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Heal Your Lymphatic System with Dr. John Douillard - E62
32 Plays19 days ago
Most people struggle with stubborn weight around the belly, brain fog, sluggish energy, and mysterious aches, never realizing that a congested lymphatic system might be at the root.
When your lymph isn't flowing, toxins build up, immunity suffers, and even blood pressure can spiral out of control. Left unchecked, these problems chip away at your longevity and your daily vitality.
Healing your lymphatic system takes more than surface-level fixes; it requires getting your breath, diet, and daily rhythms working for you. This episode explores proven ways to get your lymph moving, all guided by someone who knows how to translate tradition into real results.
Dr. John Douillard is a leader in integrating ancient Ayurvedic wisdom with modern scientific research, focusing on practical approaches to health, longevity, and self-awareness. A chiropractor by training, he spent over a year in India studying Ayurveda before returning to the U.S. to co-direct Deepak Chopra’s center, where he trained medical doctors in holistic health practices. Dr. Douillard has authored seven books and published extensively on topics such as breathwork, circadian medicine, and digestive health. He is also the host of the 'Ayurveda Meets Modern Science Podcast'.
“That's what I love about time tested wisdom is, it doesn't usually change at all. It hasn't changed in a couple of thousand years, probably not going to change in six months.” - Dr. John Douillard
In this episode you will learn:
- How the diaphragm plays a central role in both lymphatic health and overall vitality, and why dysfunctional breathing is linked to common issues like belly fat and poor digestion.
- Why stress and sensory overload in modern life disrupt subtle self-awareness and biological rhythms, leading to widespread metabolic issues, and the ancient and modern strategies to counteract this.
- The science behind circadian rhythms and the powerful effects of syncing your daily routine, sleep, and meals with natural cycles for improved energy, weight management, and longevity.
- Practical entry points for reclaiming health, including simple breathwork exercises, nature exposure, mindful eating, and movement after meals.
- The foundational principles of Ayurvedic medicine, including the importance of seasonal eating, understanding your body type, and using tradition informed by modern research.
- How compromised lymphatic function from poor diet and weak breathing impacts immunity, energy, and cognitive health, and evidence-based steps you can take to restore your system.
Resources
- Connect with Dr. Douillard on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lifespa
- Learn more about Lifespa: https://lifespa.com/
- Listen to his podcast, ‘Ayurveda Meets Modern Science Podcast’: https://lifespa.com/podcast/
- Download Lifespa’s e-books: https://lifespa.com/ebooks/
This podcast was produced by the team at Zapods Podcast Agency:
Find the products, practices, and routines discussed on the Alively website:
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Transcript
Introduction to Health and Wellness Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
That diaphragm is the number one pump of your lymphatic system. So if you don't have a diaphragm functioning well, the first thing that will get compromised is the lymph around your belly, which is why we have extra weight around our belly and our hips, because that lymph pump is broken for most of us.
00:00:18
Speaker
So at least we got to start there.
00:00:24
Speaker
This is the Home of Health Spam podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
00:00:38
Speaker
Dr. John, it is a pleasure to have you with us today on the Home of Health Spam podcast. Thank you for joining us.
Ancient Wisdom and Self-Awareness Enhancement
00:00:44
Speaker
And before we dive to your story and everything you're doing, how would you describe yourself?
00:00:51
Speaker
I say that I'm a lively human instrument. And this instrument that we all have has the ability to kind of amp up our self-awareness, our subtle perception.
00:01:07
Speaker
And in our world, we think that, you know, the more sensory stimulation stimulating it is the better. But from some of the ancient wisdom perspectives, the more subtle something is, the more powerful it is.
00:01:24
Speaker
We can't see the circadian rhythms. We can't see the microbiome. They're doing like the lion's share of everything. And we have what are called enteroreceptors in our body, particularly in our diaphragm, that actually enhance self-awareness, that allow us to be more aware of the subtle. And even not only is that great for health and and longevity, but it's also really critical for the thinning the veil between the physical and the spiritual.
00:01:53
Speaker
you know so But what i love about ancient traditional wisdom, and and particularly Ayurvedic medicine, is they understood that you got to fix the body, you got to fix the mind. And then you have the ability to be more self-aware. And then you have the ability to realize that, hey, guess what?
00:02:06
Speaker
I'm also spirit. I'm also a soul. I don't have to die to figure out that I'm actually a soul. We can actually have some of that. awareness of the most subtle part of us while we're here.
00:02:17
Speaker
So that's what I love about the ancient wisdom. It's not, oh, you have heartburn, let's just fix
Impact of Stress and Sensory Overload on Health
00:02:21
Speaker
that. Let's get rid of your blood pressure. Let's actually fix this mind, which is a big problem these days, fix this body, which is broken down because of the mind.
00:02:30
Speaker
And then then it it just affects our self-awareness. We just have none. We're so dependent on our happiness from the outside world. And we don't have something happening out there. We get sad.
00:02:43
Speaker
Well, there's a wealth of joy and loving and kindness for no reason waiting for us on the inside. And that's the beauty of these traditional systems been around for thousands of years.
00:02:54
Speaker
They really did have it locked in where we're just like, oh, here's the cholesterol medication, you know. I might go on a very personal journey on this conversation, Dr. John. um i On this, I'm curious. This is something I've been playing with a lot. You're you're saying we think the more sensory, the more we intake, the bigger the impact, the better.
00:03:12
Speaker
But it's often the more subtle. And maybe the why doesn't matter. But I am curious, the more noise that we have right in society, you didn't have videos before where you could access infinite different people talking and about different things and much less pre-YouTube, just all the content you could read on the internet constantly and the TVs and radios and all of this that we're consuming, taking in, taking in, taking in.
00:03:38
Speaker
Does it make it ever harder for us to even notice and hear those subtle signs? Like how how do we get back to quieting some of the noise from the outside?
00:03:49
Speaker
to be able to tap into those subtle noises, rhythms, vibrations, you think as an instrument, like it's playing ah song, but we we can't hear it all the time.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's really the massive major problem in our culture. You know, i did, and I wrote an article recently about ah this exact thing.
00:04:14
Speaker
know, we have metabolic syndrome, which is the epidemic of our time, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, you know, high cholesterol, extra weight around your belly, all these metabolic syndrome issues. And we have we have pills for all of them.
00:04:25
Speaker
But when you actually look at the research, every one of those are directly linked and caused by stress. So, you know, then you look at, yeah so take, for example, if you're going, going, going, constantly doing this, constantly going 90 miles an hour faster than any of our ancestors ever did, just overstimulated.
00:04:46
Speaker
the body's under a chronic underlying emergency threat. like there's a little bear chasing you 24 seven, but you're just, you know, staying just far enough away to stay alive, but it's there all the time. And if you're under a chronic stress all day long, your body's gonna put more cholesterol into your blood to make more stress hormone, which is what it's made of,
00:05:05
Speaker
to help you get a get up that tree faster. It's going to raise your blood pressure because you climb that tree faster with higher blood pressure. It's going to put more sugar into your blood because that sugar is going to get you up that tree faster as well. And any reserve fuel it can find is going to put under the mattress store does reserve fuel as fat, mostly and first and foremost around your belly and hips.
The Role of Nature and Meditation in Healing
00:05:24
Speaker
So it's logical, right, that that's really the problem. And from there, we have to look at, well, what treats stress? Well, then you look at meditation and prayer, and there is no shortage of studies showing that if that meditation can reverse the blood pressure, the high blood sugar, the cholesterol, it's just on every single level. But nobody, but you are, which I love, and nobody seems to be talking about the elephant in the room, which is this culture. So how do we actually fix it?
00:05:55
Speaker
Meditation is obviously the key. Dipping the the cloth in the dye of your own silence twice a day, morning and night, create a creates a ah ah resonance between your circadian rhythms and nature's circadian rhythms.
00:06:10
Speaker
Because when you have a still lake in your calm, the body can see what's down there in the but bottom of the lake, the tires and all that junk, and it'll elicit a healing response. so But also that a level of silence creates a level of clarity, a level of self-awareness where the body can have awareness of problems and problems and fix them.
00:06:31
Speaker
But it also has the, you know, the self-awareness that we begin to have that this crazy lifestyle is not good for me. Like that's the first level of awareness we have to have is like, wait, I got to stop. I got to turn down the volume. I got I got find myself. I got to be in nature and just, you know, go off the grid. i Real quick, they did a study with here in Boulder, Colorado, CU Boulder.
00:06:59
Speaker
I did two of them. One was they took healthy Boulder, Colorado types. And they said they measured their circadian rhythms, their cortisol, their melatonin, and they were completely out of whack, dysfunctional.
00:07:12
Speaker
and they took them up into the mountains for a week, no cell phones, they were in bed with the sun, up with the sun, electronics, reset their circadian rooms and their biological o clocks, which have to be in rhythm for us to be balanced 100% in a week.
00:07:28
Speaker
They did a follow-up study for a weekend, 69% restoration in just a weekend. So we can all like do that, right? We can all like, particularly in the summer, just turn off the lights, turn off your wifi, just go off the grid for a weekend, turn off your phone and just go off.
00:07:41
Speaker
And you can even Be in your own home, you know, or go into nature. You know, if you go into nature. What you don't realize is happening, even if it's like completely a canopy of trees above you, which is cooler and feels better.
00:07:58
Speaker
The sunlight which gets into those trees bounces off the ground and bounces off the leaves. I'm talking about the infrared light, the one that is not in the LED light bulbs, which means we're full on deficient in them.
00:08:11
Speaker
So when you go into a forest, what's actually happening is you're getting, if you go to Google, Google infrared light photography and look at a forest and then look at a city, a city looks exactly like a city.
00:08:24
Speaker
You go into a forest with an infrared light camera, the difference is it looks like an explosion of white light. So all the infrared light is so amped up Like it's multiplied its intensity because it's bouncing off all the leaves and you're just sitting there getting blasted everywhere, up, down, inside your shirt. I mean, all around. I mean, you can't not be in it.
00:08:45
Speaker
And that is so healing for us because we're so deficient. And that infrared light penetrates your tissues, activates an enzyme called cytochrome C oxidase, which makes your mitochondria make energy. But it also, that same enzyme from the sun makes melatonin in your cell.
00:09:02
Speaker
that actually is used by your body within the cell. It's not the one that makes you to sleep. This is a different melatonin. It's always in the cell. It cleans up all the free radical damage from energy production, which is one of the major factors of unnecessary aging factors is we have all that we can't get rid of damage waste products fast enough.
00:09:22
Speaker
Well, the sun, the infrared light, will actually provide the energy and the melatonin to clean up all that damage to keep you alive a lot whole lot longer. It's simple stuff like that, right? But it's powerful. And we stay in our house with our computers, you know, and and then we have just more and more of the stimulation.
00:09:40
Speaker
And somehow, you know, maybe AI will just sell do it all for us. We could just go walk in the park and like chill. But That might be a way away.
00:09:51
Speaker
But we'd still have to do it, right? And and so I guess that's that's a question I would have if you had kind of this pyramid of the quality you could get from it. So it sounds like a week off the grid, you're getting back to 100%. if you can go in nature 100% off the grid, at a weekend, you can get to 69%.
00:10:09
Speaker
Like, that's something, okay? And there's still people that say, I can objectively know that. I see the research. I see that's good. But... As we know, everybody knows as well, if if I eat right, if I sleep right, if I move my body a lot, like I'd be healthy. But as a society, we we don't consistently do those things.
00:10:25
Speaker
So then maybe you step back and say, okay, maybe what I can start with is i won't consume from outside i voices, ideas, et etc. like I'm not going to look at my phone for the first 30 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever it is in the first part of the day.
00:10:40
Speaker
And I think a lot of people know, yeah, this is bad for me, but they still do it, right? Their alarm's on their phone. It's the first thing they look at. Before they get out of bed, they're on that scrolling before they get out. And I'm just curious for people to say, hey I know these things, but I'm still not doing them. Are there other practical, smaller things that can just be entry point steps to start down that path for them?
Breathing and Digestion for Optimal Health
00:11:01
Speaker
Totally. And the most important one is that if you are are under stress under stress, which we're talking about, the bear in the woods chasing you 24-7, every time that you get a little stressed out, hu we change how we breathe.
00:11:17
Speaker
And that stress version of breathing becomes normal to you. And then other stress comes along, that becomes normal to you. And then in short order, you completely adapt to a lifestyle of stress and change your body to breathe in a way that tells your body, every cell of your body, life's an emergency.
00:11:36
Speaker
I was in a restaurant about a year ago and I was coming in and some elderly folks were coming out. And they were older, like eighty s and and their mouths were open, huffing and puffing, barely able to get in and out. It was hard for them.
00:11:48
Speaker
And I looked at them and i was like helping them out. And I says, my God, if someone would have just told them they could breathe five minutes a day, it would, and there studies to back what I'm going to tell you up, up it would completely eradicate your high blood pressure and your heartburn and your indigestion. There's at least 15 studies showing you can strengthen your diaphragm, breathe away your heartburn.
00:12:12
Speaker
Fact. blood pressure studies, but breathing techniques can reverse your blood pressure as good as a Western medication in three minutes. The diaphragm is weak for almost all of us. 91% of athletes in a recent study did not have a diaphragm relaxant and contracting fully. So none of us breathe the way we were designed at all.
00:12:36
Speaker
And if someone would have told them that the age-related cognitive decline that they're experiencing is because their diaphragm, which is the pump of your entire lymphatic system and the cerebrospinal fluid, which is a version of the lymphatic system to pump out the trash out of your head, three pounds of trash and plaque out your head are pumped out of your out of your brain chemistry while you sleep at night.
00:12:57
Speaker
Don't sleep well, you don't drain well. If you don't breathe well, you don't drain well and you start to become, you know, get brain fog, you forget full migraine headaches. All these things happen because a compromised lymphatic system, which number one pump is your diaphragm.
00:13:13
Speaker
And number two, where the lymphatic system starts is inside your digestion. And the other piece of the puzzle, everybody just bubble wrap in their diet. Say, oh, you know what? I don't like wheat, dairy, nuts, seeds, grains, legumes, nitrates, oxalates, goitrogens, phytic acids. Let's get rid of all that stuff and eat meat and vegetables because I can digest that.
00:13:33
Speaker
Those harder to digest foods that we've been eating for millions of years as human beings, at least 300,000 years, I'd say, you know, but you know but They did find gluten in the teeth of ancient, you know, commoneds 3.2 million years ago.
00:13:50
Speaker
So they've been eating that. We know that for a fact. So when you just take the food out of your diet, you are bubble wrapping it, fixing the symptom of weak digestion without fixing the cause.
00:14:03
Speaker
And those foods have what are called the hormesis effect. They're a little bit of irritants that irritate the gut lining just enough to create something called gut immunity. And if you don't have those irritants, there's no reason for gut immunity and you see severe compromise.
00:14:20
Speaker
There was a study done where people who, let's just say wheat, for example, if you eat wheat, people who i ate wheat, people who didn't eat wheat, they were gluten-free, but they didn't have to be, they weren't celiac. The people ate wheat had four times less mercury in their blood than the gluten-free, but didn't have to be, folks.
00:14:36
Speaker
Significantly more good bugs, less bad bugs, and more killer T-cells than the people who were gluten-free and didn't have to be. And I think that and the the the one that just locks it in for me is the Amish kid research. The Amish kids have the lowest rates of asthma on the planet.
00:14:55
Speaker
Their genetic cousins that came from the same valley in Switzerland came to America and became sterile farmers. And they have the highest their kids have the highest rates of asthma on the planet. But the Amish kids run barefoot in the barns, they have cows and spats, and they're just you know just breathing all this dust in the barn. So the researchers went, don't understand how this can be. They're same genetics.
00:15:15
Speaker
One has the highest, one has the lowest in the country. And they basically measured the dust in the barn that the Amish kids were breathing on a regular basis. And it was the dust that created enough irritation, a hermetic irritation of the respiratory tract,
00:15:31
Speaker
that created an immune response to the asthma, the lowest rates of asthma. This is why if you have a digestive issue, don't just stop eating the food. Sure, stop eating it and for a spell, but fix the reason why.
00:15:46
Speaker
Particularly if it's a recognizable food, like wheat. You can get wheat without glyphosate. You can get wheat you can get or any other grain or beans or oxalates. you you know Now people can't eat.
00:15:58
Speaker
Their kale is bad. Their zucchini is bad. Their tomatoes are bad because it has lectins and things like that. This is really good for the symptoms, but terrible for gut immunity.
00:16:09
Speaker
and you could And that gut immunity starts inside your intestinal tract where your lymphatic system starts, which carries your immune system. And if that's broken down or not amped up or strengthened because of good digestion, then you're going to lymphatic congestion, which is not going to be able to carry your immune system well.
00:16:27
Speaker
It's not going to detoxify you well. And you're to start to get a host of symptoms that you're going to blame on the food, but it's not really the food. And if so when you look at all that, with the breathing and reboot digestion, you know, this is how we create self-awareness by getting the body functioning in a way where it can actually feel good inside itself.
00:16:48
Speaker
And then a level of self-awareness comes, you know what? This is my crazy life I'm living. I'm going 90 miles an hour, did-tada day going, and you start having that desire to change.
00:16:59
Speaker
But a lot of us just don't even know. we don't know, you know, because that we're just going because we're I'm accomplishing things and that does feel good and you should be good. But I did research on this. and We published studies on this. We can talk about it, but I call it the eye of the storm.
00:17:14
Speaker
The bigger the calm you have inside, the more powerful you are on the outside. I'm not saying going for a walk and stay in the woods for your whole life and do nothing. No, we're talking about maximum human potential, but you can't get there being in the winds as a storm. They're going to, it'll beat you up.
00:17:29
Speaker
But if you create that calm, The more powerful, the more calm you have, the more productive and powerful you can be in your life. So that's why we want to do it, to be more productive, not to be just like, you know, sitting in a room meditating all day long.
00:17:43
Speaker
That's not the plan. And so I think that that's a great launching point into Ayurvedic medicine and healthcare. care that You've touched on, you know, studies on it. So it's these things that cultures and humans and societies have known and done for thousands of years before. And then we got science and we didn't understand maybe the mechanisms behind it. And so, oh, well, that's not real because we don't understand it. And I think those are two separate things of saying, hey, we don't understand it, but it could still be real. And as some of the science is catching up, you know fMRI, oh, we can actually measure in the brain what's happening when you do X versus Y. Oh, now we can actually test the biomarkers for X versus Y. The the science is catching up to what the ancients
00:18:28
Speaker
knew and lived. And I guess I'm curious in your practice, you're you're kind of leading the way with incorporating this into a Western lifestyle. What does that mean? Maybe maybe start just define Ayurveda, Ayurvedic health care for
Ayurvedic Principles and Practices
00:18:43
Speaker
us.
00:18:43
Speaker
So, Ayurveda is the traditional system of medicine from India. It's thousands of years old. The All-Indian Ayurveda Congress, which is all their doctors of Ayurveda, is the largest medical organization in the world today.
00:18:56
Speaker
And it's been around for 5,000 years and it's still the largest medical organization in the world. So you just got to think if it was, if it was terrible and didn't work, wouldn't be here as the largest medical organization in the world to this day.
00:19:10
Speaker
It's time tested. And, but time tested is ancient. People think, uh, you know, what are the old people? No, they didn't know what our ancestors now. They didn't know anything. But when you take the ancient wisdom and you have modern science to back it up, that's something I feel like we can look at. So science alone can prove, you know, coffee's good, coffee's bad, whatever it wants to prove really. Wheat's good, wheat's bad. I can give you something on both sides of any aisle.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah. So, but when you have something that's been around, for thousands of years. And you have modern science, which is kind of my thing. I was i went to India for a three-week vacation, ended up staying there for a year and a half. Then ended meeting Deepak Chopra there, came back and opened his center and ran his center, helped co-directed his center for eight years.
00:19:50
Speaker
And I was training medical doctors. That was my job, one of my main jobs, and seeing patients And I realized that the only way I'm going to sell this, which will help them understand this, you know, because I'm a chiropractor teaching medical doctors, you know, that was 1986.
00:20:04
Speaker
I needed a science, you know, so I started finding the research behind the this ancient wisdom. And now on my website, Lifeslaw, we have 1500 articles of every health condition and every just every everything I could find that was a really cool ancient, you know, like kind of wisdom, you know lifestyle thing or herb or whatever.
00:20:24
Speaker
That's got modern science to back it up. And that's what we have at Life's Found. All that research there is for free for folks. But the thing that I would say, going back to what can you do first? Well, I think the most important thing is the Nobel Prize winning science on circadian medicine.
00:20:39
Speaker
They were all about your biological clocks thousands of years ago. They mapped out when you should eat breakfast, when you should exercise, when you should eat dinner, should you fast, should you not. All these questions have been answered thousands of years ago.
00:20:52
Speaker
And they lived the lifestyle according to books, textbooks about it. so So I do believe that's a really good place to start. And I think that the the first place to start, and I did a study, on my ah weight loss study ah early on that I published in Ayurvedic journal.
00:21:08
Speaker
where we had people eat ah breakfast and a lunch and supper, no snacks. And we made supper supplemental or like a soup, a smaller dinner, a bigger lunch, chenna whatever e you need a breakfast to get your lunch without hunger, right? and we measured their anxiety, ah their exhaustion after work, their sleep you know scores,
00:21:35
Speaker
their energy, their vitality, and how much weight they lost. And when it was an eight week study, and of course everybody was, back then they were being told the thing was eat little meals all day long. That was what everybody was doing back then, here right? Which now we know is not really very good for us.
00:21:52
Speaker
So they were just eating, you know, meal, snack, meal, snack, meal, snack, meal, snack. So the body never burned its fat because it never had to because it was kidty eating off this constant ever and never ending buffet So when you have breakfast or lunch, they had to first start to burn fat and they were freaking out like, wait, I need my snack.
00:22:08
Speaker
I mean, we're supposed to eat snacks. And once they did that, they started feeling better over after about the second two week marks, they stopped complaining. And then they started feeling really, really good and better and better.
00:22:18
Speaker
They lost 1.2 pounds. per week for the entire study, which is an eight week study. But they also, their energy got better. Their fatigue was less, their sleep was better. Their no tiredness after the meals was significantly improved.
00:22:32
Speaker
Their cravings were less. We measured all that. It was just kind of just by getting them into eating a breakfast and a lunch and a supper with no snacks. And then once they had that, we said, now, what if you can make supper a little bit smaller, like a soup or a salad?
00:22:48
Speaker
And once they did that, they felt even better. he lost more weight. Then we said, what if you were to make it a little bit earlier, finish that meal before six o'clock at night, have your breakfast, have your lunch, and then see if you can do ah earlier supper. And what if you can do that?
00:23:02
Speaker
Over time, the body gets used to this. You can then skip supper. So you have a breakfast and lunch and no supper. And that was the original intermittent fasting. I mean, it happened thousands and thousands of years ago. And of course we had great results when people did that, but you have to get yourself over the fat burning hump to get you to be able to do that. Cause most people are like, I need my, I'm so hungry at dinner and I need this and that.
00:23:24
Speaker
So, so it's simple things like that. And the first thing to start with is just try to start with having a bigger and more relaxed lunch. That would be great. And after that lunch or dinner, preferably earlier, preferably not so big,
00:23:40
Speaker
move your body. Don't just go to the couch and sit down. There's something in Ayurveda thousands of years ago, again, they call the Shatapavali, which means walk after a meal. It was a thing they talked about thousands years ago. Now we have hard science to show.
00:23:54
Speaker
Helps your stomach empty faster. Helps you lower your blood pressure. Helps you lower your blood sugar. Helps protect your arterial lining, which gets pretty damaged in that first hour after your meal. All this stuff was like, they talked about this. Now we have the science to say, that was a really good idea to walk after the meal. And a really bad idea was to go sit on a couch.
00:24:12
Speaker
And you can just, folks, just eat a big meal if you want, but in front of your TV while you got the clicker, you're trying to find a Netflix movie that you're trying to figure out what one you like, march. Just sit there and march in front of the TV.
00:24:24
Speaker
That's all got to do. While you're looking around for what you want to watch, whatever you can march. And once after 15, 20 minutes of scrolling, whatever, you can sit down on the couch. You know, simple things like that, really. But they're profoundly effective.
00:24:37
Speaker
Still back to this Ayurvedic definition, right? It's this ancient the practice of medicine. I think at least how I had been introduced to it, you had the pitta, like you had different identifying and then what kinds of foods you would have and what are hot foods versus cold foods.
00:24:53
Speaker
How much does the what you're eating tie into the timing of eating and then supplementation or other pieces, how it all comes together? Yeah, well, the how, when, what, and even where you eat it really does matter. In Ayurvedic medicine, Ayur means life. Veda means science. So a science of life.
00:25:11
Speaker
And it really understood seasons and rhythms big time. Like they understood that we should eat nuts in season the winter like the squirrels do. And we should eat fruits in the end of the summer, just like every other mammal or critter does, you know, that we are seasonal circadian beings and we should act like them. now we have a Nobel prize winning sciences as if you go against that grain, you're gonna pay a price, big price.
00:25:37
Speaker
And then they also said, what we are intimately connected to those cycles in nature, like there's summer, it's hot. We all know people who are hot all the time, who would never wear a jacket, throwing off the covers all the time.
00:25:51
Speaker
Maybe your spouse or partner is that person throwing off the covers. That's a person who has a lot of heat constitutionally. They have more summer qualities inside of them, right? We call that pitta.
00:26:02
Speaker
And then there's the folks who are cold all the time and they are putting on the blankets and putting on hats and stuff. And they have more winter qualities in the inside of them, right? Simple. And we call that vata, which means air.
00:26:14
Speaker
Pitta means fire. This is the words, right? But when you have more air or vata in your natural constitution, you're going to be cold. You're going to be dry like winter.
00:26:25
Speaker
But nature had a plan. And the plan was, I know it's cold and dry. I know a lot, some people have a lot of this vata constitution. And what was good about that? The vatas were highly self-aware.
00:26:37
Speaker
Pizzas were fiery, competitive driven. They wanted to build a bigger cave. They they were never satisfied, right? But the winter vata body types had sensitivity. They're the ones who drew all the cave, theyre the rock art and a you the hieroglyphics and all that.
00:26:55
Speaker
that was the vata. They were the scouts who would be out there and they could sense danger around. They could feel everything, had a lot of radar. And you know people like that who are very sensitive to everything and that's them.
00:27:07
Speaker
But naturally I got a plan for you guys. And that plan, I'm going to give you a harvest of nuts and seeds and grains which have a lot of fat and fiber in it. And you know if you're going to have the hunting in the winter to eat more of those proteins and fats,
00:27:22
Speaker
and insulate yourself from the coldness of dryness of winter, because you're a cold person in a cold place, like wherever, Vermont, and you're eating cold ice be blueberry smoothies?
00:27:34
Speaker
Like, no, that's not what nature had in mind. You know, we should, the nature of provided the antidote to the extreme of each season. So we thrive in the summer when you're a hot body type, nature provided fruits and vegetables to cool down your system. Now everybody should eat with the season, but once you know your type and you can take our, we have a free body type questionnaire and just answer a bunch of questions, tells you what your body type is. And it's cool to know,
00:27:57
Speaker
Oh, my God, that's why ah I'm a little bit anxious. and that's why I get heartburn. That's why I get angry easily. Or if you're the spring body type, which is this type that is like, think about the spring, right? You go for a walk in the spring, you're going to get mud on your feet.
00:28:13
Speaker
The earth holds on to more water in the spring, to germinate seeds. We hold on to more water in the spring. The people who have more, we call kapha, think of kapha, congestion. They hold on to more mucus, more water.
00:28:27
Speaker
They are going to be heavier set, maybe easier going, calm. They're going to be a heavier, calm, easy going constitution.
00:28:38
Speaker
Now their body type is congested. And what does nature provide in the spring is the harvest. Well, there's no pasta. There's no pizza. It's a no carb time of the year. It's roots and vegetables that clean and scrub the mucus off your villi of your intestinal tract and reset your whole intestinal microbiome.
00:28:56
Speaker
So we have grocery lists, which makes to make this really simple. We have grocery lists you get on our site, which this is like a summer grocery list. And all you do is print it out for free. Okay, I wrote a book on this called the three season diet, which was like, there's three seasons.
00:29:11
Speaker
that we harvest, that we eat from. One season is resting, the dormant season in nature. Nature's always full of cycles of rest and activity. So you have a spring harvest, summer harvest, fall harvest for winter eating.
00:29:25
Speaker
So this is the summer list. You circle the foods on this that you like, whatever you like, a whole bunch of them. And then just give yourself permission to eat more of those foods. That's it. And the ones with the Astrich are the super foods for that season.
00:29:38
Speaker
When the seasons change, take out the winter grocery list and do the same. Make it easy. and And you don't have to only eat off those lists. Just eat medicinal dosages of what nature was an intended because the foods that are coming out of the ground in that season have different microbes in the summer than the spring.
00:29:55
Speaker
And those microbes are what are called bacterial endophytes. And they live on the plants that you eat. And they make the plant better, stronger, more potent as a food, as a nutrient.
00:30:09
Speaker
Just like if you took all the bugs out of your gut, you'd be completely different person. With modern farming techniques, does that still hold true? I mean, I think back to Amish children versus their kind of cousins that came from the same ancestral line that if you're in too sterile of an environment, you lose the exposure to that. So I'm curious of, yeah, technically these foods would have X and Y, but if we're doing hydroponic farming that you're not even in the soil or all these different things, are we still from the same foods getting the same thing?
00:30:41
Speaker
They're going to get the quality. So you're going to get the nuts and the seeds that are heavy and warm in the winter and the cleaning, the spring greens that are going to scrub your intestinal belly because they're just, you know, the the the soluble, insoluble fiber in the spring and the cooling fruits and vegetables. Yes, so but you're right. We really need a diverse microbiome. So you really want to be thinking where you're getting your food. That's why organic is important to get as many bugs and diverse bugs as you can.
00:31:08
Speaker
you know, getting more exotic foods from the grocery store that you generally don't eat very much. you know what I mean? You might not eat organic, you know, kale or organic, you know, something that you just decide, I just don't, I don't even know what, you know, bok choy is, you know, try it out.
00:31:24
Speaker
Anything easier to get those, that diversity in your gut. is critically, critically important. We know now the science shows that our hunter-gatherers, their bugs in their gut changed dramatically. That was Stanford research.
00:31:36
Speaker
We also know that that the bugs in the spring are predominantly actinobacteria, which are good for fat and fiber. And for energy. And then the summer, our hunter-gatherers had more bacteria, which are for sugar and carbohydrates and starches.
00:31:52
Speaker
So our fuel supply was supposed to change. in the so In the spring, it was burn your fat, be more ketogenic, burning your own fat, right? Because there's no carbs. It's a no-carb time of the year. It doesn't exist in the spring.
00:32:07
Speaker
And then in the summer, you actually then change your your your fuel supply to be more starch-based. We starches aren't, you know, public enemy.
00:32:18
Speaker
Number one, they're actually part of the the annual nutritional cycle, which really takes a year to complete. Yeah. and So we've talked about ah breath and coming back into that and it it getting off kilter and the work that could
Importance of the Lymphatic System
00:32:34
Speaker
be done there. We talked about circadian rhythms and getting in tune with the cycles of the season plans. We talked about the fuel that we consume, the food.
00:32:43
Speaker
ah Something you've brought a couple different times that maybe we're digging a little deeper on is the lymphatic system, the role that plays and and how we're able to influence that or how without us trying influence, some things may go awry. Can you say a little more about that?
00:32:58
Speaker
There was a study done that showed that if you don't, Break down your protein and your fat completely. So your proteins are your nuts, your seeds, your lectins, your all of these things are retold. Don't eat beans, nuts, seeds, grains, all that.
00:33:12
Speaker
If you don't break them down properly, they're going to go in the fats, which are the environmental pollutants, which we dump, according to the EPA, 70 million tons of chemicals in our atmosphere every year, which filter down on the food we eat We have to end up digesting it and detoxifying it. Our ah digestive system is not just digest, it's detox.
00:33:31
Speaker
It's designed to get rid of the toxins as well as a sign to take the good stuff in. So it's very complicated. So when you don't digest those proteins and fats completely, the study, and I'm quoting it now, you would those proteins and fats will be incompletely digested and broken down.
00:33:49
Speaker
And they'll be too large to get into the bloodstream and nourish you. They will get up taken into the garbage can, which is the body's collecting ducts for the lymphatic system. Your lymph is the trash removing system, the immune carrying system, the delivery of good fat for energy systems. So if you're tired, feel toxic or have compromised immunity, which we didn't do a great job with COVID,
00:34:12
Speaker
then there may be lymphatic issues there. And so so that's what that's how the lymphatic system gets congested from a broken down upper digestion. And when that lymph gets congested, it can make you tired, lethargic, your skin can break out, and rashes and get you can brain fog, headaches, headaches,
00:34:31
Speaker
migraine headaches. um You can get extra weight around your belly and that's where it starts is around your belly. Then it goes out through your skin, into your brain. This lymphatic system is unspoken in medical practice, but it's well researched in the journals, which never makes it to medical practice. That's the sad thing. In Ayurvedic medicine, the lymphatic system was the system called Rasa.
00:34:57
Speaker
In the study of rasa lymph was called racina and that was one of the eight major branches of ayurveda which was the study of longevity so the study of lymph was a study of longevity which means how well is your immune system being carried through your system how well you getting rid of the trash that has a lot to do with your longevity right and if that's not working well you have to pay a price so if you can go on my website and type in a lymph quiz and it'll actually ask you a whole bunch of questions like do you have all these you know, symptoms and it'll give you an answer as to whether you have a lymphatic
Actionable Insights for Health Improvement
00:35:29
Speaker
issue.
00:35:29
Speaker
You also have something called the digestive health quiz and you can go through every aspect of your digestion and find out where your digestion is broken. If you have a problem with this or that food, And then you can kind of begin to use herbs and lifestyle and diet and foods to restore function opposed to just, you know, take another pill to continue eradicate symptom or dramatically bubble wrapping your diet where then now you end up with, you know, less and less foods that you can actually eat and feel good eating.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah. And just lifespa.com. You reference it quickly. We'll put it in the show notes, but for you we've referenced this a few times. Tons of incredible resources. I know I'm going to be doing a lot of these because it's coming out of this, but lifespa.com for anyone curious.
00:36:13
Speaker
So these are ways we can identify problems. What are some actions people can take if we could go through each of them. So on the breath work, you know, what what is an action or a practice people will do on that? On circadian rhythm, we talked about getting into nature. On some of the diet thing, eating in tune with the season. And then on the lymphatic side, like to to get that system flowing better, what can we do?
00:36:36
Speaker
Let's do the breath first. Okay. I'll give you some very simple acts. Like I said, with those elderly folks, five minutes a day. Okay. And I'm gonna give you that right now. Okay. So first of all, you should know the rib cage job in life is one thing, squeeze all the air out.
00:36:50
Speaker
That's his job. And the only reason why the rib cage ever open is because your diaphragm contracted. But if it doesn't contract fully to open the rib cage, suck air in, it's just going to, the rib cage over time is going to win the war.
00:37:05
Speaker
And you're going to have to start to breathe more shallow, more shallow. And you're going to start to take a more shallow breath. Your mouth at some point is going to drop open and you're going to be. And that's a bad sign, right? That means that you've you've lost respiratory capacity and efficiency.
00:37:19
Speaker
So what do we do to fix that? Well, we want to strengthen that. So this is an exercise. And I wrote an article called the best diaphragmatic breathing exercises. It's free. um extra There's three instructional videos there.
00:37:31
Speaker
You can. go deeper if you want. But here it is, super simple. I call this calisthenics for the diaphragm. This is not how I want you to breathe, but I want your rib cage to be freed up from your diaphragm. Because right now the rib cage is tight, diaphragm is tight.
00:37:46
Speaker
And as I'm sitting here talking, I might be leaning a little forward. And as I do that in a couch or in front of my computer or in my car, my rib cage is pushing my diaphragm down into a pre-contracted position.
00:38:00
Speaker
So it can't fully contract and therefore fully relax. So over time, we're just doomed. That's why 91% of athletes did not have a diaphragm relaxing and contracting fully, according to a recent study.
00:38:11
Speaker
So we all got to do this, okay? So it's this, take your arms. Well, if you first say, first we're to do is we're going to breathe always through the nose and we're going to fill the belly only, okay? Let's just breathe in through the nose and inhale as you fill only your belly. Watch your belly go out.
00:38:26
Speaker
Now, as you continue to inhale, fill your chest.
00:38:31
Speaker
As you continue to inhale, fill your upper chest.
00:38:35
Speaker
And then out. Now let's do that a little bit deeper. Let's fill the belly all the way first.
00:38:43
Speaker
All the way. Now your chest all the way.
00:38:49
Speaker
All the way. Now your upper her chest all the way.
00:38:54
Speaker
And out. This is a pranayama breathing technique called Durga Pranayama. It's been around for thousands of years. Super simple. It's slow. Now we're going to put that into action. We're to take our arms up over the head.
00:39:05
Speaker
The rib cage is going to go up, but we're going to breathe through that same breath where the diaphragm is going to be going down. So we're going to pull all the adhesions and tension around your rib cage and diaphragm by doing this. You're going to reach for the sky.
00:39:18
Speaker
Fill your belly only all the way. Now your chest only.
00:39:25
Speaker
Now your upper chest. And as you reach, sip in as much air as you can, and reach as high as you can and sip the last bit of air in your nose.
00:39:34
Speaker
As you take that maximal in, you can feel a pull into your rib cage and then breathe out. Let's try that again. Arms go over the ted top of the head. Feel your belly, your chest, upper chest.
00:39:50
Speaker
Now sip the air in and reach, reach, reach up, up, up. And you should feel a big pull under your diaphragm. Now you're do, so you do that 10 times, then you do over to the side, you're gonna do 10, and you're gonna feel a pull here.
00:40:07
Speaker
you feel your belly, chest, upper chest. And then as you breathe out, you can go all the way other side, squeeze the air out. All the air out, all of it out, all of it out.
00:40:20
Speaker
Do 10 that way and then 10 this way. Feel the pull over here. Breathe in, belly, chest, upper chest. And then all the way out, squeeze every last bit of air out.
00:40:35
Speaker
contract the abdomen, get rid of it all, and do 10, 10 straight up, left, 10 to the left, left and 10 to the right. And that is what I just call calisthenics for the diaphragm. There's many more breathing techniques that are more refined for different, can be like heartburn ones and you know but you know um blood pressure techniques and things.
00:40:56
Speaker
But that's a really good one to start with, just to do the calisthenics to get the ribcage and diaphragm freed up from each other. and you can do that in front of your computer. It just feels so good. It's like a dog stretching. You watch them, they go like that and make big yawn.
00:41:10
Speaker
i mean, they're doing that. And getting that breath work tied up and everything, does that then have this compounding effect that plays a role in the lymphatic system and and what you can do? Are are these...
00:41:21
Speaker
That diaphragm is the number one pump of your lymphatic system. So if you don't have a diaphragm functioning well, the first thing that will get compromised, and this is according to the science, is the lymph around your belly, which is why we have extra weight around our belly and our hips because that lymph pump is broken for most of us.
00:41:41
Speaker
So at the very least, we got to start there. So we're storing trash in that area effectively because our pump's not working properly. Yeah, undigested protein and fat will find its way into the into the fat as sort of reserve fuels deposit because it can't it wasn't processed properly.
Conclusion and Resources
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:01
Speaker
Dr. John, this is this has been fantastic. i I know we are just touching the tip of the iceberg. Lifespa.com is a wealth of information, so much you can do there. Besides the website, you have a number of books you reference.
00:42:15
Speaker
Some of them, you work with some of the biggest names out there in all different areas, as well as in the NBA, but also not just Deepak Chopra. I know James Nestor, his book, I took a lot from that and many, many others, Ben Greenfield and others.
00:42:29
Speaker
um Before we sign off, is is there anything you want to share with our listeners, other places to find you other than Lifespa.com or oh anything you want them to know?
00:42:40
Speaker
I'm on all the social channels. I usually just do a little one-minute shorts with some really cool snippet of research. But the idea there is that if you want to dig deeper and learn more, have a library of free information. and All of the knowledge on our website is free. It's for 1,500 articles, ancient wisdom, modern science,
00:42:59
Speaker
You know, really well referenced so you can kind of bank that what you're reading is real as opposed to lots of things that people who say things, you know, you don't know if it's true. And and three, four or five, six months, they find out it wasn't such a good idea.
00:43:12
Speaker
know, that's what I love about time test algorithm. It doesn't usually change at all. hasn't changed in a couple of thousand years, probably not going to change in six months. And then of course, we have a newsletter where we put out this these articles of ancient wisdom, modern science three times a week. So you can you know sign up for that and part of our family and just dig into this research. just This is amazing, simple way of living your life.
00:43:34
Speaker
And also we have an Ayurvedic store. I've been formulating Ayurvedic herbs for 40 years for other companies as well as my own. And so we have herbal, all of our books are there. All my books, I've written seven books and There's deeper dives into the knowledge. There's our herbal line, our skincare line.
00:43:54
Speaker
Lots information there at our store at livesba.com slash store. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is an interesting space, the longevity space, because so much is focused on the new.
00:44:05
Speaker
but What's the new research? What's the new thing discovered? What's the new pill, the new biohack that comes out? But I think it's Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett are saying, I'm less interested in how things will change in 10 years, then what can I know will not change? in ten years And I think looking back to this 5,000-year-old practice, it's like, well, these things have worked. I know that part's not going to change.
00:44:25
Speaker
And so maybe where you wouldn't be willing to experiment on this molecule we just discovered and are creating in a lab, these practices, ah these medicines, these ways of living and being are tried and true.
00:44:40
Speaker
and And you can really tap in. And I can't thank you enough for your work and and all the resources you put out to the public for free. No, thank you very much. You're so right on. you I feel like, you know, that's, you know, we just don't know what to believe. We don't know the latest diet. People are so confused, but eating seasonally, how can that be wrong? Right? Because we are we've been doing that. you know This is a planet of seasons and we all are tied to them and, you know, deeply confused.
00:45:07
Speaker
dependent on those seasons but we decided to change that all is eat carnivore eat quino or eat vegan all year long and there were seasons when you'd be maybe more vegan you know in the summer why would you kill your animals they knew wasn't like why they knew if they hunted all summer long they would have over hunted there'd be nothing to hunt in the winter and they would starve in the spring that happened to many cultures and tribes around the world And the ones that were smart, they had rules in place for that not to happen.
00:45:37
Speaker
And I've written about that and studied that. So it's like, like there are so we need to tie ourselves to the seasons. Otherwise, we do pay a price in the long run. Short run, I think it probably felt great. But what's the long-term consequence? Is it doing the job for you or is it getting your body to do the job for itself? That's what we want to be thinking about. yeah Great point. Well, thank you so much, not just for today, but all your years of work and everything you put out into the world. Thank you, Dr. Jones. really appreciate Andrew. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that.
00:46:07
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other Healthspan role models on Alively.com.
00:46:20
Speaker
Enjoy a lively day.