What do emotions have to do with physical ailments? Can emotional turmoil manifest as visible symptoms? Do chronic diseases have specific personality types? All these questions and more will be explored in today's episode of SOTT Talk Radio's Health and Wellness Show. As always, Zoya will join us for her pet health segment.
Join us Fridays at 10 am EST, as we expose the lies and emphasize the truth in our modern world.
Running Time: 01:56:00
Download: MP3
Here's the transcript of the show:
Jonathan: Welcome everybody! Today is August 28th. Welcome to The Health and Wellness Show. My name is Jonathan, I will be your host for today. Joining me in our virtual studio from all across the planet, we have a full complement of hosts today: Doug, Tiffany, Erica and Gaby. Everybody's here.
Gaby: Yay!
{Hello's}
Jonathan: So today we are going to be talking about the mind-body connection: what do emotions have to do with physical ailments? Can emotional turmoil manifest as visible symptoms? Do chronic diseases attest specific personality types?
So, we will be going over some of those issues and we'll be addressing the idea that: modern-medicine doctors really kind of look outside the brain or the body for answers. And I think it's kind of well understood among the general population - if you were to go out on the street and ask a few people here and there: "Are your emotions connected to your physical health?" Most people would say "Yeah". There's a kind of an intuitive understanding of that. But ironically, as with many other things, this has not coddified in medical practice by and large.
So, we're going to talk about that today and go over some of those details. Let's start with some connecting the dots: some news from the week. Gaby, do you want to start us off here with this article about antibiotics?
Gaby: Yes. It is interesting because it's an article describing how your physical body can affect your emotions - like the other way around from our show. But still, it is relevant.
This is an article written by Richard Horowitz. He's a worldwide leader on Lyme's disease. And he published this article (ref.) in Psychology Today last year. And it is titled 'Antibiotics found effective in schizophrenia.'
He revealed how they were a couple of studies were doctors used antibiotics called tetracycline - basically doxycycline, demeclocycline. And patients with schizophrenia felt better. Some people even healed.
And the researchers of this study were speculating that the antibiotics were decreasing complex pathways in inflammation and so forth. But they failed to ask a very simple question or to figure out: what do we give antibiotics for? We don't give them for inflammation, we give them for infection.
So, that's like the basic construct of these papers because schizophrenia has been linked with several infections. For example, toxoplasmosis is one, but also Lyme's disease which is a multisystemic disease - it is called also like the great imitator, it can mimic several diseases, including psychiatric ones.
Dr. Horowitz goes on to explain how there is a higher prevalence of the causative agent of Lyme's disease, it is a bug by the way, called Borrelia burgdorferi and it is transmitted by ticks. and there is a higher prevalence of antibodies in blood tests in patients with schizophrenia against these Borrelia.
But not only Lyme's disease, there are a lot of other co-infections or infections that are very similar or happen at the same time as Lyme's disease, such as "cat scratch disease", caused by Bartonella and Babesia which is also a very strange bug that is appearing during the last 5-10 years, more and more in the clinical practise. It is a bug that is very similar to toxoplasmosis genetically speaking, which is interesting because both toxoplasmosis and the agent of these new bugs, Babesia, cause a lot of psychiatric symptoms like unexplained depression that doesn't go away with any remedy, method or therapy.
Yes, they have been having very good results just giving these antibiotics. He goes on to explain that don't assume that the antibiotics are treating are underlying inflammation, they actually might be treating any underlying infection, which unfortunately most blood tests nowadays are very bad, very insensitive in that they don't detect infections. You need to have very highly specialised lab tests and even then, it is not 100% sensitive and specific.
There are a lot of new emerging bugs. There are over 300 species described recently for tics and the bugs they transmit. It is seen all over the world, Lyme's disease and associated coinfections is a new emerging epidemic that we are having right now. Not only in the US but in other parts of the world, in Europe, certain bugs are specific to Central America, Russia, but also China, Africa - okay, the whole world.
That's another thing to have in mind. Not only psychiatric symptoms, but also any chronic disease - neurological problems like multiple sclerosis and lots of diseases. I really do encourage people to get Dr. Richard Horowitz's book, "Why Can't I Get Better?"
I am halfway through and I am actually trying one of the protocols; and it's blowing my mind. We will talk about it in a future show; but just so you guys know, it's a must-read book.
Jonathan: Very cool.
Tiffany: I wonder if there have ever been any studies studying the demographics of Lyme's disease. I know in New England they have a higher occurrence of Lyme's disease, so I wonder if they have a higher occurrence of schizophrenia.
Gaby: Yeah. It is actually in this very same article. An endemic region of Lyme's disease has also a high prevalence of psychiatric patients, or the other way around. There are also some specific bugs, not only Lyme's disease - for example, Babesia and Bartonella - that are showing up specifically just in the US, like California, Colorado; that's what I remember: Central America and parts of South America. Different species are emerging in Europe. And yes, there does seem to be a correlation with more neurological problems and psychiatric problems.
Doug: It would be nice if doctors actually looked at any of these psychological symptoms and thought maybe to check for these kinds of infections. I know usually people are resistant to that idea. And I know with Lyme's - people will really only look into the possibility of Lyme's if there has been a tick bite. But there's been more and more cases coming up where patients don't remember ever being bitten by a tick, whether they didn't notice or if they maybe got it some other way which I guess is probably a possibility.
Or it might not be Lyme's, but something related to Lyme's that could maybe be passed on in a different way other than a tick bite. So, I think this is kind of an emerging area.
Gaby: Yes. That's a very good point because less than 50% of people don't remember ever being bitten by a tick. And these are hard-shelled ticks and the new cases, the new bugs are emerging in the soft ticks - which people don't know if they were ever bitten. You just don't know!
Go walking through the woods and that's it!
Tiffany: So not every case of Lyme's disease has that tell-tale bullseye rash that you get from the tick then?
Gaby: Exactly. Less than 50% of people recall that, and the problem is that even when healthcare practitioners are aware of Lyme's disease and neurological problems, psychiatric problems - they have, for example, a person with Bipolar Disorder. They will order the basic screening test for Lyme's disease - which, sorry my French, but it sucks! It is really bad at detecting Lyme's disease. So, if it comes back negative, they just delete Lyme's disease from their differential diagnosis protocol. That is very wrong.
You have to order at least two, three, four, five more tests. Even as Horowitz suggests himself in the end, what can be done also is a trial test of antibiotics just to see if you get better; when you have Herx reactions which is die-off symptoms when the bugs get killed. So, that means you have something going on there, even though the tests are negative.
Every single psychiatric disease described could be imitated by Lyme's disease or coinfection, or they can get worsened by Lyme's disease and coinfections.
Doug: Right.
Gaby: So, it's a big problem. But it's a problem with a solution.
Doug: We have mentioned before how a lot of these stealth bacteria can do things like morph into cyst form, or hide themselves in biofilms. In those kinds of situations, you are not going to be able to detect them. They are, for all intents and purposes, completely hidden.
Gaby: Exactly.
Doug: Yeah. I think that really drives home the point that a test isn't always going to pick up whether those infections are actually present.
Gaby: Yes. His case studies described in the book - they are very miraculous, but they all have scientific explanations as why do they work, why do the protocols work, and why they took so much time.
A person that goes to Dr. Horowitz's clinic, they consulted an average of 20 doctors before going to him. Over a span of 10 or 20 years, they have every single diagnostic test out there in the book done to them. And it was only until Lyme's disease was suspected, and looked for and treated that they actually started to heal.
There are cases of multiple sclerosis which actually did get worse because they are given steroids and cortisone medication. Cortisone medication will actually enhance and promote the proliferation of these bugs in the body because they change the immune system.
Erica: Something definitely to look into, yeah.
Jonathan: Let's move to our next topic here. Tiff, do you want to cover this article: they have got an app for depression now? All the geeks taking over are going to come true someday.
Tiffany: It's called, 'Depressed? We've got an app for that! Researchers monitor behavioural patterns with smartphone data and biomarkers' - and it was written by Nicholas Celeste. So, the author discovered this study by researchers in Tel Aviv University and they announced that 'a smartphone app might revolutionize mental health treatment.'
They geared the app towards mental health professionals and the app is supposed to detect changes in patients' behavioural patterns and then transmit them back to the mental health professionals in real time. They wanted the app to help clinicians in evaluating and treating people with mental illnesses.
It would allegedly give patients much needed independence from hospitals, clinicians and even family members - which I found really laughable, because the app is monitoring your behaviour and is sending the reports back to your doctor. So how much less independent can you be than having somebody monitoring what you are doing all the time?
They gave an example of how the app would be used and they said that, 'A patient that usually makes five or ten calls a day might suddenly start making dozens of calls a day.' They look at how much they talk, how much they text, how many places they visit - because they follow them on GPS. When they go to bed and for how long.
These are all supposed to be indicators of mental health and it provides insights to clinicians who want to catch a disorder before it is full blown.
So allegedly this app is only supposed to be used with psychiatric patients that are under care but in the study, they tested it on 40 participants - which is not a very large number. But these are so-called normal people. They said that the app detected general depression up to 90% of the time.
There is a link in the article; open that up and the app is called Purple Robot.
[Laughter]
I was thinking like, what does Purple Robot mean? I was thinking of Barney but that's a purple dinosaur. [Laughter] So, I couldn't come up with what 'purple robot' might mean. But it is available in the Google App store so if anybody wants to try and download it and report back, I am all ears.
[Laughter]
It really doesn't seem to come from a place of caring. It's just like all other technology; it is supposed to be for convenience and making your life easier but really the desire to control and monitor you is the reason why it was made.
The author goes on to say that in the ObamaCare Act, they place value on data that is gathered from gadgets and consumer behaviour. They say it is all because they want to protect their health, and they want to cut healthcare costs and reduce hospitalisations.
But I say whatever happened to just talking to people or engaging in a therapeutic relationship?
Tiffany: Have you guys seen that movie Idiocracy?
Doug: Yeah.
Jonathan: Yeah.
Tiffany: Where the main character goes to the hospital and the doctor is behind the desk? And he has these probes and you are supposed to stick them in orifices and it will give you a diagnosis?
[Laughter]
So, this is basically what that is.
Gaby: It is literally the robotic care; you don't need a human person? What?!
Tiffany: There's more to all this because there are some researchers at Indiana University; they wanted to combine the Purple Robot app, which has some questions on it, and they want to combine that with biomarkers from blood samples.
They want to be able to predict which patient will think about or attempt suicide. So, they tried it on some Bipolar patients and they said their accuracy in predicting suicidal ideation was 92%.
But it is really sad; if you are a professional mental health practitioner and you need an app and blood tests to predict that somebody that is Bipolar might be suicidal or might end up in hospital, that's really sad.
Gaby: Okay.
Tiffany: So, this to me - it's really no different than tagging wild animals and then tracking their movements and behaviours to study them.
Tiffany: Yeah. It's kind of like free-roaming humans are being tagged and tracked.
Gaby: Or what if the patients are driven crazy by their smartphones? That's an issue.
[Laughter]
Johnathan: Yeah, that's what I was wondering. I don't want to make light of suicidal ideation, but you've got to think - if you are a patient of this kind and you realise that your doctor is relying on an app, that might increase suicidal ideation.
Gaby: Yeah, it would freak me out. It's like, "Big Brother is watching me!" More paranoia.
Tiffany: Yeah, they are already paranoid enough as it is; because if you are in a really strong manic episode of Bipolar, you can have paranoid delusions and think that people are out to get you and you have this cell phone app that is tracking everything that you do. I don't think it will go over well with patients.
Doug: Yeah, we're out to get you. [Laughter]
Tiffany: Yeah, that's true.
Jonathan: I'd be really curious to see what -
I'd be really curious to see what their data points are - what they base happiness versus depression on. Like if you are playing a lot of games; well, games are good, the games are fun, so you must be happy. I don't know, I'm just curious how they base their data - on what part.
Gaby: I don't think you will get games for patients -
Tiffany: There's like a lot of psychiatrists -
Doug: Well, I wonder if somebody can use that app in a more positive way just for themselves. Rather than beaming all this information to their doctors or their healthcare practitioner, they could maybe just use it as a self-monitor. I know sometimes these things can kind of creep up and you don't necessarily know that you are entering into an episode. So, if you were maybe able to track this stuff just for yourself, and get a warning and be like, "Maybe something is going on here - I seem to have been doing a lot more texting or gaming - or whatever - lately. So, maybe that's something to keep in mind."
I don't know, it might be possible - just as a self-monitor app.
Tiffany: Yeah, only if it's kept private though.
Doug: Yeah, exactly.
Gaby: I don't know - I feel better when I turn my phone off completely. I feel so much better.
[Laughter]
Jonathan: I can see it saying, "Your Netflix quota is full. You are feeling a malaise with a side effect of social anxiety."
[Laughter]
Gaby: I need a cut off. What happened with conventional email?
[Laughter]
Jonathan: Well, speaking of psychiatric issues, that brings us to our next point here. Doug, do you want to cover this article about erasing a person? This sounds like depatterning, like Dr. Colin Ross talked about.
Doug: No, it's a very interesting article by John Rappaport from the website The Mind Unleashed, it was done on August 20th. And it is called, 'Psychiatry: Erase the Unique Individual.'
I'll quote heavily from the article because he actually writes quite well and summarises his points pretty well. He basically says: "Since none of the 300 official mental disorders has any defining physical tests for diagnosis, there's no proof that they exist, period.
You could interview thousands of people who say they feel depressed and you will find significant differences. The more you listen to their stories, the more you'll be convinced of the differences. You'll be splitting apart the central idea of depression and realising it has no common centre.
This is hard for many people to believe - that's how brainwashed we are. There is no common universal states of consciousness. It is all unique from person to person. As such, mental disorders - as a common mental state shared by everyone labelled with the disorder - is really nothing but a myth."
He talks a lot about this myth. He says there is over 300 diagnosable mental disorders, all with associated drugs for treating them, but it's nothing more than - what he says - 'pin the tail on the donkey.'
I don't know how familiar some of our international listeners might be with that game, but it's basically a kid's game where you blindfold yourself and try and pin a tail onto a picture of a donkey. And you see how close you get to actually pinning it in the right spot.
So, he is basically saying that these guys don't really have any strong criteria for diagnosing these so-called mental disorders; they are just really shooting in the dark.
He quotes Dr. Ronald Pies, the editor-in-chief Emeritus of Psychiatric Times. And he says that this doctor laid to rest the theory of chemical imbalance in July 11th, 2011 in the Psychiatric Times when he said, "In truth, the chemical imbalance notion was always a kind of urban legend - never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists. Researchers had never established a normal baseline for chemical balance, so they were always shooting in the dark."
And I think that's an important point - when they bring up this idea of chemical imbalance, since they are not working from any kind of baseline of what a healthy chemical balance is in the brain, there really isn't a way of diagnosing a chemical imbalance. So, they - again - "were like shooting in the dark. At worse, they were faking a theory - pretending they knew something when they didn't."
Tiffany: That's true Because I have worked in psychiatric hospitals and I have heard that term before bandied about. I've used it a few times before I knew better. But no one ever did a blood test. If someone gets admitted to the psych ward, no one ever says, "Okay, we are going to draw blood and test your serotonin or your dopamine levels and see if any of them fall within normal range."
That never happens! I don't think anybody even knows what 'normal range' is for any of these neurotransmitters so it's all just a bunch of baloney!
Doug: Yeah, it really is. Rappaport it goes on to say that while Dr. Pies says that no serious mental psychological professional has ever took the chemical imbalance theory seriously, he points out that this is actually nonsense because this is the basis on which billions of psychiatric drugs have been prescribed.'
So, although he is saying, 'Oh no, no one ever took that seriously', it's self-evident that they actually have taken this seriously and they are using it as a way to try to correct this so-called chemical imbalance.
He goes on to say that this myth is something very deeply embedded in our culture - that our culture is all about constructing a deep core of victimhood that reaches down into every individual and defines and limits him, the same way that original sin and atoning guilt imposes limits on the so-called spiritual levels.
These myths obscure truly dynamic and creative consciousness which shapes and invents reality. The pseudoscience of psychiatry is on the whole an attempt to block the knowledge of power of the individual creative force.
And he says at the very end, "You could rearrange deck chairs for as long as you want to, but until or unless individual creative consciousness is restored, there will always be a huge, stark, missing gap in any effort to establish social progress."
It maybe sounds like a bit of hyperbole, but I think he is absolutely right.
And then he goes on to say, "In history, psychiatry has been like a minor blip on the radar and it's going to be looked at the same way we look at putting leeches on people or cutting holes in the brain in order to let evil spirits out."
[Laughter]
So, yeah, I think he's totally right.
Johnathan: Do you guys think that the DSM - this is kind of a layperson's question - do you think that it should be essentially tossed out the window or that it is good as a baseline, maybe like a road map, for a way to generally talk about these things - not a specific diagnosis - or that it should just be gotten rid of entirely?
Gaby: I think it's just like the Bible. So much is simply based on conflict of interest because the psychiatrists themselves were sponsored by this-or-that pharmaceutical company or that specific research. So, it's concerning, at least some certain principles might apply but I don't know. Especially the latest edition, it's just terrifying the conflict of interests there that were uncovered.
Tiffany: Especially when they just keep making up new diagnoses and adding them.
Doug: Oh, I know.
Tiffany: You could have a core group of mental health disorders like schizophrenia, Bipolar, major depression, PTSD and use that as a road map. But if you don't treat it in the correct fashion, what good is the tool? You might as well have nothing.
Doug: Yeah, yeah. I think at its basis, the idea behind it is probably good. Maybe they should take groups of symptoms and say that these seem to be common to a certain group of people, so they are clearly having some kind of disorder. And here's things that we have used to try and deal with this - like what's worked, what hasn't worked; that kind of thing. That makes sense to have that kind of thing.
But I think, like Gaby was saying, it's just so - it's bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical companies right now. And they are just using it to sell more drugs essentially.
So, I'd say - as it stands right now - totally, scrap it. It's not really very useful. All it is, is a very simplistic way of looking at things - if symptoms A, B and C exists, then prescribe this drug.
I think that the idea that we should be gathering this knowledge together and kind of looking at things, connecting some dots, that sort of thing, that makes some sense. So yeah. I'd say - the idea, yes. In practice, no.
Jonathan: Oh, I was just going to say, I think too if psychiatry as a whole - I don't personally know any psychiatrists but from just what I heard and read, they don't do this generally. But if they took in disparate points from a person's life - for instance, somebody who is prone to anxiety and, let's say, they work a job that they hate under fluorescent lights 8 hours a day and they eat a lot of really crappy food, those are contributing factors and it's going to make it worse.
And so, whoever they are seeing for that disorder should say, 'Well, you need to stop eating wheat and try to find a different line of work'; or things like that. And that might correct actually quite a bit of what they are feeling.
But instead - Doug, like you said - they just kind of hammer people with prescription drugs which, of course - I think we are all well aware of - just makes it worse over time.
Doug: Yeah. I think to really have a DSM that actually worked properly, you would have to revolutionise the entire field. And kind of works in with our topic today that you need to look at the person as a whole rather than look at a so-called chemical imbalance and say, 'Oh, we need to correct this chemical imbalance!'
No, you need to look at the person. You need to look at their entire life - what are they doing, what are they eating, what is their job, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, what are they forced into in their life that they don't want to do?
All these things; you have to take the whole picture into account. And I think the DSM discourages that sort of approach.
Tiffany: And it's not as if psychiatrists - if they have been working with a patient for a certain number of years or a specific amount of time, even though they don't spend that much time with them, maybe like 10 minutes. After a while, you get to know this person, you get to know their life.
But they are not equipped to deal with it. They will know all these things that's going on with the person but they will still just pull out the prescription pad, which is really just a shame.
Jonathan: Yeah. Well, moving along here - along the lines of mental health and anxiety. I've got an article here called 'Music more effective than drugs in relieving pain and anxiety', which is quite interesting. And I have got personal experience with; I've played music for quite a few years.
And I think other people who play music, or even if you don't play and you just listen to music, that you've had moment where it hits a deep, emotional centre and you feel a release. You might cry or feel more relaxed.
So, in this article it says: 400 published scientific papers have proven the old adage that 'music is medicine.' Neurochemical benefits of music can improve the body's immune system, reduce anxiety levels and help regulate moods in ways that drugs have difficulty competing.
"We have found compelling evidence that musical interventions can play a healthcare role in settings ranging from operating rooms to family clinics," says Professor of Medicine at McGill University,
Psychology Department.
"Even more importantly, we were able to document the neurochemical mechanism by which music has an effect in 4 domains: management of mood, stress, immunity and as an aid to social bonding"; which I think is just an academic way to say what we're aware of - that music can help you feel better, it can help relieve stress, it can help you bond with other people in a social setting and - I think the really interesting one is that it can actually help your immune system.
It says here later in the article that: Levitin's team surveyed over 400 papers looking for patterns in the evidence supporting the claim that music can affect brain chemistry in a positive way.
The 4 areas are: reward, motivation, and pleasure - that's one, as an example, to help with eating disorders. Stress and arousal, that's two. Immunity - to strengthen the body's immune system and slow down age-related decline, and social affiliation. And the 4 primary neurochemical systems that are affected are dopamine and opioids, cortisol, serotonin and oxytocin.
The effects that music has on the brain actually releases these compounds within the body and can treat people for a various number of illnesses.
Now, this may not be - if you are extremely ill, you aren't just going to pop in a CD and just cure yourself. [Laughter]
But for maintenance of your life, your state of mind, the state of your body, it is important to regularly listen to music that you like, that you enjoy.
There is one other thing here - the point thatI made - this doctor says, "You don't need a neuroscientist to tell you that music can be invigorating, intensely pleasurable or sad. But this is an exciting time for research on the biological foundations of music."
They are working on software that can provide similar musical feedback to users which he says might help relieve pain for people recovering from strokes or drug addiction. There are some hospitals that already use music to relieve anxiety before surgery and pain afterwards. But Sven Bringman of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden says that, "It could be used more. Music is not used as much as it should be because it takes more of the nurse's time than just giving anaesthetic."
So, I think here we have another example of the way the medical establishment approaches things. If it takes time, if it takes a lot of effort to treat someone with a more holistic approach, the preferred method for them generally is to administer a drug and have a quick result.
That reminds me of a case, not specifically related to music but along that point.
A person whom I am aware of, will of course remain nameless, had some thyroid issues and went to the doctor, and the doctor said, "Well, you can either get it removed entirely, or we can kill it with radiotherapy or you can do this and this and this, which is going to take like 6 years, and you'll still have your thyroid."
And of course, the option that was chosen and the option that the doctor promoted was the quick option which, in my mind, 6 years doesn't really seem like a long time in the grand scheme of things, especially for something as vital as your thyroid. It's like, 'Quick, quick, in and out, just take it out, and here's some drugs and I hope you feel better.'
I think this point in the article about how they are not using music to the extent that it should be used is similar to that.
Doug: I wonder, do they say anything about the type of music?
Erica: Oh yeah!
Doug: Anything about how different types of music can affect you?
Jonathan: Not specifically in this article, it was more about music in general.
I guess they were assuming it would be music in line with what the person wanted to listen to. There are just talking about music being pleasurable. There is a machine here - it's called a Jymmin machine. A special type of exercise apparatus that allows music to be paired with weight training.
The sounds change as the user pushes harder. It says you have the perception that you are being really musically expressive. It says, "You have the perception that you are being extremely musically expressive."
That might tie into the creative expression aspect of psychology there, but they didn't talk about specific types of music.
Tiffany: I think, as you said Jonathan, it should be what the person really enjoys listening to. I mean, I think classical music is all well and good and everything but if you don't really do classical music, then I don't see how you'll get the same pleasurable sensations, like, say if you were listening to your favourite pop band or somebody like that.
Gaby: I think it should be a balance though. Maybe some people are driven crazy by classical music, but I think music should be melodic enough. Like, I don't know, a person enjoys heavy metal. I don't know if that's going to be good for you. [Laughter]
Doug: I do wonder about that though. Because a lot of times when people are talking about soothing music, and something to kind of destress, classical is the default. People say, 'Oh yeah, listen to some classical music.'
Well, personally, I don't know - I don't dislike classical music. But I find I need a lot more structure in my music. I need that 4/4 time signature to be able to get into it; there's got to be a bit of a groove there. I find that classical music is always changing time signatures and stuff like that, I feel very floaty when I listen to it, like not grounded.
So, I don't know - I think for me personally, I don't think classical music would really be the thing I would go towards to try and chill out. I think I would much rather listen to some ambient electronic music or something like that. That's my personal preference, but then I don't know.
Gaby: But then like Porges' Music Therapy of The Polyvagal Theory, for example, people do engage. People who have, for example, autism, they do engage socially under music therapy. It has to be certain frequencies. I don't know the classic that comes to mind is like chorus type-of-thing.
It has to be like specific frequencies of music - not necessarily like any type of music. So, I think that some clues will be there in music therapy and the polyvagal theory.
Jonathan: I agree with that, but the thing is it's also -
Tiffany: Well, I don't play music, but I like to sing along so I like melodic music. I used to sing myself to sleep. And I didn't know about the vagus nerve at that time, but singing really stimulates and that and makes you feel good.
Jonathan: It does. I wonder about the theory - like how Gurdjieff talks about objective art, is there is a theory of objective music? Because it is such a personal thing, I get the idea in relation to visual art that is should express some deeper truths, some kind of - whether it is geometric or esoteric, or whatever the deeper symbolism is about reality - that art should not necessarily just be whatever splashed on a canvas or whatever moulded into some random shape. I wonder if there is something like that with music, too.
I know people who listen to, for instance, really hardcore metal and are the nicest people you will ever meet. And are at peace with themselves, have a great life and seem to be very well and stable and adjusted.
Also for myself, I really like Bop jazz - which a lot of people find really chaotic. I have a friend who can't stand that kind of music, it's just like nails on a chalkboard, and for me I love it.
But again at the same time, there are people who like, say, Neil Diamond who I don't like. If I heard Neil Diamond, I would change the channel. [Laughter]
I wonder if it is kind of like a key. There is the frequency of the music that has this certain effect that can be objectively measured, but at the same time, it needs to fit into the keyhole of the person's preference and what they like listening to.
Doug: I think that makes a lot of sense and maybe it has more to do with the actual frequencies themselves than the actual structure. Whether you are listening to metal or jazz or electronic music or whatever, it's more about the frequencies that are being used than the actual structure of the music itself. I don't know - I am just speculating.
Erica: I think it also has to do with where you are at on a particular day. Like you were saying, Jonathan, I like jazz too and there's times where things like Miles Davis, you can handle; and it starts to morph into this more chaotic sense and then all of a sudden, I feel like, "Wow, I think I need to turn that off. Right now, it's like overstimulating my brain," and switch to something else.
Jonathan: Yeah, it is really specific. That's true with me too. There are parts of jazz that I really enjoy and parts that I don't, even sometimes in the same song. If it goes into this really offbeat, like there's no time signature at all - I'm down with a 7/8 or a 6/7 or some of these weird time signatures; but when there is none at all and it's just kind of like you're there on the trumpet just slamming your fingers, just making noise, I don't find that enjoyable. And then I'm like, 'Argh, I need to find something with more of a groove to it.' So, yeah.
Jonathan: Well, let's go to our next and last connecting the dots here that will lead us into our topic for the day. Erica, do you want to talk about this: the connection between your mental and emotional health and physical illness?
Erica: Yeah. So there was this interesting article that was put up on SOTT (The-connection-between-your-mental-emotional-health-physical-illness) and it was on Collective Evolution on August 22th. Rajie Kabli is the woman and she was interviewing a woman known as Organic Olivia, and the article starts out with basically: we ignore the messages our bodies are sending us and then we dampen them with drugs or other sort of addictive behaviours, like we covered on last week's show, rather than addressing the underlying problem.
But when sickness comes knocking, we usually find ourselves forced to deal with them.
And so Organic Olivia talks about her personal experience. She had really poor negative thoughts and it brought on a long list of body issues, such things as IBS(irritable bowel syndrome), liver deficiency, depression, eating disorders and then eventually parasites.
She turned to many doctors for help. She became ill after being given a Gardasil vaccine. And sick and tired, she literally finally decided to take back her health and was diving into research and went on to consult a Chinese medicine doctor. As her health began to improve, so did her attitude and outlook on life.
So, they have a short little interview on this article with Olivia. But some of the points that she addressed that really tie into our topic today I'm going to list just to give our listeners an idea what she was talking about and what we've probably all experienced at one time or another.
The first one she says is, "When you are feeling sad or depressed, you tend to overeat." And we covered this in last week's show about food addictions and whatnot. "And our body tends to hold onto physical weight because it is going into survival mode.
Every major organ in our body has an associated emotional counterpoint. So, paying attention and taking care of one of them can usually offset the other. Also, along with having an emotional counterpoint, every vital organ has an internal clock that it likes to follow in order for it to replenish."
She also suggests drinking ginger tea as it is amazing for digestive health. So, if you have stomach issues, an unsettled stomach, butterflies in your stomach, ginger tea is recommended in a lot of alternative medicine.
Then she completes the list by saying, "Parasite cleansing is completely normal and very important in many Eastern cultures. By doing a cleanse, you may see improvements in your skin, bowel movements, metabolism, energy levels, liver function, appetite and abdominal pain."
So, that was just a short little article, again, tying into this mind-body connection. Our physical health affects our mental health and then it becomes this feedback loop. How we choose to either ignore it or deal with it leads us on a path to healing or into greater sickness and illness.
Doug: It's interesting that she brought up the Chinese medicine and working with that. It's like Gabor Mate has said - all these ancient systems of medicines really did look at the entire person and would look at the emotional state of a person as a means of really sussing out what was going on.
It's interesting to look at the Chinese medicine, the Five Elements. They have charts out there that show how the different organs relate to specific mental states or emotional states, like the spleen is associated with worry and overthinking, the lungs are associated with grief and sorrow, or the liver is associated with anger and resentment.
I have seen this in just working with people. A lot of times when people undertake something like a liver cleanse, it would bring up all of this old anger and resentment and stuff that they have been feeling. They have to process this stuff that they have been repressing for a long time. I think it's a really good way of looking at what sort of emotion you are going through and then relating that to what organ that might be associated with.
Jonathan: Yeah. I was going to say I can definitely draw a personal connection between the weight - Erica, you mentioned the weight issue. I think I have mentioned in a previous show that I used to be pretty heavy; I think I clocked in at 298lbs when I was my heaviest.
Doug: Wow.
Jonathan: Yeah. I can remember vividly that I was really all over the place emotionally during that time. Of course, probably a lot of it had to do with a bad diet and uncertain life situation and things like that. I would just swing like a pendulum between anxiety and depression and back and forth, and back and forth.
Looking back at it with this perspective, I'm sure that the state of mind contributed to that because even if you just look at causal factors, and not saying that being depressed makes you obese; but being depressed will cause you to binge eat pizza, which will then lead to other certain foregone conclusions. So, it's a chain that works together.
Doug: Yeah. A lot of times people are using food as a means of medicating themselves, to suppress those feelings that you are having by eating these comfort foods. So, it definitely is all related.
Tiffany: Yeah, I can relate to that too. I was in a very anxiety-producing relationship at one point. And when my boyfriend finally moved out - thank god - I remember I went down into the office of the building where I lived to pay my rent, and my manager was like, "Oh my god, you lost so much weight!" And I didn't even try/
I called it the 'My boyfriend moved out and I don't care' diet.
[Laughter]
Jonathan: I wonder if there is more - like an esoteric connection between that as well, saying that you dropped the weight of this person metaphorically, and so then literally you also dropped weight.
Tiffany: Yeah. It was such, such a stress-relief, I tell you.
Erica: You see that a lot in relationship dynamics; it usually goes one way or the other way - say, when people go through a divorce, they either lose an extreme amount of weight or they gain an extreme amount of weight, really depending on how they are processing it.
If they feel like they are losing something that they know is toxic or not good, maybe they lose a lot of weight. Or if they feel like they need to fill some sort of void, then the eating addiction starts to come in and you start to repress everything with food or try and fill that empty space with carbs.
Jonathan: So, that kind of leads us into our topic for the day and I had a premise - I guess you'd call it a premise - that I wanted to throw out there for us to discuss for a moment. The question being: why is this not a bigger deal? And I guess maybe we could just riff and speculate on that for a moment.
By 'this' I mean the mental-emotional-physical connection. Because if you go to a very large hospital in the city, say - or really anywhere, but I'm using a metro hospital as an example here - the chances are that the doctor is not going to bring up this connection. They are going to diagnose you based on what they see, or based on the test results, and then they are going to give you a prescription.
Same with what Doug mentioned about psychiatrists; they are going to look it up in the DSM and, "Oh, you're feeling this and this and this and this, so here's a pill. Or here's five pills."
So, do you think the reason that this connection is not more widely known or really practiced in modern medicine, is it strictly financial? Could it really be that simple: that it's just for the benefit of the pharmaceutical companies? Or is there some kind of collective amnesia that has worked its way into the medical establishments, where you get into a rut, and so the medical establishment as a whole has gotten into a rut of doing things a certain way and nobody really challenges it?
I know we've touched on different stories in the past about doctors being smacked down by the FDA or by the AMA for expressing more holistic opinions; so, there is an oppression, sort of bullying factor there as well. But I guess it just makes me curious.
I have known some doctors - and, by and large, the doctors that I have known are compassionate people - they became doctors because they wanted to help people, they wanted to heal people. If you were able to show to them: here is this really strong connection, we can totally show evidence for this, actual hard data saying there is a connection between the state of mind and the state of physical health, that they would pick that up and run with it and try to work with that more.
So, what do you guys think about what some of the reasons are that this is not more widely practiced?
Gaby: Several things, at least on my side: corruption of science, for one - doctors' financial interest, corruption of science, psychopathology signs basically. We are not taught about psychology, emotions, in medical school and it creates a lot of suffering for the patients, for the doctors themselves. It's just like a huge neglected part of healing - how to deal with emotions.
Some people describe going into med school like stressful, it's like PTSD. You go, and it is like continuous PTSD and when you get out, you are easier to program that way as well. It is like a multifaceted problem that it creates so much suffering from all parts, all sides, except if you are a psychopath and you are okay with that. That's the prognosis.
Tiffany: Listening to it, in many ways doctors' hands are tied because of the way the medical system is set up - it is so compartmentalised. So, if you go into a doctor's and you have an emotional issue, well, they'll send you to a psychiatrist. Or if you have hormonal issues, they'll send you to an endocrinologist, or kidney issues, you go to a urologist. Everything is just split and broken up into different parts.
Like we were talking about earlier, looking at a person and treating them as a whole - it takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of time and doctors just don't have time for that. They are allotted a certain amount of time to spend with each patient and they can't go over that or they will lose money.
Doug: I think a lot of it has to do with inertia too. The system is set up in this way, like you are talking about, Tiff. And it is going to require a huge expenditure of energy to try and change these things.
The way things are done has this inertia to it; it's all going in this very specific direction. And to try and put the brakes on that and reassess and go in a different direction, it would take a lot. It would take a lot for an endocrinologist to say, "Well, we have to look at this from a bigger picture."
Their training doesn't look at that generally. And it's funny, Dr. Gabor Mate talks about this Bermuda Triangle. This idea that: a study will come out showing a very clear connection between the emotional state and a disease. He talks about a few specific studies that have come out that showed a very clear connection. And he says, "But these studies although they come out and are published in these journals, nothing is done about it." It just disappears from the radar.
You would think a doctor reading this will think, "Oh, wow! Look at this emotional connection between heart disease and depression, maybe. So, maybe this is a new way for me to address this with my patients." It just doesn't happen. It comes to the surface, people read the article, and then it disappears. Nothing is actually done about it.
Gaby: Yeah, and even for the money: some healthcare systems in the world are arranged in a way that you only have 15 minutes at the most to see a patient. Here in Spain, sometimes they give you 5 minutes at the most and you have the hallway full of patients waiting.
So, the system doesn't work. But also through continualmedical adaptation - because, there is a lot of information, like too much information, and some people don't even have the skills to assimilate or keep up with everything. So, they rely on official medical organisms for the information that they will absorb for the practice. Whatever, basically: like email additions or conferences they are able to attend during Labour Day doing work.
Conferences they are sponsored, basically almost 100% sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. So, yes, corruption of science has many, many basic aspects to it. I think the system by itself - in essence - is pretty much - how do you say - evil.
It doesn't satisfy doctors the way they treat their patients, well, at least, that's the general impression. I am sure some doctors are having a big time.
But in general, they are unsatisfied of the health practices they are dealing. And the patients are suffering the most. They don't get answers, they don't have the money to pay for the technology of some diagnostic test while you can get a lot of information just by sitting with your patient for one or two hours and just go through everything: a basic medical history. It has been bullet-proofed since thousands of years. We didn't have to reinvent the wheel! But that's the way it is. The system is evil basically!
Doug: I think that's why you see more and more people going to holistic practitioners. You go to a naturopath or to a Chinese medicine doctor or something along those lines because they will take the time and they will sit with the patient and try to figure out what exactly is going on.
A lot of these practitioners will utilise other mainstream people, like, "Well, we do need a blood test here. So why don't we send you to a doctor and see what's going on here?" Rather than only going to the doctor that has this specific, narrow field of focus, they'll use it as a tool. It's like, "This doctor knows about this, so why don't we find out what's going on in this area and take that into the whole picture?"
I think a lot of people who are taking control of their own health are going from this sort of perspective and using these specialists more as a tool to figure what's going on instead of putting themselves entirely under their care.
It's like that old saying: to a carpenter, every problem is a nail that has to be hammered down. So, it is like: getting a more holistic perspective on these things actually works a lot better.
Erica: Well, I think Dr. Mate does a really good job of that. If our listeners are interested, there is an interview about When the Body Says No: How Emotioms Can Prevent or Cause Disease. It was an interview on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and, like Doug was saying, he talks about the Bermuda Triangle.
But also, because he was a palliative care doctor and he would sit with people as they were dying, again, like his book that we mentioned last week, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts", he had this opportunity to have these conversations with these people about their stress, what's going on in their lives, their relationships. And he really in this book delineates all these intense cancers, breast cancer, and other illnesses that are directly connected to your emotional state.
I think he even used the term called psychoneuroimmunology. So, this mind-body connection that his patients were suffering. It is really a fascinating book.
There is also an interview with him, if you don't have time to read the article, called When the Body Says No: Caring for ourselves while caring for others., and those are on the SOTT page.
Gaby: Mhmm, yeah. I remember watching that. Gabor Mate is very inspiring. And he does come from a background of working with palliative care, end-stage cancer and people with drug addictions, as covered on an earlier show.
Tiffany: Yeah. He really stresses that the mind and the body can't be separated. He said some of the things that make people ill is their 'strict adherence to duty' versus 'caring for themselves, or addressing the needs of the self'. He named that as some of the risk factor for cancer.
He also said that believing that you are responsible for other people's emotions, or feeling that you can never ever disappoint people or say no, sets you up for illness.
He thinks that who gets sick and who doesn't is no accident. It is tied to your emotions or how you set boundaries, and that can affect your health.
Doug: He draws a very real physical connection. He says that if you do have these emotional states, or you are repressing in some way - whatever it might be. That does have a direct affect on the immune system.
So, if you are somebody who doesn't have very good boundaries in your everyday life, then your immune system doesn't have very good boundaries. This is just one way that the emotional state can end up having a physical manifestation.
Somebody who is immune compromised, it might be because in their life, they don't have these boundaries set up and they don't stand up for themselves and define themselves in some way. They take all their time to be responsible for other people's emotions. His work is very, very interesting.
Gaby: He also explains the other extreme - okay, there are people-pleasers, people who don't know how to put boundaries.
He also explains how there are those who put a lot of boundaries, the other way of protecting one's self from distress. Here I am quoting from his book: 'The other way of protecting one's self from the stress of threatened relationship is emotional shutdown. To feel safe, the vulnerable person withdraws from others and closes against intimacy.
The coping style may avoid anxiety and block the subjective experience of stress but not the physiology of it. Emotional intimacy is a psychological and biological necessity. And those who build walls against intimacy are not self-regulated, just emotionally frozen. Their stress from having unmet needs will be high.'' So the physiology, biology, psychology of it - you'll end up sick just as well.
Erica: Yeah. And he shares how the immune system functions like a brain; it has a memory, it has reactive capacity, it has learning capacity. He even called it the 'floating brain', right - its interaction with the brain up in our heads.
Then he goes on to cite this UCLA psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Siegel. He coined a phrase called the interpersonal neurobiology and it indicates that the biology of our brains and our bodies is in inter-reaction with our personal relationships. So, how we express ourselves in those relationships, or how we suppress ourselves, has a lot to do with our health.
And we can really see that, when you need to say something, and you don't, you end up with sores in your mouth, or you withhold how you are feeling and your breathing gets shallow. These are all things that happen almost instantaneously; or you have a confrontation with someone and you get butterflies in your stomach, it's almost as if the body instantaneously is connecting with those things going on in your head. If that makes sense?
Doug: It's really interesting too, because you drift into these 'New Age-y' side of things where people are pretty quick to dismiss these ideas.
I don't know if people are familiar with it, but Louise Hay wrote a book back in 1982, and it has been reprinted many times. It's very popular, it's called Heal Your Body where she connects all of these different ailments with emotional states, and have those things connect.
It's only now that science is catching up with this thing and saying, 'No, no, there actually is really a mechanism for this.' I think the serious scientists or medical establishment would still be hesitant to take any of this kind of stuff on board.
But actually there is a very real connection here when you look at it - one example she talks about it constipation and how constipation is related to holding onto things. There is this metaphoric connection where you are holding on to old stuff, you won't let something go. That ends up manifesting in the body as constipation and can become a real, chronic problem if it's something that you are chronically repressing.
There was an update; well, it's not really an update, but another book written by Michael J. Lincoln - he's an interesting guy. He has an Indian name as well. Narayan Singh is his Indian name because I think he took on the Sikh religion at one point. And he has this massively thick book that has all these very intricate ties between different emotional states. The book is called Messages from the Body.
And you can look up very specific stuff, like not just having foot problems but getting down to which toe you are having a problem with and which segment of the toe; and the emotional pattern that exists behind that.
So, to have Gabor Mate show this psychoneuroimmunology, this very real connection that happens there, legitimises a lot of these things.
Gaby: Yeah, I have always been surprised at how accurate Louise Hay has been. Even though you know that disease means that inflammatory problem, because of the diet and so forth; because of the body-mind connection, you read explanations that she gives emotional factors with certain conditions and you just say, like, "I cannot deny that!"
Doug: It's interesting because a lot of times when we do have these physical ailments, the first thought is what physically is going on, and, "Have I been exposed to some bacteria from food poisoning?" Or something like that or this kind of thing.
I think despite the fact that these physical things do have a physical connection - like diet, which is the case in a lot of situations - I think you can still look at things from an emotional standpoint because of the way that it's manifesting.
Like somebody who has a bad diet could have any number of different things going wrong: they could have digestive issues, they could have mental issues. It could be arthritis or some kind of inflammation with the joints. So the way in which it manifests has to do with the emotional connections.
Erica: I think we have all experienced that for sure, for sure.
Jonathan: There are 2 people who I knew who, again, will remain nameless - I'll try to keep it as anonymous as I can; both of these people have since passed. They both had cancer; one person had colon cancer, the other person had stomach cancer.
The one person with colon cancer was the nicest, most empathetic, most compassionate, open person that you can imagine; like really awesome person. The person who had stomach cancer was not a mean person but was very closed off, very rigid, very traditional, he wouldn't try tea because it's kind of gay. That kind of thing - he was very tight, kind of a tight person.
So, they both ended up passing from these very similar types of cancer, but their personalities were very different. The common thing between them was that they both drank a lot of beer. [Laughter}
And so, it makes me wonder - obviously it's not just a one-to-one with the emotion and the disease 100%, but that there are also environmental and dietary factors can play into this as well. I am curious about how they manifest in different parts of the body.
Tiffany: I have kind of similar story. I worked in a hospice for a while and there was one lady that I had as a patient. She had colon cancer and she was the sweetest lady you'd ever meet. She had come to terms with it. She had a very - well, from what I could see - a loving relationship with her family and her husband. And she was just so sweet and so welcoming and always very pleasant despite what she was going through.
And then I had another person who had liver cancer and he was really, really mean; like 'curse-you-out, hang-up-the-phone, slam-the-door-on-you, won't-talk-to-you' mean. He would even try alternative medicine. He was taking cannabis oil and smoking it, but he just could not get over that anger.
They say in Chinese medicine, the liver is the eat of anger. And I could really see that in him.
Doug: Well, just from the two examples that you guys have given. You've got these people with colon cancer who are very sweet, very giving, very compassionate. But I wonder if maybe they were suppressing themselves in some way in order to be that way for other people.
It's like, "Well, I have to keep my stuff at bay so that I can be there for other people."
It's really interesting; I had a mentor when I first got out of nutrition school with this woman who was a holistic nutritionist who had been in the business for like 15 years or something like that, and had thousands of different patients. She had gotten more and more into the emotional side of things just because she had recognised all these different patterns.
One thing she said was that - she gave a couple of different examples - like: she found that every patient she had who was overcome with candida, so had a really strong candida infection, she said they were always very overwhelmed people who didn't deal well with their stuff, their daily life stuff. They were always very overwhelmed so here they are overwhelmed with this fungal infection.
And she said that she found that anybody who had the chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia type picture always had a very martyr-type stance on things. Like, "Oh no, you go ahead. I'll be fine." That kind of thing; like, "Oh, no, I'll stay back and clean the house while you guys go and have fun."
Like they always had that martyr personality. So it's very interesting to see that there's these connections, where it's a person's stance on life leads to the kind of disorders they end up with.
Gaby: It reminds me of stories as well of cancer survivors. Those who fit a certain profile - apparently around 10% according to some studies - have a greater chance of recovering or curing themselves.
And some of the personality profiles was that they gave a lot of trouble for everybody - the nurses, the doctors, they were the typical patients that everybody would hate involved. [Laughter]
That is actually the best profile for healing,
Doug: Huh, yeah. Maybe it's because they were expressing it, they weren't holding anything in.
Gaby: Exactly! They were expressing themselves. They were assertive and they came across as annoying to the system. But that's actually alright because it's true.
Jonathan: That makes me think of George Burns.
I just heard a story about him the other day so it's fresh on my mind. He lived to be 100 years old; he was born in 1896, died in 1996. He religiously smoked cigars and in the story that I have heard, it was a person talking about how they had travelled with him for a while, that he drank Martinis and did not have a limit, and was just like, "Keep 'em coming."
Every time before a show, he would have two Martini's chased with a coffee, do his show and then just drink Martini's off into the night. Now that's not an excuse for everybody to go off and just drink as many Martini's as you want.
Gaby: Bummer
Tiffany: Darn!
Jonathan: I know, dammit! But drawing the comparison between somewhat very evident carcinogenic lifestyle and his personality, he did not have a filter on his mouth. He would say whatever came to mind, at any time and he wasn't mean, but he just did not filter himself at all. And he didn't care what anybody thought about him.
And so it makes me wonder, did his personality contribute to him living so long because he didn't tense up these emotional issues that a lot of people feel?
Tiffany: I think that has a lot to do with it. I was reading - or going back to reread certain parts of this book, I read it about a year and a half ago. It's called "The Healing Power of Illness" by Thorwald Dethlefsen and Ruediger Dahlke - two German guys, psychologists.
And, speaking of George Burns not filtering himself and not caring what anyone thinks about him, they say that symptoms or illness is a sign of lack of wholeness and a lack of harmony at the level of consciousness.
So he says that people are basically bipolar; they have a light side and a dark side - or a shadow side. And failing to acknowledge and accept and integrate that shadow part of yourself, which is like rejected parts of yourself or reality that you don't want to face, it leads to illness or symptoms.
And if a person refuses to live out whatever principle is in their shadow side, whatever it's saying, if they refuse to live that out it descends from the consciousness level and it descends into the body where it appears as a symptom. And the person, at that point, they are forced to live it out and manifest every principle that they have ever rejected.
They say that medicine, they try to take away the causes of illness or mask the symptoms. But illness really is too crafty to be shut down in that way and it will find a new cause to justify its continued existence.
They use the example of a person who really, really, really wants to build a house. They are not going to stop just because the person took the bricks away. They are just going to use wood to build that house instead.
There is an interesting thing that they said, relating to an article that Gaby talked about - critters, basically. Bacteria nor viruses cause disease, we just use them as tools for manifesting our illnesses, which I thought was really interesting.
Gaby: Right.
Jonathan: It is.
Tiffany: So, if you are rejecting part of yourself or various aspects of your life that you don't want to face, and you are in some situation and you are basically lying to yourself about what's going on in reality, it's going to manifest as a symptom to force you to see what's going on.
Doug: That's really interesting. That actually mirrors the homeopathic perspective on things, too. Within homeopathy, there's different levels of manifestation; there is the physical, the mental and the emotional. And they say that if you suppress ones, it will just creep up in another way.
And the one that they use an example of a lot is somebody who has eczema as a baby. The medical model will spread cortisone cream on that, which just - from their perspective, all you are doing is suppressing it at that point. You are not actually getting to the root cause and dealing with it.
Well they say that it is overwhelming the number of people who have had cortisone treatment for eczema develop asthma later on in their life as a young child, or preteen kind of thing - they'll develop asthma.
It's like the same kind of thing. If you are repressing an emotional, it will find a way to manifest in some other way. And within the homeopathy thing, there is this hierarchy that if you are suppressing physical symptoms eventually it will manifest as an emotional symptom, and if you are suppressing emotional symptom, it will eventually manifest as a mental symptom.
So somebody who is suppressing their depression with drugs can start to have cognitive difficulties, start losing their memory - having these kinds of things happen to him.
It's really interesting, a lot of these things we look at as side effects of the drug. Well, it might not be so much a side effect of the drug as much as a side effect of repressing these symptoms that are trying to communicate something to you.
Erica: It makes a lot of sense.
Jonathan: So, I guess the point being that everybody should go out and, today, speak your mind, don't hold back.
Tiffany: You have to express it in a healthy manner, just don't go out and start pouring off on everybody.
Jonathan: Yeah. [Laughter]
Gaby: It's a learning curve but it's possible.
Tiffany: Well, I wanted to bring up some degrees of escalation that they talk about in this book The Healing Power of Illness. Because there's seven degrees and the seventh one was really surprising to me, but I'll go over it.
They said that the first degree of escalation of an illness is some kind of psychological phenomena, something that's going in your mind or your subconscious that you are not facing. And then the second degree - if the first degree is not addressed, like the psychological phenomena, it would go to the second degree. It will turn into a functional disturbance, some kind of symptom. And the third degree is an acute physical disturbance, like accidents or wounds.
People think of the mind-body connection, you just get sick physical or you get some illness, I think accidents come to play in this too.
The fourth is, if these physical disturbances aren't addressed, it will turn into a chronic condition. And the fifth in an incurable process; and then the sixth is death, if none of these things are addressed. But then they say, as the seventh degree of escalation, if you die from some chronic disease and you still haven't managed to confront your shadow self and integrate it, at your next reincarnation, you might be born with a congenital deformity as a form of karma. So, I thought that was really interesting and thought-provoking.
So, you have to wonder: children who are born with these congenital illnesses, is there something in their previous life that they didn't face, that they didn't live out, that they have to learn? It sounds like you are blaming the person for bringing it on themselves.
But, like Gabor Mate says, there is no blame here. These are unconscious things that just happen. It's not like anyone is doing this on purpose. They have no idea that it's happening under the surface.
Doug: It's like the concept of all that exists are lessons. Your life is like an opportunity to learn these lessons. And if you are not learning it, you are just going to keep on this cycle over and over again until you can confront this and learn from it
Jonathan: I think that that draws a comparison too between the feeling you get when confronting certain things. For myself, I am usually pretty shy, I'm non-confrontational. I don't like to get into spats with people or to call somebody out on something.
The times in my life when I have been able to muster up the courage to do that, it feels so good. You might feel like kind of a jerk for a minute but you're like, 'No, I was in the right, and I said what was on my mind and that feels great.'
So, the feeling of that I think - not that everything that feels good is good - but in a certain way that that's a confirmation that that's a release of something that was pent up.
Tiffany: There is a certain feeling of empowerment you get for standing up for yourself. I have done it, I can recall doing it a few times in my life.
I gave it a name like 'Turning the bitch on', where somebody is obviously doing wrong and you have to tell them about it and you have to say "No" is so many words. And you have to say, "I am not going to stand up for this, this is wrong."
It makes you feel like nobody can mess you, like "Yeah, this is me, this is my space, I am going to protect myself."
Jonathan: Something that crossed my mind earlier while we were talking about this and talking about the idea of allowing yourself to be a doormat, or being conflicted emotionally about other people's issues. Doug, like you were saying, the victim mentally of, "No, you go ahead. You take advantage of me. That's fine." It made me think about psychopathy. And since psychopaths do not have this emotional component, they do not wonder whether they have hurt someone, they do not have that empathy, that compassion towards other people, would that allow them to essentially live longer?
Because I just saw the other day that George Bush Senior had his 90th birthday. And I'm like, "If anybody should shrivel up from the sheer evil that's within them, it should be him."
Tiffany: The same thing with Dick Cheney and his multiple heart problems.
Gaby: When he already doesn't have a heart, literally.
Jonathan: It just makes me wonder is there is a connection there. There are people that -obviously the diagnosis of psychopathy is hard to make. You can't really effectively make it at a distance. It has to be rigorously studied.
I will say, however, there are certain people - politicians, like Bush Senior, evidenced by his actions throughout his life, in the government and the things that he perpetrated. It's certainly possible, I can say that much without feeling conflicted about that. Is there a component there that allows people to live longer because they are not conflicted? They don't have that inner struggle.
Doug: It's possible.
Tiffany: It's interesting, because I knew a guy who was horrible - awful, awful person. He was an abuser, he abused his wife, he abuses kids, he raped people; and he ended up with anal cancer and he did not die. He is still alive to this day.
Jonathan: Wow!
Gaby: Yeah, you'd think a perp like that!
Doug: It might have to do with: these disease manifestations are like - it's almost like you are not expressing your soul, you know what I mean? It's like you've got something to express, you've got something to do in this lifetime and you are suppressing that in some way, and then that ends up leading to these different disease states.
So, if a psychopath - from one perspective, they are kind of soulless. They don't have this inner life force, this inner kind of drive. There might not be anything particularly in there that needs to be expressed. So, they are not really suppressing anything, like you said, Jonathan. It might just be -
all that being said, I think that there are plenty of examples of psychopathic individuals who do end up with some chronic disease. And that just might be purely on a physical level, because they are not taking care of themselves in some way.
Who knows? Maybe there isn't the emotional component there. Whatever they end up with is just more reflective of how they've treated themselves physically. I don't know.
Gaby: Or maybe the stress of being under another bigger predatory psychopath.
Doug: Mmm, yeah. That's a good one.
Erica: And then there is the effects on others - what was the name of the book? "Women who Love Psychopaths" was one. There was another one. Oh, "How to Spot a Dangerous Man". These personalities in How to Spot a Dangerous Man - it could be 'how to spot a dangerous woman' also. The book was basically written from the perspective of women who had suffered so greatly in these relationships and how their physical, emotional health deteriorated rapidly.
I really recommend those books for anyone who is in a type of situation like that, because it helps you realise that you are not alone and how these psychopathic or soulless people can destroy you slowly.
Even in Gabor Mate's book "When the Body Says No", these women that have breast cancer or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, this slow deterioration of just trying to do the right thing and be the good wife or be a good mother and not really taking into account the fact that these people are sucking their life force basically.
Gaby: Possibly another good book, because not acknowledging emotions is a huge source of stress and some people are literally so wounded, so injured, that they don't know what they feel anymore.
I think a good book is also "Women who Run with the Wolves", and it also applies for men as well. It is an international bestseller by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It is basically: how to heal your injured instincts, your emotions and it really teaches a lot about yourself and others, and it's a really great read.
Erica: Excellent book! And I love the way that it is all based on what some people might consider fairy tales or old stories, but there are so applicable to our experiences today - the story of Bluebeard and his torturing of his wife. She has such a great way of telling a story; she is really a master storyteller, but interweaving all those archetypes into the story that anyone can really identify with.
We have all had these experiences like 'Little Red Coat.' Great writer, I really enjoy her work.
Doug: For sure.
Tiffany: And that really brings up the point of listening to your gut. I think Gabor Mate brought this up in one of his talks - he asked the audience, "Was there ever a time you had a really strong gut feeling and you ignored it and you ended up regretting it afterwards?"
The thing is: you have to be in touch with those guts feelings and you have to practice listening to it and actually following through on what your gut is telling you in order to learn your lessons really. So, I think that's a big part of keeping yourself healthy is listening to your gut and trying to follow your instincts.
Jonathan: Sure.
Doug: Yeah. I think a lot of that comes down to emotional intelligence, or what they term emotional intelligence - actually educating yourself on your emotions, because we so often just ignore them.
Erica: I think in How to Spot a Dangerous Man they called them 'red flags'.
So, for those in the dating world - usually on the first or second date - if you get a red flag, bad sign.
She talks about how people usually brush it aside. I would say that applies in relationships with people as well. Your first couple of days of meeting someone, if some gut response, or a red flag comes up, you really need to really pay attention to that and keep it tucked away somewhere there, but not to brush those sensations aside.
We are taught in this culture to be understanding and accepting and people will change. From personal experience, that doesn't really happen. I go back, going, "Gosh, I should've paid attention to that red flag 10 years ago!"
Gaby: Or the BS meter!
Erica: Yes; or something just doesn't ring true. You can feel it - like Doug was talking about - in body sensations, like we talked about in last week's show: the pain in your neck or your clenching of your jaw, or you find your shoulders get tense. That's your body telling you something to pay attention to and don't just brush aside.
Jonathan: Yeah, that invariably happens to me when I am ignoring something, or I am stressed about something and I am lying to myself and I don't want to realise that. Give it a day or two and pretty soon my neck is really tight, or I've got a toothache - usually things like that crop up in parallel. It's pretty clear now. It's not like I can read myself perfectly, but it's become more clear over the last maybe 5 or 6 years. Whereas I remember in the past being like, "God, this sucks. I am hurting and why, I don't know."
It takes learning those signs and learning about what's happening in your body as well as what's happening in your life allows you to draw those connections, and say, 'Okay, well...' - like you mentioned earlier, Erica - '...my teeth hurt so it must be something that I am not saying. My neck hurts so I'm stressed out and I am clenching my teeth. So, what am I stressed out about?'
Erica: I remember Louise Hay does say in the book that Doug mentioned, teeth issues are deep seated beliefs; so maybe, like Gabor Mate talks about in a lot of his lectures, that ingrained sense of duty or that ingrained sense of being a martyr.
If your teeth start hurting, maybe it's some habit that you picked up a long time ago. And the teeth are like your little red flag, "What's this deep-seated belief that I am holding onto that's not helping me move forward?"
Doug: Yeah. I've got the book here. It says that 'teeth represent decisions - longstanding indecisiveness, inability to break down ideas for analysis and decisions.'
Tiffany: So, is that like the phrase that somebody is 'toothless'?
Doug: Mm, yeah.
Tiffany: You think that can play into it?
Doug: Yeah.
Tiffany: In this book again, The Healing Power of Illness, which I highly recommend, they give a few rules on trying to interpret your symptoms.
So, the first rule is to ignore all apparent causal relationships. Not to say that there aren't any physical causes for an illness, like say, you catch some bug or something, but whatever chemical or physiological cause you think is causing your symptoms is not the pressing issue - just recognise that the symptoms exist.
Then the second rule is to focus on the thoughts, themes, fantasies and emotions that were occupying you at the time that your symptoms occurred - like what kind of mood were you in or was there something new that happened in your life - and when you have gone through this, pay particular attention to things that seem meaningless or unimportant.
Because so many times we are taught to repress our feelings, or think about, "That doesn't really matter, that's not important." So, those are the things you should pay particular attention to because the stuff that you repress is the stuff that makes you sick.
The third rule is to listen to the way that symptoms that symptoms are described in an abstract to a psychological level, because the language is very psychosomatic. Like people might say 'I can't bend over because my back is too rigid' or, 'I'm breaking out it in a rash.' Language will give you a clue as to where the underlying symptom is coming from.
The fourth rule is to ask yourself: what is this symptom stopping me from doing or what is this symptom making me to do? Like some symptoms will make you stay in bed, telling you that you need to rest, you need to slow down, other ones prevent you from participating in certain activities like sports and hobbies, and really good ones keep you from going to work. [Laughter]
But seriously, you need to pay attention too what behavioural changes the symptoms cause because that can give you a clue as to what might be going on under the surface.
And the last(5th) rule is 'If the hat fits, wear it.' So, if you think you might be onto something as to where your symptoms are coming from, don't push it away, don't push it into the shadow and ignore it because then it will just move deeper. So, if you come up with something, accept it.
Gaby: That's a real certain thing for meditation, working on those suggestions you are explaining. And, with the Prayer of the Soul or through Eiriu Eolas - eebreathe.org, because it really has a powerful seed of meditation. It literally says, 'Clear my eyes that I can see, clear my ears that I can hear, cleanse my heart that I may know and love the holiness of true existence.' It's a powerful seed to work out some of this stuff and, in turn, what is the root of the problem or how to stay in touch with your emotions. Meditation, yes.
Jonathan: Definitely important to recognise those things as they come. And then, as you said, Tiff, not push it down and deal with it.
I think our bodies, as well as our inner minds - what you might call your conscious, has a way of nagging at you. And I think most of us have had that experience in one form or another, whether it's something that's happening that you are ignoring, and it just keeps coming back and it keeps coming back and finally, you have to be like, "Ugh - okay, okay, okay; yes, I have to deal with this."
So, I think it's important to do that and not go off into other distractions. I definitely had a lot of experiences like that. I already have a PhD in ignoring important issues. [Laughter]
Doug: Me too.
Jonathan: Well, this might be a good time for us to take a little break and go to Zoya's Pet Health segment. She's got some information for us today on some misconceptions about feline nutrition and how to do proper nutrition for your cats.
So, let's go to Zoya for a few minutes and when we come back, we are going to wrap up the show with a recipe for lamb tagine - Erica, did I pronounce that right? Tah-een?
Erica: Ta-jeen - tagine. Morrocan lamb.
Jonathan: Alright, we'll be back after this.
[Intro]
Zoya: Hello, and welcome to the Pet Health segment of The Health and Wellness Show. Today, I would like to talk again about nutrition. It's an important topic, especially when there are so many misconceptions and myths.
More so, these misconceptions are being promoted by the veterinarians, perhaps not out of any conscious attempt to deceive but out of ignorance, and because the by-product of such practice is more business and more profit to the clinic.
For example, this summer, I did a short internship in one of the big city clinics and had a chance to see how they operate. First, they all did their best to provide the best care they possibly could - no doubt about that.
But what is also clear is that it is a business and the lion's share of the profits came, not only from the annual vaccinations, but also from chronic problems - particularly the ones that had to do with urinary obstruction in cats. A problem that is tightly related to dry foods.
What's more, after the problem was diagnosed the owner was advised to start feeding the cat with another specialised and more expensive dry food, when it was the dry food that caused the problem in the first place.
It is true that specialised dry food is designed to solve the various problems that led to the creation of crystals and the subsequent urinary obstruction. But, sure that you will agree that preventing the problem from happening in the first place is a much better alternative.
Not long ago when speaking with my research instructor, I was again reminded about the number one rule of veterinary care: good veterinarians should have nothing to do when they come to work if various prevention procedures are being followed properly and if the diet and upkeep are species appropriate. What is left is only dealing with emergency cases.
But, of course, this is utopia in our current world, especially when the purpose of most veterinarian clinics is to make profit and not only to provide an important service.
Also, some veterinarians lack basic understanding about the animals they treat. And even if they are well-versed in their physiology in various treatment procedures, when it comes to nutrition in many cases they are very ignorant about what is considered to be optimal to the specific animal.
What's more - due to the ignorance - they can't offer adequate advice to the owners about the proper upkeep and care of the animal that may prevent most of the diseases to a veterinarian.
So, this is what I am going to do now. I am going to talk about some of the misconceptions regarding nutrition for cats. We are going to talk about five main myths.
Now, the first myth is that dry food is good for cats. Now there is more and more evidence that dry foods is a probable source of many chronic health issues; urinary, arthritis, kidney, diabetes and even dental problems are just a few of the diseases now being associated with dry food diets.
Natural diet is without a doubt the best and most logical solution. And since cats are obligatory carnivores, the diet should contain up to 95% of animal protein.
The second myth is that dry food is important for cleaning teeth. Well, cats' teeth are designed for tearing and shredding, not grinding. In fact, because of the size and texture, most dry foods are swallowed whole with minimal chewing. Plus chewing of high carbohydrate food produces a starchy film that can adhere to teeth, creating a rich environment for dental damaging bacteria.
Now, another myth(3rd) is do not mix or change cat foods. In the wild, your feline predator will hunt for a range of interests - from mice to bugs. So, why do we assume that switching foods in detrimental? In reality, variety may prevent over-supplementation, nutritional imbalances, and the development of food sensitivities.
Slower introductions of varieties of foods will encourage better digestion and a healthy immune system. That's basically the key to avoid all sorts of gastrointestinal problems. It's introducing gradually the new food.
Now, the following myth is the favourite argument of anti-raw food people. Myth number four is that raw foods have the highest risk of antibacterial contamination. The simple fact is that, as a predator, your cat evolved with a digestive tract that is short, acidic and hostile to bacteria designed to process and eliminate food quickly, not allowing much time for bacteria to multiply.
While caution should be taken with cats with weakened immune systems, precautions in place by leading manufacturers of raw diet pet foods offer safety and peace of mind.
Now, the last myth(5th) is that food must be left out, so your cat won't go hungry. Now, leaving food out is for our convenience mainly. Unless there is a specific health issue, your cat should eat on a schedule of 2-3 meals a day to help with completing proper digestion.
A couple of snacks aren't out of the question, but remember that a few pieces is enough - not in an entire bowl.
Dry foods are sprayed with flavourings to addict the cat, if you will choose to leave a bowl full of dry food for your cat just in case, the more your cat eats, the more it wants. Basically, it prevents your cat from eating other foods. It gets addicted to junk food.
And again, remember how felines behave in nature. They don't have a constant access to a bowl full of goodies, that's for sure
So, this is it for today. I hope that this segment was educational for you. And have a nice day, goodbye!
[Outro]
Jonathan: There you go! Alright, thank you, Zoya! That was really good information for everybody. The thing about leaving the food out was one I didn't know. I usually will do that and try to leave a full bowl if I am not around, but sounds like that's not entirely the case.
Tiffany: You are always told to do that.
Doug: Yeah. If I left a bowl of food out for my cat, he would eat it all.
Jonathan: Well, let's go to our recipe. Erica, do you want to enlighten us on how to make lamb tagine?
Erica: Yes. So, when discussing our possible recipes, we decided to have something that we made for dinner last night, which is always great.
So, just a little background on what tagine is. It is a Moroccan dish and a tagine is actually a type of North African cookware made from clay or ceramic and it consists of two parts: one round, wide, shallow cooking base and a conical top.
But the word tagine also refers to a stew-like dish which is prepared in this clay cookware. So, if you travel to Morocco you will see this clay cookware where tagine is made. You can make tagine with other types of meat, I found that I enjoyed lamb the most.
And so, this recipe - you could search the web for it if you were interested - there's been a lot of things that have been omitted just for the high carb content and inflammatory spices like paprika.
So, this is a twist on a traditional recipe; but I was never a big fan of lamb and so I wanted to find a way to cook it where I would enjoy it, so this is my little alternative on tagine.
You can buy lamb, preferably without a bone with in - about 3lbs is a good amount to serve for 5-10 people. What I like to do is cut it up the night before in small chunks and marinade in it the spice mix. I am not going to give actual teaspoon, tablespoon measurements because I don't tend to cook that way. But this is just a rough recipe that I follow.
And again, if our listeners are interested you can search the web for it. There are hundreds of different ways to prepare it.
Basically, the spice mix that he uses. And again, if you prepare the lamb the night before and marinade it in the spice mix, it's a dry spice mix, it's going to have a lot more taste in the lamb when you cook it the next day. It doesn't necessarily need to be prepared that way, but it definitely makes it more tasty.
So, the spice mix is: cinnamon, ground coriander, turmeric, ground ginger - and I also use fresh ginger and I will go through that in the preparation when I discuss it, ground cardamom, ground allspice, black pepper, salt to taste and then ground cumin. You can also use a mixture of Northeast Indian spices called Garam Masala; and basically, it's black and white peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and mace, cardamom pods, bayleaf and cumin.
So, all those spices can be used in excess really to keep the lamb nice and covered. So, when you mix these spices together and then you mix the lamb in there, you want to use your hands, that really helps to get those spices to cover the lamb chunks. And then you can put it in a zip lock bag, you can even marinade it for two days if you want.
Then when you go to prepare the lamb tagine: I use what is called a Dutch oven. It's a large cast iron pot because I don't have an actual tagine cookware. So, in the Dutch oven, you want to brown the meat first.
So, you take the meat out of the zip lock bag, you put it in the Dutch oven with some bacon fat or tallow - any sort of oil like that that you like to use. I don't recommend coconut oil just because it will give it a different taste.
And you want to brown the meat and the spices first to get it cooked on the outside. And then you remove the meat from the pan and just put it in a bowl on the side and then you add onions and garlic.
And then I use fresh ginger, you can cut it into little round circles or you can grate it - it's really a preference thing. And then you basically sauté the spices until they are see-through, so the onions are clear and cooked down; and then you add the meat back to that mixture.
And then, in a traditional recipe it would call for something like tomato, stewed tomatoes or tomato sauce. We have supplemented that, not using tomatoes but using bone broth instead and really any kind of bone broth - chicken broth or beef bone broth. And then you want to put equal amount of bone broth and water. Just so when you get the meat in the pan with the bone broth, you want water a little bit above the meat so it's going to be stewy.
You want to cook it for at least an hour to an hour and a half. You can cook it longer - the longer you cook it, the more tender the lamb is going to get. But I found an hour, an hour and a half, the lamb is cooked and then the longer you cook it, the more stewy it turns.
You can also add sweet potatoes, if you'd like; some people put carrots. And then again you continue cooking, I think, the sweet potatoes about an extra half an hour. You can always parboil the sweet potatoes before if you are running low on time. And then, that's basically how you serve it.
After about an hour and a half you'll notice it really thickens up. There is a lot of fat, it will most likely be yellow from turmeric which is very good because it's anti-inflammatory. That's basically what you have. You have your lamb tagine.
It's great as a leftover too, because again, the set spices start to really soak into the meat. And it's extremely filling.
Tiffany: Yes, it is. It's delicious! And it does taste better the next day. I was looking for some the next day but I guess it was all eaten up. [Laughter]
Erica: So, any questions on that? I apologize for not having the exact measurements. But as Tiffany and I were saying, sometimes when we are looking for recipes, you can look on the Internet and just get an idea. The spice mix is really the base of the dish and the more spice, the better I find.
Jonathan: That sounds really awesome, definitely something I'm going to have to try.
Doug: Mhmm.
Tiffany: Yeah, it's good.
Gaby: It's good!
Erica: And very filling. [Laughter]
Jonathan: Alright.
Tiffany: Yes, it is.
Jonathan: Sweet. Alright, well, thanks very much for that. That's an awesome recipe.
I guess that's our show for today. So, we just like to say thank you to everybody for participating. We had a pretty active chat today so that was cool, people in the chatroom. And I'd like to encourage you to check out the other two shows on the SOTT Radio Network. There was no Truth Perspective last week, but I believe there is going to be tomorrow, correct?
Tiffany: As far as I know.
Jonathan: And that's at 2pm EST tomorrow, and then at 2pm EST also on Sunday, Behind the Headlines. So, be sure to tune into those on BlogTalkRadio on the SOTT Radio Network. And we will be back next Friday at 10am EST.
So, thanks again everybody. Have a great week and we'll see you next week. Bye everybody!
{Byes}
Doug: Bye, everybody!
Erica: Bye!
Gaby: Bye!
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