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How A Plant-Based Diet Can Heal You with Dr. Matthew Lederman - E49
22 Plays1 month ago
Feeling frustrated by the endless cycle of prescriptions, procedures, and fleeting diets? Many people find that traditional approaches only mask symptoms instead of addressing the root of the problem, leaving them tired, discouraged, and searching for lasting solutions. This episode sheds light on how rethinking your relationship with food - particularly by embracing a whole-food, plant-based diet - can unlock real improvement in energy, digestion, and overall well-being.
Dr. Matthew Lederman is a board-certified internal medicine physician and recognized leader in the fields of nutrition, lifestyle medicine, and mind-body integration. Best known for his appearance in the Forks Over Knives documentary and co-authoring several influential books, Dr. Lederman combines conventional medical training with deep expertise in whole-food, plant-based nutrition and emotional well-being. He holds certification in Nonviolent Communication and is one of the few physicians to have completed the rigorous four-year training process in that discipline. He is the co-creator of the Webe Kälm device, and co-host of the webe Pärents podcast, where he works alongside his wife Dr. Alona Pulde to help families cultivate connection and build resilience.
“It's not a lack of these specific nutrients. It's a lack of whole foods and too much processed [food] and too much animal foods that's making people sick.” - Dr. Matthew Lederman
In this episode you will learn:
- Why Dr. Lederman considers physical sensations and felt experience essential for optimizing health, and how he encourages fluency in communicating with your body’s signals.
- The journey that led Dr. Lederman from conventional medicine to a focus on plant-based nutrition, practical ways he transitioned his diet, and how he helped patients make sustainable changes.
- Approaches to nutrition that emphasize abundance rather than restriction, with specific details on Dr. Lederman’s own daily regimen and views on protein, supplementation, and processed foods.
- The importance of flexibility, balance, and consistent daily movement for long-term health, plus strategies for incorporating effective stretching and bodyweight routines into a busy life.
- How chronic stress, nervous system regulation, and emotional connection impact overall well-being - and why connections with others are as vital to health as diet or exercise.
- Practical tools for self-regulation and sleep, including Dr. Lederman’s work with the Webe Kälm device and why establishing routines of physiological safety is foundational for both adults and children.
Resources
- Connect with Dr. Matthew Lederman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theconnectiondocs/
- Learn more about his offerings at Connection Docs: https://www.connectiondocs.com/
- Listen to the podcast he co-hosts, "webe Pärents": https://open.spotify.com/show/41fJGgev0Md7ingDYzJ8td?si=Ara6rkDbQjuRzFLYTPvQ0g&nd=1&dlsi=0ce90442e36044a5
- Shop all the products Dr. Lederman mentions in this episode: https://alively.com/products/matthew-lederman
This podcast was produced by the team at Zapods Podcast Agency:
https://www.zapods.com
Find the products, practices, and routines discussed on the Alively website:
https://alively.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Health and Wellness
00:00:00
Speaker
It's become more clear to me than ever that physical sensations and and felt experience has its own wisdom and is essential to become fluent in communicating with your felt experiences if you want to optimize health and well-being and support healing.
00:00:23
Speaker
This is the Home of Health Span 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.
Matthew's Healing Journey
00:00:37
Speaker
Matthew, it is wonderful to be with you here today on the Home of Health Span. And I know we have a lot to discuss. We were just talking about everything we wanted to get in on the show before we started recording. um But before we jump into that, how would you define yourself?
00:00:52
Speaker
I would define myself as a lively healer, really focused on helping people heal and and doing what I can to support their their journey. That's a beautiful way to put it. And I think as we get into your own journey, ah that'll be a really common thread, right? Because in things that might seem disparate to other people, that healing focus really, i think, does come to the fore.
00:01:18
Speaker
So... Given that, I think maybe a lot of people might be most familiar with your work or have come to it through some of the books you've published. Would that be fair to say?
00:01:28
Speaker
As well as documentary? Yes. Yes. The Forks Over Knives documentary and the books. Yeah. Yeah. So can you talk about what, if we go there, sparked your interest in that side of health, right? The the nutrition side and and what it can do for our lives.
00:01:47
Speaker
Yeah, like I said, I've always been drawn to the ah profession around healing and helping people do that. I've done worked on that personally all my life. And as going into the conventional medical world, the conventional medical system as an internal medicine physician, i liked parts of it. But there was something missing where I couldn't really help people the way I wanted.
00:02:10
Speaker
And doing what everybody else was doing, throwing a lot of pills and procedures at the problem just didn't cut it for me. And at the same time, there wasn't an avenue to take that was very clear if I wanted to do something different.
00:02:24
Speaker
So most of what I've done has been through self-exploration, looking, seeing what's out there and trying to apply the same healing concepts that that i bring into my life for my patients.
00:02:41
Speaker
And that's allowed me to continue to grow and continue to support people.
Exploring Plant-Based Diets
00:02:45
Speaker
And it started with bringing in the nutrition, but it's really blossomed from there. and Okay, so so starting with the nutrition, did you have a particular aha moment? So just as context, personally, my father was a pediatric cardiologist.
00:03:01
Speaker
And as you know, being a physician, you don't get a ton of training on nutrition in med school. And at least when my father went through it, the training you did get was not scientifically accurate. whatever he was taught. And so the the Tim Ferriss slow carb diet, I introduced him to that.
00:03:17
Speaker
And in his 60s, he lost 65 pounds in a year, started running half marathons. And it was this just this wake up call of, wow, there's this whole different life that I've been missing out on because I was working on this food pyramid, just like bad principles.
00:03:32
Speaker
Did you have a similar... knowing what you were seeing and say, Hey, I want to move further back. Like, I don't want to just pull bodies out of the river. I want to go up. What's putting these bodies in the river. Why was it nutrition that sparked that first step?
00:03:46
Speaker
I didn't realize it was going to be nutrition, but I was on with the, and during residency with my friends who are all doctors and training medical residents, we all followed the Atkins diet, thinking that that was what was going to make you healthy and didn't know any better, but I didn't feel great.
00:04:06
Speaker
And even running, I was, when I switched to the Atkins diet, I, I, I couldn't run very well. i My stamina was down. So I knew something was off, but I didn't know what. And I read one book that remember halfway through. I said, I think this book is going to tell me to be vegan, which I did not want to be.
00:04:25
Speaker
So I was unhappy about that. But they were making some great claims. And you'll see, i don't want the word vegan to turn people off. It really isn't about vegan. It was about removing a lot of the junk in my diet.
00:04:38
Speaker
And for a week, I tried rice and beans. And I said, okay, I don't know how to be vegan, but I can make rice and beans. I thought that's what you needed for protein to combine them. And I did this diet for a week and I thought i was going to feel terrible. And I wanted to prove to myself that what they were saying in the book wasn't true. And I'd go back to enjoying my life, but I wound up feeling really good. I had digestive issues.
00:05:00
Speaker
I had energy issues. I had sleep issues. And all of a sudden I felt better and I still didn't want to do the diet. So I said, okay, how can I get out of this? And I'll say, well, you can't, you can't get enough hi calcium.
00:05:12
Speaker
if you're you know If you're not eating you know animal products, you need to get your milk to get your calcium. And I read about that and I said, oh, well, it looks like you can get enough. And I'm like, damn, okay, that's not going to work.
00:05:23
Speaker
What about protein? You can't get enough protein if you're not eating animals. And I said, oh. damn, you can get enough protein after I look. In fact, you know there was benefits of actually getting less protein versus more and the impact on your bones and your kidneys and liver.
00:05:36
Speaker
And I said, oh, this is not working out well. But I still didn't want to do it. So I said, well, i can't live off of rice and beans for the rest of my life. So it's not going to taste good. So even if it was good for you, it's not doable. And I got a a vegan cookbook and I tried to make vegan and French toast. It took me five hours.
00:05:50
Speaker
I didn't know what the hell I was shopping for. I was looking for all these weird named ingredients and I made it finally. And I said, oh my God, this tastes good. So I basically ran out of reasons and excuses to not do it. And then I said, okay, how can I make this work for me?
00:06:04
Speaker
And that's what we do with patients, which is, you you know, get your fruits, get your vegetables, the whole complex carbohydrates, get those in. And then you can add to it. And then you want to minimize or eliminate processed foods.
00:06:20
Speaker
And that creates the diet that's going to work work for most people. and then we help them modify that. And that's what I did for myself. And I felt great ever since. Yeah, I do find that being the most helpful, right? If you go in with a mindset of deficit, hey, here are all the things I can't do and and I'm not allowed, oh, these cupcakes, this set, versus let me build up from a base of I want to get...
00:06:45
Speaker
this amount of whole plants into my diet to get these nutrients. And let me do only things that I like to eat. Let me not force myself to eat boiled Brussels sprouts. If I eat boiled Brussels sprouts, you don't have to do that. There's so many options in the world of plants.
00:07:00
Speaker
And then you just start crowding out the other. So if you do want to add some meat in or eggs or whatever, like that's fine. It's probably way better than where you started because you crowded out the junk.
00:07:12
Speaker
ah yeah What's your take on that? I agree. and that people ask me, is this healthy? And you can't answer that question. You always have to include compared to what? If someone told me, you know, broccoli and sweet potatoes, that's very healthy.
00:07:28
Speaker
But am I going to eat broccoli and sweet potatoes every day for the rest of my life? No, I don't want to do that. Sometimes I go out with friends. I go out to restaurants. I do other things. I get bored. I want to try different dishes.
00:07:38
Speaker
So it's really getting ah understanding how to make the diet work for you and make the healthiest choices you can. Given that, so that's kind of where you started and you were pushing against it, pushing against it. I...
00:07:50
Speaker
I don't know if I had this somewhere. I was reading a book ah in this space and I think a quarter of the way through realized, wait, the answer is being vegan. And that was kind of the last day I eat meat for quite a long time. like, okay, well, I guess that's what I'm doing now.
00:08:02
Speaker
And you know my blood market, everything changed. It was completely transformative in a 12 month period. It was absolutely crazy. I had Dr. Greger on the show recently and he was like, you know eggs, like I actually think it's the yolk, it's not the whites that are problems. So i I do that for some protein on my salads.
00:08:17
Speaker
What does your... day-to-day or week-to-week nutritional regimen look like now, several years in? Before answer i actually I just want to make one point that I think talks to what you spoke to what you're you're talking about with your dad.
00:08:29
Speaker
When I was at ah Kaiser, I was a hospitalist. ah for I did about a year there when I was transitioning. And and one point, I remember getting my blood levels back.
00:08:42
Speaker
And my total cholesterol was like 120. And I said to one of my hospitalist partners, I said, you believe my cholesterol 120? And she looked at me, she goes, what are you, vegan or something?
00:08:54
Speaker
And that told me so much. That told me that, one, they knew that a plant-based diet actually could help you. Two, it shows you like how they looked at it, like it was ah a dirty word.
00:09:04
Speaker
and I'm thinking to myself, you're a doctor that knows this. It's not that you don't even know it. You at least tell patients, and then they have the choice to take it or not. Don't assume because you won't do it, a patient won't do it. And I think that's where a lot of doctors won't make these changes, so they don't even bother telling patients about it. Yeah, it's...
00:09:24
Speaker
It's a frustrating system. It's really a mess. so So anyway, yeah, what was the other question? I'm sorry. i just wanted to point out that don't go to your doctor if your goal is to optimize health and well-being.
00:09:37
Speaker
Your doctors are great at dealing with acute issues and and fixing broken things and problems, but not if you want to optimize health and well-being. Most doctors, I'm not going to say every doctor. Yeah, and I mean, I i believe most self-aware physicians would give you the advice like, look, I'm not a nutritional expert. I got X number of hours in med school over the entire period on training. a nutritionist, this is what they're specialized in, right? Like you wouldn't come to me to change my tires just because I have a doctor in front of my name. Like you'd go to somebody who does that. So maybe you're the person who's specialist. Yeah. So the question was today, right? Several years on what does your day-to-day or week-to-week nutritional regimen look like?
00:10:18
Speaker
I mean, is it entirely whole food plant-based or or what does it look like? That's my goal is to be so I'll eat ah my first meal around usually 1130. So I don't like to eat first thing in the morning. It just doesn't sit well. And I'm a big fan of trusting your body and how you feel. Some people say you got to eat breakfast.
00:10:37
Speaker
um not that's not how i That's not how I do it. So some people, some of my patients love eating breakfast. Some of them don't. I'll have my first meal at 1130. That's usually oatmeal and berries. Or it's i'm I'm enjoying right now a brown rice with avocado and apple mixture.
00:10:56
Speaker
And I'll eat a big bowl of that. And then I won't eat again until probably 530. And then at 530, I'll have a salad with some type cooked type of cooked vegetables.
00:11:09
Speaker
And I'll have some kind of sauce or dressing on that. Plus, or I'll mix it into the other dish, which is so tonight. It's this potato salad mixture that we have. So my wife will make something each every Monday and I'll have that for the rest of the week for dinner.
00:11:25
Speaker
And then Saturday and Sundays are usually little bit, a little bit different. And so this week, you know, one week it might be lasagna one week. It's a millet, a Thai and vegetable dish.
00:11:37
Speaker
So I'll have, you see what I'm saying? So I'll have that plus the vegetables and the salad. And then I like to have something sweet. So there's this fudge and like a date nut truffle ball that my wife makes. and I have a little one of those and a little piece of fudge after my meal. And that's, that's my typical weekday And then on the weekends, I usually have a meal where I'll go out or get something out.
00:12:03
Speaker
And that meal, that might not be fully... That might have like a little bit of oil sometimes. it might be just a traditional vegan dish. But I'll have that one night out of my 20... me, it's fourteen meals So one of them will, that's what you said, am I 100%? would say it's it's always vegan. I'm not adding animal products, but there might be some oil and more processing of the vegan ingredients versus the rest of the week. It's no no added oils, minimal added sugar, added sweeteners. Usually it's dates and minimal added sodium, added salt.
00:12:38
Speaker
Well, the dressings or sauces, like what what are you putting in those? I love this hummus. So hummus is the base. And sometimes I'll mix like a little bit of ketchup, which will that will have a little bit of added sweetener, a little added sodium, or honey mustard will have a little added sweetener, a little added sodium in there. And I mix that with the hummus and I'll coat that and it almost tastes like ah what is it, a Russian dressing if it's with the ketchup or a ranch if it's with the honey mustard.
00:13:03
Speaker
Or I'll have these vinegars that I mix with a little bit of the hummus and and all there's different flavored vinegars. And the hummus has olive oil, right? No, no, no. I get ah hummus without any... It has... It'll have tahini. So I'm not ah on a noga no added fat. So...
00:13:18
Speaker
As far as the fats, they're in the whole form. So it takes the tahini, the seed, the sesame seed, and you grind it up, yeah but you're not extracting sesame oil. You're eating the whole sesame seed.
00:13:28
Speaker
So I'm okay with fat, but not where you extract the fat out and then concentrate it into an oil or a solid. And then I have on the on Sundays, I really love this.
00:13:40
Speaker
We make this banana ice cream that's frozen, and I'll take this... ah fudge that we have. And my daughter likes to help me and she makes these little balls of fudge and she mixes it throughout the ice cream, like a Ben and Jerry's almost where it's all spread out. And then we have this peanut butter flour that we add a little bit of soy milk to, and it becomes a liquid and you pour it over the ice cream with the, the fudge balls in there. And it hardens like a peanut butter shell.
00:14:06
Speaker
And then it's like this big peanut butter shell with the fudge balls and the banana ice cream. taste I used to love Ben and Jerry's, so I had to find a replacement for that. and this really works. Yeah, you made your own chunky monkey.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. very So yeah, you could do that. You could put pretzels in there and you know you could get chocolate cup, different flavored fudge balls in there. It's really good. Yeah, and it sounds delicious. It sounds really, really good. yeah And then, i mean, eating so many whole foods, do you get all the nutrients that you want? Do you use any kind of supplementation on top of that?
00:14:39
Speaker
I do a multivitamin. The data is not great that of vitamins are going to really help you and make you better or that they're really going to hurt you. I mean, there's some that I would stay away from in the supplement form, some of the isolated nutrients, but that's not really ah problem for people. It's not a lack of these specific nutrients. It's lack of whole foods and too much processed and too much animal foods that's making people sick.
00:15:07
Speaker
So I tell people, Yeah, I'm not really sure about the vitamins, and if they're going to help you or or hurt you, or it's a net zero. So you have to decide, would you rather take them and and potentially be wrong or not take them and potentially be wrong?
00:15:22
Speaker
Either way, you could we can go either way here. And then that's really a personal choice. But whatever you do, don't care too much about that. Focus on this other stuff, which we know will help you. Yeah, don't major in the minors. So, yeah I mean, it's you're not doing like a D3, K2, creatine, anything other than the multivitamin. That's the only.
00:15:39
Speaker
The multivitamin has ah D in it and it has all the other stuff in it. And it doesn't have some of the things that like vitamin a has has been shown to potentially be harmful, of folic acid in supplements, vitamin E. those I tried to find a supplement that doesn't have those because if I know there's a concern, at least I don't want to take that in my supplement. That's what I focus on.
00:16:03
Speaker
And the creatine, I've seen studies that typically it has the most positive impact for vegans because right you're not getting the same level from animal products. Is that something you've looked at at all or you don't do the creatine?
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, my sense, I've looked at that a little bit. And again, that's one of those that I tell people if that's going to really... give you peace of mind or you feel like it's a noticeable difference. I ask people to isolate the variables and then test it out.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah. A lot of people make a lot of changes and you don't know what it is. lot of people make changes and then they think when there's a problem, they think this is the, you know, but For example, people, when they switch to a plant-based diet and they try to eat the same portions, but the calorie density is significantly lower.
00:16:45
Speaker
So if you eat a bowl of food that's 2000 calories per pound and another same bowl that's 500 calories per pound, you're getting a quarter of the calories in the same bowl. So then people will do that for a week and they'll say my energy is low because a plant-based diet is naturally lower calorie density. And they'll think that's because they're not getting enough protein.
00:17:03
Speaker
So then they'll go and eat a burger and they'll feel better, but it's not the animal protein, it's the calorie burst. So I have to help them find those things that they don't make the wrong conclusions and then do something that winds up harming them. I just tell them, hey, you got to eat more.
00:17:18
Speaker
yeah we got ah we got it or That's just an example. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. does do you Do you supplement with protein at all? It sounded like you you didn't think. This is, I think, a problem in the mainstream plant-based world too.
00:17:31
Speaker
There is this obsession with protein that I think is hurting people. okay My focus is how do I get less protein,
Incorporating Movement for Health
00:17:38
Speaker
not more? If I'm eating 100% whole food plant-based, I'm getting a ton of protein, more than my body needs, and you don't store it.
00:17:45
Speaker
So you need to now eliminate it, which stresses your bones, liver, kidneys. yeah And I want to get the right, it just just enough. And you need very, very little. and we're really talking about the essential amino acids and we talk about protein. right You don't need that much.
00:18:01
Speaker
And you can trust your hunger signals to get you more than the enough protein if you're doing whole plant foods. But if a significant portion of your diet is coming from processed protein dilute foods, like added oils, which gives you a lot of calories with no protein, you then maybe there's some benefit to some people, but not if you're eating a whole food plant-based diet and you are meeting your caloric needs, not restricting calories.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. you you know Earlier you referenced... being on Atkins when you were trying to run and lower energy and people dialing in, getting enough calories to to move their body how they want to,
00:18:39
Speaker
Understanding nutrition was where you entered the picture on this kind of healing. How do you think about movement? Like what's your journey on that been personally? That has been quite a journey.
00:18:51
Speaker
I started, focus like most people, focusing on resistance, yeah know weight training and cardiovascular. And I really ignored the balance and flexibility piece. And as I'm getting older, for long-term functionality, it has such an impact to focus on flexibility training, which to me includes balance.
00:19:12
Speaker
And I've made a real concerted effort to prioritize that, not because it's more important than resistance or cardio, but it's not recognized or it's not prioritized. So I have to really put a lot of emphasis on that.
00:19:25
Speaker
I think the way people stretch, they don't hold the stretches long enough. They don't do it regularly. It takes a lot of time to make these changes. But what I found is when I do that, I move better.
00:19:37
Speaker
i have less aches and pains. Everything from you know the when the muscles are tight and it's pulling the joints closer together than they should be, and then that over time is going to cause you know joint erosion or pulled muscles because the muscles are tight and they're pulling on the tendons inappropriately.
00:19:56
Speaker
And then you move funny and then it causes a little tear. All these problems is that people associate with age are really problems because they stopped using their muscles and moving their muscles in the way they should.
00:20:09
Speaker
And they're sitting for eight hours a day, but it's not just standing. People go and get a standing desk. That's not it. You got to move and do all these motions that you don't normally do because if you don't use it, you lose it. Yeah, it's ah I mean, our our mutual friend, Melanie, just had a recent podcast on Born to Walk. Right. That that it's not the standing versus ah it's the movement that we were made to move is is really what it comes down to.
00:20:33
Speaker
And moving your joints in ways that you might not do in a natural part of your day and this in the society we live in. So, you know, moving, extending your shoulder all the way back.
00:20:45
Speaker
So what happens to people is they never stretch their and get you know full extension. They start going like this and like this. and it But then you do one movement because you're reaching for something and you tear something. You say, oh, my God, I tore something. It's not because there's something wrong with you. It's because you lost this motion and then you moved it way past what it's used to doing. So we got to increase that our range of tolerance, our range of movement.
00:21:08
Speaker
and And that'll actually connect to a lot of chronic pain issues, and which we can get into later. But how our body responds and stimulates chronic pain is affected by this as well. So this this concept that I'm telling you about. So have a lot of people that have chronic pain that will help them. And there's a multi-prong approach.
00:21:29
Speaker
But one of those is moving your body in a way that you're your nervous system perceives as safe again. Okay. so there's and and then what's interesting is stress and how being in fight or flight mode affects the muscle spindles so that they they are basically keeping the muscle tighter and not letting it expand as much as it could or should So our chronically mobilized nervous systems where we're dysregulated also affects our flexibility, which then affects injury and long-term functionality.
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah, this could be a total tangent, but it does seem in this level of constant, this period of constant low-level stress that tensing, it's not just muscular. There's something kind of emotionally, i think people are...
00:22:15
Speaker
tense and unable to maybe open themselves, not just physically, but also emotionally to new experiences and new environments. ah Just before we move off the physical point though, sorry ah to go off on that tangent, because I do want to jump to kind of mindset and and stress management, especially with what We Be Calm Next.
00:22:31
Speaker
Are there any tools you use or or what does the day-to-day week-to-week look like? Like, for example, ah one of our prior guests, JJ Virgin, was really big on balance. And she talked about Gabby Reese taught her do it at the end of a tough workout.
00:22:48
Speaker
Because it's when you get in trouble, it's when you're unbalanced, when you're tired. So you want to really train your body when you're fatigued to to stabilize those. And so I was just curious, knowing how important that is for you on the the flexibility, mobility, plus balance, how you incorporate that in to an overall fitness.
00:23:05
Speaker
So I love all those nuances, but what I find for most people is I need to get them to do it at all. So for me, I found a system that I use that it works for me. And the most important thing is that you're doing something every day.
00:23:22
Speaker
I paid my daughter. i said to her, I'll give you $50 because she wants to be able do splits and straddles and your flexibility all for ready.
00:23:33
Speaker
And I said, I guarantee that if you stretch every night for six months with me for 15 minutes, you'll you will be able to do so splits and straddles in six months. So she said, I'll take you on that bet.
00:23:44
Speaker
So she's doing it now with me. So we're meeting our need for connection and care and and and that sort of family time together, doing something that's caring for the body. And it's gamifying because she's excited to try and either she'll get it or she'll get 50 bucks. Either way, she wins. Right.
00:23:59
Speaker
So things like that, like just get it in even though there's there's probably some truth to if you work on balance when you're tired, you're you're doing you' there's some benefit there.
00:24:10
Speaker
But I have lot of people I can't get work on at all, no matter when it happens. Yeah. I mean, I think this goes back to the point you made on nutrition. Is it healthy compared to what? So yes, that's better than this, but this is better than nothing. And so let's, let's go from better than nothing and not worry about perfect.
00:24:25
Speaker
Maybe for that first step, good, better, best, good, better, best. That's what we do with food and with life in general. And so with the the cardio, the resistance training, the mobility, sorry, the flexibility and the balance of Is that a do you have a kind of week to week program around that on these days? I do this versus that.
00:24:46
Speaker
Yeah, I can give a plug for yoga body. Have you heard of yoga body? and No, I don't. Really great. um They have something where they work on flexibility and strength and strength and and particularly the strength is around moving in these motions that you wouldn't normally do.
00:25:04
Speaker
And I think it's very easy. It's very affordable. So I have a lot of my ah clients do that if they're willing. I do it every morning before I take the kids to school. It's just doing something. And then if I want to supplement, I'll i'll go for a walk or a hike or a jog. i can go to the gym a couple times a week. But i my rule for myself is, better ah first thing I do before I even get on my phone...
00:25:26
Speaker
I have screen time on and I am not allowed to use my phone or devices until I've done the morning, the three, it's 315 minutes as a strength, which is more of movement type of, and then there's a strength plus, and then there's a flexibility.
00:25:42
Speaker
And if you do all three of those, it's 45 minutes. and And then I allow myself to use my device. So that was sort of something that worked for me was putting it into that system and having something that shows up and I'm doing it with someone else versus by myself.
00:25:56
Speaker
And do you use any equipment or it's all body weight for all that? Do you have any kind of free weights at home or anything? Yeah. So there's a, I have a weight set that you, what is it called? kind of just a dumbbell And I have some blocks and some straps and a pad, some resistance bands. i mean it's not very, any, but a lot, you can use a coffee table, a bench.
00:26:15
Speaker
It's very easy. It's not very, not a very expensive system. and And it's not like that's the only thing, yeah but find something that you're going to do that you're enjoying. And the funny thing for me was when I started doing this, I would tell my wife, I would say, I used to go to the gym and run hard. And I said, I don't feel like I'm doing anything.
00:26:33
Speaker
when i when I was doing these movements and I'm like turning and my hands by my back and I'm like, is this this really doing anything? But after a couple of weeks, I just noticed I moved better. I felt better.
00:26:43
Speaker
I get out of the car and I'm like, oh, that was and wasn't so hard. at all Those little things. Yeah, ah yeah. And I'm like, wait a second, my hip is not like sore now. And I was like, damn, like I'm just going keep doing this cause it feels good.
00:26:56
Speaker
Don't let my head tell me, oh, if you're not bench pressing 200 pounds, it's it's not exercise
The Nine Pillars of Well-Being
00:27:01
Speaker
or whatever. So it's It's really trying to reconnect your body and trust that it's going to lead you in the right direction.
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One of the things you kind of touched on, some since we've been on, but even before the recording, is just how interconnected these things are. And so the stress management, the mindset that...
00:27:21
Speaker
When you're in a stressful position, it's harder to make those healthy nutrition choices. When you're in a stressful position, it's putting your body in physical stress in different ways and and hurting that mobility.
00:27:34
Speaker
ah So maybe talk about Your discovery is there. And then hopefully we can talk a little bit about what you're doing with WeBeCalm and how that helps younger generations. So we put this together in our book, Wellness to Wonderful.
00:27:49
Speaker
We put together nine pillars. And what was really, it's a pillars, iss it's an infinity sign, but it's that they all affect each other. So yeah the nine pillars are first connecting to yourself, regulating the nervous system, getting it out of threat mode and into a sense of safety, which shifts your physiology that you can then in your internal world are the next four.
00:28:12
Speaker
So there's your sleep, nutrition, activity, and play. And then your next when you optimize and resource your internal world with sleep, nutrition, activity, and play,
00:28:23
Speaker
And you've done that connection to self. So you've you've gotten out of fight or flight mode and you connect to your feelings and needs and what really makes you happy. Then you can connect to your external world and really experience joy, which is connecting to your family and friends, work, which is meaning and purpose, spirituality, something bigger, greater than yourself. And then the natural world, which is all of the life on this planet. And those nine pillars, we treat them like nine beautiful children.
00:28:50
Speaker
And they all play with each other, interact with each other, and no one is more important than the other. And you're not going to ever get to a place where you don't worry about them anymore and they're all good. Like this is a lifelong tending to those nine children.
00:29:02
Speaker
And whichever one needs your attention, that's where you put your energy first. What's really cool is... When you're more connected with your family and friends, for example, you have more ah hope and you're inspired and you want to take better care of yourself so you eat differently.
00:29:15
Speaker
And when you eat better and get more sleep, you're less likely to snap and yell and scream and be reactive with your family and your friends. So do you see how one affects your connection? They both affect each other.
00:29:27
Speaker
Well, and you're probably more likely to get up and go engage, right? Like if you're down and low energy, then you you pull yourself out of that outward environment too. Exactly.
00:29:38
Speaker
Exactly. We, as you know, you have the five pillars, which are very similar to the four one side, and then we just kind of bucketed all that outside yourself as one, right? The social connection, the purpose. yeah But it it comes down to the same thing of health is not this absence of disease. It's kind of where you started your career of, wait, I could just react when there are these problems, but actually to thrive in life, I need to tend like a gardener across all these. It's the sun, it's the rain, it's the quality of the soil. It's all these things have to come together.
00:30:09
Speaker
Exactly. And, and, You know, the fact that we put all the external pillars and and broke them out, I got certified as a nonviolent communication trainer. I'm one of the few physicians that got certified. It's a four year process. It's quite quite. It was harder for me than medical school to become certified.
00:30:28
Speaker
ah to develop the expertise for that. But that really showed me how to connect and what a really, really effective connection can do. So we broke it out because that's a particular interest of mine. And it helped people.
00:30:44
Speaker
It created containers for people to break out that social connection. But to your point, it's all connection. So as long as it gets, and and and a lot of times people don't see how that affects your physical health as much. One of the talks we do is specifically on how connection affects physical health. It's not just mental health and well-being.
00:31:02
Speaker
So we wanted to give that a lot of lot of airtime as well. And that's why we broke that out. I actually recently did a TED Talk on this and kind of my wake-up call on the importance because it was... kind of blind to it personally. It was so health was this internal thing. And then ah my wife ended filing for divorce and whoa, okay, what what was I missing out here?
00:31:22
Speaker
And just going into the research on socially isolated older adults have a 52% higher chance of developing early onset dementia, right? Like it, it really impacts all these other pieces.
00:31:34
Speaker
And so what are your day-to-day or week-to-week personal practices when it comes to this, do you do breath work? Do you do, I mean, there are different pieces to it, uh, for sure, but there's one on the internal mindset.
00:31:50
Speaker
And then I guess there's the the next piece on that broader social engagement, that out outward of, Hey, I make sure i get 60 minutes out in nature each day. And that's what this looks like. yeah Let's maybe take each of those in turn.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah. So the, the first part is, taking care of your own side of the street, really checking in what's going on inside your body. And that's self-awareness, self-connection, and a self-regulation.
00:32:20
Speaker
And that requires different practices that are impacted by those other pillars, but they require additional things. For example, I do meditation.
00:32:31
Speaker
I do breath work. I have an empathy buddy that I talk to most days of the week. And I do internal family systems work where I'm checking in with all of my different parts. If you're familiar with IFS, there's all different ways to connect to your body. And it's become more clear to me than ever.
00:32:54
Speaker
That physical sensations and and felt experience has its own wisdom and is essential to become fluent in in communicating with your felt experiences if you want to optimize health and well-being and and support healing.
00:33:14
Speaker
So I've, but it's, it's not a language that most people are fluent in, nor are they exposed to. And it's a very subtle language. Like if I said, how are you feeling now? And tell me about what's going on in your body.
00:33:27
Speaker
lot of people can't really answer that question. Some people look at you like you're crazy if you even ask them that question. But then if they're not looking at you like you're crazy, they'll look inside. They'll be like, well, I feel good. I feel bad. That's it.
00:33:39
Speaker
They know good, bad. How do we build out that language? How do we how do we become more fluent? And that process... creates healing in and of itself. It's actually really important part of healing chronic pain.
00:33:53
Speaker
Like a lot of people are focused on eliminating chronic pain, eliminating unpleasant feelings. What they don't realize is that's not as effective as actually learning how to connect to the feelings, including pain and supporting them passing through.
00:34:08
Speaker
And that sounds a little, I don't know if your audience going to think that's a little foo-foo or a little out there, but Once we spend some time with them, it starts to make sense. Yeah. And whether they think it is or not, I mean, it's, I i believe, true, right? So it it doesn't kind of matter the opinion. like I don't care what they think. Yeah. it's i would I think you come to it. It's interesting to hear how much difficulty other people have with it, because I thought it was just me, right? When I started this show, I'd have so many guests that were former dancers or yoga instructors, this and the other.
00:34:40
Speaker
And I would ask these questions like, well, I just listened to my body. What does my body need on this? And I'm like, what do you mean? like And so it's this language I've really spent the past couple of years really trying to learn. And I just assume we all knew it at a younger age and then lost it. I was this open water distance swimmer.
00:34:57
Speaker
And so deliberately try to train my mind to turn off signals for my body because otherwise I would just... be living in pain all the time. But if if I could just shut off those signals, it didn't matter. And then now, you know, as a mid 40 year old man that goes to the gym, and just pushes through no matter what's going on, it leads to injuries, right? I've had two knee surgeries and all these other things.
00:35:16
Speaker
So i I'm having to learn that language. And so to to realize that that's not maybe just me, I thought I was in the minority, but it sounds like maybe I'm not. No, no, you are not in the minority. And if you value it and put the time in to cultivate that self-connection, it's really powerful.
00:35:35
Speaker
And the people that I see that come to me are the ones that are struggling and the in the conventional system and they're not getting better. In fact, the patients that used to frustrate me because I couldn't help them.
00:35:47
Speaker
So it wasn't personal. I mean, I just couldn't help them. Now those are the patients I love to see. So if you have chronic headaches, chronic pain, where there's no other caught known cause, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia,
00:35:59
Speaker
All of a sudden now we can help these people in a way that we couldn't before. So it's it's so powerful, but they are willing to do anything by the time they come to see me because the doctors basically really hurt them by saying, there's something wrong with you. Here's your diagnosis, but there's nothing we can do.
00:36:17
Speaker
So they'll offer them steroid shots or pills that don't work. And it's like, That's the worst place to leave them. They're lonely and helpless. And I don't know if this is the right phrase or not. My parents recently talked ah to me, idiopathic.
00:36:30
Speaker
Is this the, those kinds of things where, Hey, we know there's a problem, but we have no idea what the cause is and what this is. And just bucket all these things under this umbrella. Cause we don't really know what's going on like IBS or some of these others.
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah. And it's like, there's this whole other area that the doctors also are not excited to learn about. i think because they're overwhelmed and it's just tough for them. to fit anything else in.
00:36:52
Speaker
And they're also struggling themselves. A lot of the doctors have the problems that we're talking about, the chronic stress, the disconnected homes, the lack of self-awareness. In fact, to be a
Introducing the WeBeCalm Device
00:37:03
Speaker
good doctor, you have to shut off a lot of your feelings because you got to be able to think clearly in emergencies.
00:37:09
Speaker
That's not the time to start feeling. But yeah we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's great to be able to think in high stress moments, but then also be able to connect and feel and don't lose touch with yourself.
00:37:21
Speaker
And with that that feeling, that connection, the the regulation, could could you touch on what you're doing with WeBeCalm as a father of a nine-year-old who's having regulatory issues? I'd love to hear more about that.
00:37:34
Speaker
So I love this tool. I have it here. It's the WeBeCalm device that my wife and I came up with. And it's a tool that forces... It was made with children in mind, but I use it myself and we recommend it to adults as well.
00:37:50
Speaker
It forces you to slowly exhale. You can't blow out comfortably if you try to blow out fast through the tube. It also then holds a ball up when you blow out. so i don't know if you can see, but
00:38:07
Speaker
So it's ah keeps to keep the slow exhale, you're getting that constant feedback that you keep blowing to keep the ball aloft, and it's focusing your attention. So we're taking advantage of different calming pathways, all of which have data on them around turning on the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your calming part of the autonomic nervous system. You have these pathway of slow exhalation, which is a very powerful way to turn on the parasympathetic's There's the focused attention on the ball, which is, again, another way to turn on parasympathetics.
00:38:38
Speaker
And then there's white noise that comes out the back, which is auditory regulation. And again, sort of like a white noise that also turns on the parasympathetics, which is what you want. The parasympathetics are the the rest. They allow the body to go into modes that support rest and digest and reproduce.
00:38:56
Speaker
So what I do is I have... Every night I tell people to use this for five repetitions and then do another set of five if you want to. but just use it before bed. and then if you want to use it elsewhere, you can, or more often you can, like I have one in my car. And what's really nice about this is you see it on your nightstand, which gives you a a reminder to do it.
00:39:16
Speaker
And it's training you so turn on the parasympathetics and it's training your body to know what to do and what that feels like. And if you do it over and over again, what we do is we but tell our kids, can you take a weeby breath And they immediately now during the day, and they don't have to have the device in their hand because they've trained themselves.
00:39:37
Speaker
And immediately when they hear the word we be, we do a lot of this, it's association. They hear the word we be breath. They start to take a slow exhalation and their body immediately remembers like muscle memory of that calming experience. And it triggers that neural network that they have created every night through that work yeah to now turn on in the calm environment.
00:39:59
Speaker
And it's so powerful and so easy. But the key is to use it every night before bed and to give them that feedback. Because if you give a child or even an adult, this makes sure they're doing it right. So it trains the body to do a correct correct correct process.
00:40:15
Speaker
And it's so effective. Yeah. I mean, on I would imagine on so many levels, because I just think of Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps, too, of having that routine before a shot or before a race, that having eight nighttime routine of, hey, this is what I do before i go to bed. It just gets my body, my mind in that mental state of my sleep, regardless, is going to be better. And much less when you're doing something that very specifically is working on the parasympathetic nervous system.
00:40:41
Speaker
It's fantastic. My daughter called me, my nine-year-old called me hysterical from school. I couldn't even understand her. She was crying so hard. And I said, honey, i I really want to support you. I'm hearing something so so upsetting to for you and I can't understand you. Can we take a weeby breath together before so that I can understand you better?
00:40:59
Speaker
And she immediately, immediately so calmed down without even taking the breath, but then did the weavy breath and did five of them. Like it was nothing. Like she just, her body just knew what to do. Almost like the part of you that can drive a car yeah and not pay attention.
00:41:12
Speaker
She just did And she was like, oh, that I feel better now. And then she told me what happened and we talked, but it was so exciting to see that that training paid off.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah. And she just knew what to do and went into autopilot and calmed her body immediately. Yeah, fantastic. So i'd I'd love to talk a little bit about sleep. we So we we touched on a few times of doctors are often the worst on some of these things that they're advising patients. And, you know, as a child of two physicians, my parents told me, oh, you don't need sleep. You can train your body not to need it, ah which is scientifically incorrect.
00:41:46
Speaker
And then the the separate side of how that lack of sleep can impact all these others. right If you're sleep deprived, ghrelin goes up and you you eat worse food your stress levels go up and it's harder to self-regulate.
00:41:58
Speaker
Where are you in terms of how you think about sleep, how you support your own sleep hygiene and and structure? So sleep is one of those things that really a lot of people struggle with. And what we find is if you do this other work, sleep will fall into place. But for some people, we it's hard at first because when you're so sleep deprived, it's hard to do this other work. So it's almost got to jump. There's a circular thing going. You got to jump in at some point and start working on everything.
00:42:24
Speaker
So sometimes it's a little messy at first. But what I found is that People don't have sleep disorders. They have regulation disorders. In other words, there regulations that when you are regulation means your body is preparing for threat. Your body thinks it's in danger when it's dysregulated.
00:42:41
Speaker
If it's preparing for threat, if it thinks something bad is going to happen to it, would it sleep? It wouldn't sleep. It's not natural to go to sleep if it thinks something dangerous is going to happen.
00:42:53
Speaker
So what we have to do is single to the signal to the body that it's safe. And when a body feels safe, when you're in a physiological state of safety, you will naturally fall asleep.
00:43:06
Speaker
So what I focus on is how do I get your body feeling safe? And that brings us back into all the other pillars. But the first thing is I'll tell people sleeping issues. I say every night, I want you to use the Weeby Calm and stimulate that calm. And it's not going to happen at first. It's not like you can just use the Weeby Calm once and all of a sudden you fall asleep. It's the repetitive. It's almost like at the gym. You could lift the bench press once.
00:43:29
Speaker
That doesn't make a difference. You got to bench press for months and all of a sudden your strength increases. Same thing with this. I got to get them messages of safety to their body. One of the best ways to tell your nervous system that it's safe. You can't think you're safe.
00:43:43
Speaker
You got to send a message of safety. And one of the best ways to do that is through slow exhalation, mindful focused attention. So mindfulness practices. And then sort of how we start to go about our day. Another one is connection.
00:43:56
Speaker
When I am socially connected to people, that automatically tells my body, gives me feedback that we're safe. It's okay to connect. So connection helps, by it's bidirectional. Connection can make me feel safe.
00:44:08
Speaker
And when I'm safe, it's easier to connect. So physiological safety is the focus. And when i think about it, like nutrients for food, you want to get at nutrients throughout the day. i want you to get nutrients of safety.
00:44:22
Speaker
throughout your day So what are your messages of safety that you're getting throughout the day? and that includes how you're breathing, how you organize your day, how you're talking, how you're thinking. you know All of that can either tell your body that it's going to increase messages of safety or by how you're doing all those things, you could actually be increasing messages of danger and threat.
Routines and Safety for Better Health
00:44:42
Speaker
Does that make sense? That's a really important point. It makes a lot of sense. I remember years and years ago coming across research on that safety point, but in sleeping away from your home environment, right? Which psychologically makes sense of, hey, if you...
00:44:57
Speaker
you're out in the wild and you have predators that could be eating you. You have your own normal home environment, but when you're away, you're going to have a different sense of safety. So it's just going to be a lighter sleep and it evolutionarily makes sense because you're going to need to protect yourself from getting eaten by lion or whatever.
00:45:12
Speaker
But there's so many other components to that safety. And and I guess to your point, the the nutrients are the triggers that we can give ourselves to then when we lay down, feel that,
00:45:24
Speaker
holistic yeah safety, psychologically, mentally, physically, emotionally, as we, as we put our head on the pillow. It's exactly, it's so important. And when you travel, when you feel, when your body shifts and it's like, think of it like a rubber band or a guitar string and it can tune, it can be really loose for safety or really tight for threat, let's say.
00:45:45
Speaker
And it's constantly loosening and tightening based on how it's perceiving the environment. Yeah. And I'm not sure if you've heard of the polyvagal theory, but he talks about neuroception. And that's your how you're interpreting your environment, basically, and how you're receiving the environment.
00:45:59
Speaker
But when do you travel and you're away from a familiar environment, your body automatically starts to tighten a little bit. It's unfamiliar. It's unsure. is it's it's so But you can do things for that. When you're in this physiological state of more threat,
00:46:14
Speaker
You lose those messages of safety that are important to tell you that go from your nervous system to your gut, for example. And they tell your gut, it's okay to function. It's okay to move. or It's okay to digest and and keep moving. So when people travel, they get a little, their bowels don't work as well.
00:46:29
Speaker
That's because when you have threat, this state of threat or more threat than you usually do as far as your body's perceiving, you lose some of those safety messages that you need to go to your gut for it to function properly. So it slows down and then the ah stool and it doesn't move through the gut as well. So people will complain of constipation when they travel.
00:46:51
Speaker
And then as soon as they go home, their bowels start working again. It's because they got into a place where they feel safe. Those messages of safety, which are required for your gut to function normally, turn the gut back on and tell it, okay, we can digest again.
00:47:04
Speaker
Same thing with rest. Oh, we can rest again. So we can fall asleep easier when we're home. But what you're when you're traveling, you can do things like... I have my kids bring where we become and they use that. And I have them, they have an eye pillow that they use at home.
00:47:17
Speaker
So they bring that with them and they have a music routine that they do and a meditation that they do before bed. And the more of those messages you can do, even though the system this the environment's different, you're flooding yourself with familiar things as well. And you decrease that impact of of threat or that sense of threat.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it just took me back actually when my daughter was an m infant. Every single night, I had the exact same playlist. It would start with Michael Moore's Growing Up, and I would dance with her in the kitchen, and then we would do bedtime routine, and then I'd do the bottle. like ah and Every single night.
00:47:47
Speaker
And she got really, really sick. We ended up in the ER. yard ah And crying, crying when the the doctors were giving her shots. I was like, i I can fix this. And I just put the song on and held her, and she just stopped immediately. right like it just Psychologically, as an infant, right she's just a few months old, she already had that association of, okay, and this this feels like home.
00:48:07
Speaker
This is back. I'm okay. That is a perfect, perfect example. You created a neural network that you just turned on. And it was like, ah because you did it every night, it was like a super highway that you just had to line the cars up and put the music on. And she went down that pathway.
00:48:23
Speaker
That's what I'm talking about. You got to create these neural networks that turn on safety that you've associated with safety and the predictability. That's why kids love watching the same movie over and over again. It's highly predictable, which helps them feel safe.
00:48:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that that was the the magic of blues clues, right? Like that they would play the same one. So the kids would know what was coming and they could get the word. Like it's a whole psychological thing. Exactly. Exactly. And adults can, that's the thing. You don't need to be an infant to take advantage of that.
00:48:49
Speaker
You just have to create those systems that, that repetition. That's why we're telling people do every night before bed, do the same thing. I don't care if you do anything else, but do that.
00:49:00
Speaker
And you can take advantage of that network, not only before bed, but throughout the day
Future Projects and Conclusion
00:49:04
Speaker
then. Yeah. Matthew, you know, we started this off, you were describing yourself as a a lively healer. And I think your journey, hopefully all the listeners can hear how that has come to fruition and not just talking to talk, but walking the walk.
00:49:19
Speaker
What's next? Well, a couple of things. One, I'd love if people are interested to listen to our podcast, We Be Parents, go to webeparents.com. On there, we basically talk to parents and help them bring connection skills and and support connection in the home.
00:49:39
Speaker
And it's just it's me and my wife are doing that. It's super fun. i love I love connecting with her just recording the podcast. and In fact, we started. like I don't know anybody's listen, but we're enjoying doing it together.
00:49:51
Speaker
So that we're going to do more of. And we we are in the process of launching an application um that is ah ah coach using AI to help people connect and improve connection in their relationships.
00:50:07
Speaker
So that's really, really been fun teaching people basically have connection support 24 seven from AI that was trained with our processes and and techniques.
00:50:21
Speaker
So that's something that we're, we're doing. And then we're, have a kid's books, that we've released right now, they're eBooks. And they're again on topics to help parents and families bring connection skills or work through hard topics like device usage. There's one coming out on device usage. We did one on navigating and traumatic experiences like the fires in LA.
00:50:45
Speaker
we have one on dealing with shame and self-worth in children and how they have, how to navigate that more effectively. So all these things are geared towards helping families connect and heal.
00:50:57
Speaker
It's amazing. a thing as As a father, as a parent, as an individual working through all these things myself, I thank you for your work. And thank you so much for coming on the show today to share all of this with our listeners.
00:51:09
Speaker
ah Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate your support. 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.
00:51:25
Speaker
Enjoy a lively day.