing in different ways. Do you have a take?
- [44:35]
B
I do have a take, and I think we don't know. Fundamentally, we don't know. And it's probably gonna be different in different people. So right now, the leading theories, let's say, are you didn't completely get rid of the virus for one reason or another. Maybe there's a reservoir where it's hidden in your body. And people have pointed to different organ systems, the ovary, the testes, where maybe it could be hidden and be a reservoir that continues to see the body. Maybe you got rid of it, but it created autoimmunity. You know, it had this kind of effect that. That created autoimmune disease in your body. And now you're really wrestling with autoimmunity. Maybe you have micronutrient deficiencies, and that's why you can't fully rid your body of it. Maybe it's affected your nervous system. You know, the people who have pots, the postural orthopedic tachycardia syndrome, where they get dizzy when they get up, that it has somehow altered the nervous system. So as I spoke about earlier, there are people who are experimenting with these vagus nerve devices to see if they can quiet the symptoms. So I think we will learn over time that in different people, there are different reasons for why they have not fully recovered. And it is a beautiful opportunity for us, you know, as a society, to learn a lot more about how we recover from things that we don't fully understand. I read a book some years ago called the invisible Kingdom, and it was about this woman who had chronic lymes and her path to fully recovering and actually being able to have children. She wasn't able to conceive until she fully recovered from the Lymes. So there's detective work, there's Experimentation, there's a journey when you've been ill and you haven't gotten good answers. And I would say see another person experiment with a different approach. For example, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, you know, they have very different ways of diagnosing and treating that maybe doesn't need to know the underlying viral pathology the way we need to in western medicine for long Covid.
- [47:00]
A
And I'll add to that, absolutely be a detective, get second opinions, third opinions, go deep, try to understand it. But in my experience, I think it's also important to be able to zoom out and just say, I don't know. And maybe there isn't. Maybe you need to lock it in the, I don't know, drawer at a certain point and let go of it because you'll drive yourself nuts.
- [47:26]
B
And that's some of that balance. How much of your time do you spend trying to fix something that's not right as opposed to accommodating it, Getting more rest, not being as athletic as you were before you had Covid. I mean, I don't want to say people should settle, but sometimes battling. Everyone will know the story of Jimmy Carter, who at around age 90 came on public television, said he had cancer metastatic to his brain and he was ready to meet his maker and ready, preparing to die. And then he lived another 10 years. There was a new medicine, an immune medicine that put that melanoma into remission. So that's the other, let's say, encouraging thing. We are constantly doing medical research and we are constantly discovering new treatments that might be just right for you.
- [48:19]
A
So you mentioned medical research in closing, in researching the book, which is Heal Faster and a fantastic read, I highly recommend it. What stood out in terms of medical research when you were working on the book? Anything jump off the page where you said, wow, wow, this is really interesting.
- [48:33]
B
Well, I think a lot of things jumped off the page. One is something that I knew from studying Chinese medicine, which is the importance of our circadian rhythm. You know, in Chinese medicine, it's like Ecclesiastes, there is a time for, you know, for everything under heaven. A time to rest, you know, a time to be active, a time to, you know, eat and a time to fast. Well, we have that data in a growing way. So for example, the data that supports time restricted eating as a strategy, both for your microbiome, as I mentioned earlier, but actually also to reset metabolism to reverse type 2 diabetes, to improve blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, that is part of circadian medicine because we are not supposed to be digesting our food. When we're sleeping, our stomachs should be empty, which means we have stopped eating two to three hours before we go to sleep. And then we have, you know, eight hours of sleep and then maybe even for an hour after waking, we don't eat until our hormones are really prepared for that meal. And the incredible health benefits from immune to metabolic that that can have. So circadian medicine, I think is an emerging area and it ties into what's the best time of day to take your blood pressure medicine or to get chemotherapy. And is it different for men and women? I mean, this is really a very interesting emerging area of research.
- [50:02]
A
Well, just on the note of circadian rhythm, you know, I love my wearables and mealtime and bedtime. If I don't have a three hour gap, my HRV is severely impacted and I have a, I have a high hrv. But if I have a heavy, a heavier meal and there's maybe only a two hour gap between meal and bedtime, my HRV suffers, whereas three hours, four hours, maybe not so heavy, my hrv. So I have the data every morning when I wake up. Fascinating.
- [50:39]
B
And I want to say, just to emphasize that this is like one of the lovely thing about wearables is it allows you to know what works for your body because we are not all identical in terms of how our metabolism works. And so you can get that personalized feedback even. I have people wear continuous glucose monitors who don't have diabetes because they find out what they're sensitive to. But I'd say the other thing that I think is another fascinating emerging area of research is red light therapy. The evidence is probably strongest for skin. So acne, dermatitis of different kinds, wound healing, hair loss, I mean, I mean, and that makes sense because red light doesn't penetrate very deep. So the skin's quite superficial. It makes sense that it would work well for the skin. But we're in the Olympics. You know, red light therapy got approved for athletes to use pre and post workout as part of their recovery from their athletic endeavors for muscles and tendons. So I think we're going to see more and more. And the tricky thing, before any listener goes out and buys one, is that the very expensive red light that they're using in these studies and the way in which it has the exact right wavelength and the exact right size and they're researching the duration is different from the handheld one that you buy online. So I think we still have some question marks about what's the best over the counter, you know, the one you could use yourself at home.
- [52:17]
A
So we covered a lot today. Victoria, where can people find you online?
- [52:22]
B
Well, I have a website, drvictoriamazes.com and I'm also at the Andrew Weil center for Integrative Medicine, so they can find me there. I co host a podcast with Dr. Andrew Weil called Body of Wonder. If people want to learn more about integrative medicine, that's a great resource. And I have a new book which is always exciting. It's called Heal Faster. And if you want to learn more about what we talked about, it's in the book.
- [52:50]
A
Well, the book is fantastic. Victoria, thank you so much.
- [52:53]
B
Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure.