Unlocking the Body's Innate Capacity for Healing: From Colds and Injuries to Anxiety and Heart Health | Dr. Victoria Maizes

28:21There are quite a few apps that I recommend to people. For example, one is called Insight, like having insight into something, Insight Timer. It is free. Now, there is a paid version, so I'm not going to misspeak, but there's more than 200 ,000 free things on it. So you never have to get the paid version. You can use this. Most Americans have a smartphone. Once you've listened to whatever you are listening to, whether it's guided imagery, whether it's a boring bedtime story, whether it's binaural sounds or music, whatever appeals to you, it'll just turn off on its own. So you don't have to then get up and turn it off.

29:02And that obviously interrupts your sleep. So I'm a big fan. I also tell my patients that they should find something that resonates and keep using it because then essentially you're entraining your nervous system where over time you say, oh yeah, when I hear that sound, that is what leads me into gentle sleep.

29:26coming up dr victoria mazes talks about why what you eat and when you eat matters the case for small doable movement including getting outside and how environmental toxins and social connection quietly shape your health more than you might realize

29:46okay let's talk about diet you said most americans are unfortunately or sadly on the standard American diet, SAD. Whether we're on that or not, there is an overabundance of processed foods. So what are your general recommendations for improving our diet in a way that will allow us to maximize what you're calling the rapid recovery reflex, the ability of our body to heal on its own from injuries and other conditions? Two important pieces. One is what you eat. The other is when you eat. So the what you eat is really critical. I do like to personalize my recommendations. So I'm going to give some broad things.

30:30One is it's better to eat whole foods that are less processed. So that means, you know, you buy fresh eggs, you make them with some butter and salt. Those are three ingredients. You don't necessarily need more ingredients. Of course, you could add lots of veggies and have a scramble, but all of those are whole foods as opposed to buying eggs in a container that have already been scrambled for you and that you're going to pour out of a container and you don't really know what the additives are doing to you. So whole foods, whole vegetables, whole fruits, whole grains, that's going to be a much, much healthier choice in your diet.

31:12We like to recommend the anti-inflammatory diet. That is going to focus on several things. One is antioxidants. You get those from fruits and vegetables. Another way are omega-3 fatty acids, which reduce the inflammation in your body. That comes from fatty fish. We have an acronym smash fish, which is salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines, and herring. Those are smash fish, rich sources of omega-3 fatty acids, but also walnuts and purslane and flax seeds are also sources, vegetarian sources of these fatty acids. And you want also to have a sufficient amount of fiber in your diet. There are foods like mushrooms that come from Asian cultures that are anti-inflammatory and are healthy to be eating.

31:59There are spices like turmeric and ginger that are anti-inflammatory and healthy for us to be eating. Many of the diseases we are now learning are at their root inflammatory. So if you want to remove the root causes of an illness, looking at inflammation, reducing inflammation is critically important, and your diet is one of the ways you do that. The when is, again, related to that circadian rhythm. You don't want to be digesting while you're asleep. While you're asleep, the job of your body is to reboot, to restore your homeostasis, to reset your equilibrium. It resets your metabolic processes.

32:42And so if you've eaten right before you go to bed, you are digesting instead of resetting your metabolic system, instead of letting your digestive system rest. And so it's recommended that you stop eating three hours before you go to bed so that by the time you go to bed, you are able to be in that resting state rather than the digesting state. What's your take on intermittent fasting? So intermittent fasting is a larger idea that respects that idea of resting your digestive system for periods of time. And there's different ways to do intermittent fasting. The most common way that's being done right now, I believe, is what's called TRE or time-restricted eating.

33:27And there you stop eating for some period of time, which sounds so simple. But the truth is, before I really learned about time-restricted eating, I noticed I'd go through the kitchen on my way to the bedroom. And as I walked through the kitchen, those chocolate-covered almonds would just call me. And so I might have a few chocolate-covered almonds right before I went to bed, essentially, which meant that I wasn't truly resting my digestive system. and then I'd wake up eight, nine hours later and I'd go into my kitchen and I'd make some coffee and I'd have something with my coffee. Again, I'm starting to eat.

34:04So maybe I had an overnight fast of, let's say, eight hours. It's really healthy to have at least 12 hours as an adult. You wanna put your digestive system to rest for 12 hours. Now, that's not that difficult. If you finish dinner at 7 p.m., you start eating at 7 a.m. If you finish dinner at 8 p.m., it's 8 a.m. And you're welcome to drink non-caloric fluids. So you can drink water, herbal teas, black tea, green tea, coffee. But you have to wait. I tell my patients, you can't have your milk or your cream in your coffee until the 12 hours have passed. And then you go back to it. So that's the most common form of intermittent fasting.

34:46There are also people who fast one or two days a week. There's something called 5-2, where five days you eat normally and two days you eat four or 500 calories. But there's a large body of evidence at this point to support time-restricted eating for reducing the risk of heart disease, for reducing the risk of diabetes, for supporting weight loss. And so I am a fan of that form of intermittent fasting. Okay, you mentioned exercise. I think everybody knows the deal there, but is there anything specific to add on that tip? Well, the main thing I'd say is any amount is good for you. You know, sometimes we feel the barrier of time and we go, well, you know, I don't have an hour, so I might as well give it up.

35:31Five minutes is good for you. Five minutes in nature is even better for you. Ten minutes is yet better. But increments of as small as five minutes in nature have been shown to have an enormous value in terms of our health. And so what I would encourage listeners is any amount. If you're working really long days, can you take 10 minute break at some moment during your lunch break and go out with a friend, perhaps, and have a little walk and take a break? We're also more creative. We're more productive when we take those exercise breaks. So it actually is good for your employer if you do it. okay so i think most of us have heard the recommendations on sleep diet and exercise before although it is always immensely useful to hear them again where i think is and i'll just speak for myself where i know less is around environmental toxins and you were talking about things like shampoo and deodorant which immediately you know it definitely gets my attention because i use those things.

36:34And I've not thought much about what the danger of toxins might be and how to know what's in which product, et cetera, et cetera. So can you give us a little bit of a primer here? Yes. So when I talk about this subject, I'm always aware that it's anxiety provoking. And so I like to start by saying to people that the perfect is the enemy of the good. As humans, we've always been exposed to some environmental toxins. I mean, there are heavy metals in the soil. Sometimes they're in our food because they're in the soil. When we learned how to make fire to cook our food, we were exposed to the products of combustion.

37:15So it's not like one period of time in the distance past, we were just pristine and now we're doomed. But we are exposed to more environmental chemicals because this is the progress with industry that we have a lot more on the marketplace than we once had. And there is now an enormous marketplace because of consumer demand that allows us to choose more wisely, to choose products that have fewer chemicals. So I think lots of people know, for example, that you can use clear vinegar as a cleaning product, and that's not going to pose any health threats to you whatsoever. You can use baking soda. Again, it's going to be something that has no dangers, but you can go to the grocery store and there are apps.

38:04One is by the Environmental Working Group. It's called Healthy Living. It's a free app. Another was developed in France. It's a little more food than product oriented, but also quite helpful. It's called Y-U-K-A, also free. And so you can scan the barcodes. And when you use the Healthy Living app, it tells you, is this a carcinogen? Is this a reproductive toxicant, which means it's going to be a problem if you're trying to have a child? Is it an allergen? So people who tend to have allergic reaction to things are going to have problems. And because of this green movement, you can go to stores and find better, safer, healthier products that aren't going to expose you.

38:45This is cleaning products. It's your shampoo, your conditioner. It's healthier lines of makeup. It's really the wide array of things that we put on our bodies. And then we get exposed in our food. Well, they're organic is a better choice because they're not allowed to use most pesticides. And so that dramatically reduces the amount of pesticide in our water. We can use a water filter. And if you own a home, you can put a water filter on your faucet. If you don't own a home, you can get one of the Brita or Z filters that, again, will dramatically reduce the amount of toxins that are in our water supply.

39:26That's very helpful. When you were listing obstacles to our rapid recovery reflex, again, the body's innate ability to heal, there was one thing you didn't list, but I think you talk about it in the book and is very, to me, seems really important and very much evidence based, which is, I think, what psychologists call social support. In other words, the quality of your relationships. Yes. Is it worth saying a little bit more about that? Yes, thank you so much for filling in my blank. Yes, absolutely. We evolved tribally. We evolved to be in relationship with other human beings. And sadly, at this moment in time, lots of adults don't actually have a single friend, a single close friend.

40:15And this is a problem because one of the ways we can quiet our nervous system is through connection with other people. There is robust evidence to show that when we have close relationships, we live longer lives. Some of this shows up as men who are married usually live longer than men who are not married. It's the support of the wife. There is evidence that these connections can be family connections. They can be with religious organizations. They can be volunteering, so with different kinds of community connections. And so emotional support, wherever that comes from. Some years ago, the researcher at UCLA, Shelley Taylor, had a very surprising finding.

41:08She said that we have underestimated the nervous system with just talking about our stress freeze, flight freeze kind of reactions. And she said women actually have another reaction. It's called tend and befriend. So if you imagine a time where perhaps people lived in environments where they were vulnerable, the women who were often in charge of the young children had babies. You know, they couldn't necessarily fight off the saber-toothed tiger. They couldn't necessarily flee. They had babies and young children. And so by coming together with other women to tend to the children together, by befriending others, that was another critical way that they managed the stress and that they quieted their nervous system.

41:56So I think emotional support is well supported and critically important. And it's good for us to think about who are the people we would call an emergency. And if for some reason you're not coming up with any, this is an area in your life you may want to pay some attention to. Yes. And one practical piece of advice, and I've mentioned that on the show many times, but it bears repeating. It comes from our former surgeon general who wrote a book about loneliness. You know, one very practical thing to do if you're feeling like you don't have enough social support is volunteer. Great way to meet people.

42:32Reminds you of your innate nobility. I was, you know, especially specifically on the subject of men. There's a married couple that come up in my TikTok feed all the time. The wife is on camera. The husband never shows his face, but they're for reasons that I don't fully understand, but he's very funny and she's very funny and they have very funny conversations that seem often unscripted. And anyway, so I must like them enough that the algorithm knows to keep serving them up. But there was a conversation between the two of them the other day in which he was being really stupid in a way that I it was more ignorant than stupid.

43:08He just doesn't know better. But he was she was asking him, hey, you you know, what do you talk to when you're about to go golfing and you're in the locker room? What do you talk to the guys about? He's like, what do you what do you mean? What do we talk about? She's like, well, if you've just had a fight with me, you know, like, what would you tell them? She's like, well, what would they do? They wouldn't know. They don't know you. They couldn't tell me what to do. And he was going on to say that, like, yeah, he's not there to for emotional support. He's there to golf. And if he any other time, he's just home.

43:38He's home with you, which is so dumb. And again, I'm not criticizing him. I think he's a really smart person, but it's truly ignorant because you don't need your friends to solve your problems. You need your friends to support you in whatever problem you're having with through sympathy, being seen, being validated, being heard. And many men operate on this philosophy of invulnerability. I'm the Marlboro man, solo, wandering the high plains with about to get lung cancer because I'm smoking. And, you know, this psychology, I think, is is very dangerous. What say you to the rant that I just went on?

44:18I really like the rant you just went on. And I know from listening to your podcast that you are in, I think, two different men's groups or emotional support groups. And I think this willingness that, again, we're being stereotyped a little bit, but that it seems that women have an easier time having these closer emotional connections than men, if we're, again, holding to that stereotype. But it's really healthy for us to be able to unburden ourselves, to be able to share what's on our mind and on our heart with people who, as you say, don't fix it or solve it, but who listen to us. And the relief that we feel in that unburdening can be profound.

45:07Yes. I have many, many recurring dinners with friends of some not all men, but two groups that are specifically men's groups. And they're not billed at all as emotional support groups. I mean, it's just I have one group that I was at dinner with last night. It's like 10 to 12 guys who all live near me in the in the suburbs. and it can be most of us fled the city during covid and so i have mixed feelings about being in the suburbs and so we're in this really nice room in the basement of a local restaurant in the suburbs last night and it was mostly just shooting the shit but that is incredibly healing um and so there need be no top spin of emotional support or doing it for health reasons or whatever it's do it because it's fun.

45:56Yes. The health benefits, the psychological benefits will emerge. You don't even need to talk about it. Yeah. But I guess I'll ask you a question because it is just fun and it can just be fun. But I'm wondering whether over time, if the going was rough in your life, these could then be people who you would turn to and who you would allow yourself to be vulnerable with. I mean, to me, you are an unusual person because you're vulnerable all the time on air. But a lot of people aren't. A lot of people feel like they have to be strong and they have to, you know, put out a kind of mask of themselves where they're always on top of things, where they always know the answer, where they've always got it right.

46:39I mean, I'm in the medical profession. It's rare for people to say, I don't know, or I'm having a hard time or I need help. Yes. Yes. I think there are some cultural problems in the medical community that I have witnessed firsthand, both as a patient and as a child of and spouse of doctors where, you know, this intellectual humility, which we know is so helpful, not only for happiness, but highly functioning organizations is just not a cultural value for many medical communities. But in terms of the question you actually asked me, a million percent. So I have my agenda for doing it. One is that it's just fun and I love hanging out with my friends and meeting new people.

47:19But absolutely, I think for these men, I can watch it with great pride, unexpressed pride. And none of them listen to the show, so I'm not in danger of them knowing it. unexpressed pride that like, I know these guys are making friends who will be there for them when they need it. And yeah, I just don't think for many, for the men I know, at least, and this is true, even for me, I wouldn't want to join an emotional support group. But I would do want to join a group of really cool, interesting people who are going to eat nice food together, and just let the emotional support element sneak up on people.

47:55Yeah, sometimes our naming of things are barriers. I know people who have cancer who don't want to go to a survivor's group. That's not their image of themselves. And yet they probably would find value in being able to talk with other people who have gone through a similar experience. Yes. Yes. I often just refer to it as just the carpool lane. And you can move faster. OK, I've been teasing this since the jump. Let's talk about specific health problems and the integrative medicine approach to it. So colds and flus. What do you know that we should know about how to prevent and then once they come, treat colds and flus?

48:35Yeah. So prevention is always preferred. And some of the things are so basic, careful hand washing. We learned about the value of masking. If you're going to be in an environment where lots of people are sick. Doctors wear masks all the time if they're taking care of someone with an infectious disease that they don't want to catch. There are things that we can do beyond that. So we can add zinc. Zinc is available as a yummy kind of lozenge. It's often mixed with some vitamin C or some elderberry. Both are also good for you at a low dose of zinc because higher doses of zinc can upset the stomach.

49:18But you could take about 25 milligrams a day. It helps your immune system function better. It's been shown to help reduce the likelihood, the severity of getting a cold. And so at the very first sign that, oh, I think I'm getting something, you could just start to take a few zinc lozenges a day to help boost your immune system's ability to fight that off. Garlic. Garlic is a food, and I'm not suggesting anyone take it as a supplement. and it's really inexpensive and available as a food. So you take a clove of garlic, you press it or chop it. That activates the active component in a whole clove of garlic.

49:59If you hold it to your nose, it doesn't smell at all. But the minute you chop it, it gets that wonderful garlicky smell. You've converted a chemical called allian to allicin. It's the allicin that has the active antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal component. So you want to crush or chop or press the garlic, let it sit for 10 minutes. And then you want to include it in your diet in some way. When my kids are little, I'd mix it in with some cream cheese and spread it on a bagel or toast. And they thought that was yummy. And it is a way of helping to fight that viral infection. You could put in a little bit of salad dressing and put it on your salad.

50:37So there's different ways to incorporate that raw garlic in your diet. You don't want to just chew on a whole clove. It's going to burn your mouth. It's going to hurt your stomach. Another thing that you could do is some vitamin C, as I mentioned. Some people complain that vitamin C's data isn't as strong as it could be. There's some evidence to support vitamin C. It's an easy thing to include either by eating a fresh orange, by drinking a beverage like an emergency, just very easy. You want to increase the fluids anyway. So those are a few things. If you do get sick, I, one, really recommend you rinse your sinuses.

51:18Now, nobody likes the sound of that. They're like, what? You want me to put salt water up my nose? That's going to be horrible. And I have a hard time convincing people to do it. But once you do it, once you get over the hump, you thin all of that mucusy secretion so it's just easy to blow it out. It's easy to open up those nasal passages and be able to breathe more easily. If there's stuff in your sinuses, you get your sinuses to drain. There's some evidence to show that if you do that, it helps prevent COVID infections or have a milder case because you're reducing the viral load in your nasal passages, which is how COVID gets into your body.

51:59So doing that sinus rinse is a really great idea for reducing your symptoms. Can I jump in on that? Absolutely. How do you even do that? Like I can make some salt water at home. I'm pretty sure I could do that. Yes. But then what mechanism am I using to spray it up my nose? Yeah, there's apparatus. So the traditional method was in Ayurvedic medicine, they had what was called a neti pot and it sort of looked like a teapot with a long spout. You put one spout in one nostril and tilt your head and pour it in, usually did it in the shower over the sink. Most people don't like that as much as the newer NealMed sinus rinse, which is a squeeze bottle.

52:41So it comes with these little packets of salt with a little bit of sodium bicarb, which buffers the salt. You boil water, you let it cool a little bit, you mix it in with that little packet. You don't want the water to be too hot. about body temperature or more than room temperature so that it's comfortable going in and helps clear the mucus in that way. It comes with instructions. It's a little odd at first, and then you get used to it and you pull it out every time you have a cold because it's so very effective. And you're spraying it up there and then it's coming right back out or is it like...

53:19It's coming out the other side, actually. Yeah, you have it spray in one nostril, a little pressure. And then once you clear the passages, it comes out the opening on the other side because the side that the nozzles in is kind of blocked by the nozzle. That sounds pretty uncomfortable. I know. That's why people don't want to do it. But as someone who does it regularly, if I get sick or to prevent myself, you know, if I know I've been exposed to something, and as someone who's talked all three of my adult children into doing it and many, many patients, I'll tell you, it doesn't take that much getting used to, and it's very effective.

53:56Okay, I trust you, so I'm going to do it.

54:02Coming up, Dr. Victoria Mazes talks about some tips for handling colds and flus more effectively. I loved that information. I've been using it. Some smarter ways to recover from pain and injuries, and practical tools for reducing stress and anxiety without immediately turning to medication.

54:26I interrupted you in the middle of your list, so let me get you started again. You also talk about things like elderberry and echinacea. Yes. So elderberry is yummy. It's a syrup. It comes from a berry. And it has been shown to shorten the duration of a cold, but also shorten the duration of the flu, which is really awesome because the flu is a much more serious illness. You can buy that as a syrup and you can buy it also as a gummy. It's widely available. Echinacea was an herb that was first discovered by Native Americans. It helps you get over a cold more quickly. You usually brew it as a tea, but you could also take it as an extract or tincture.

55:10I really like to have people brew it as a strong cup of tea, which means you're going to let it sit in the cup of hot water for about 10 minutes with a lid over it. so you don't lose the volatile components. I have them add some black tea as well, some raw garlic, the way I talked about before, some freshly pressed raw garlic, some lemon juice, a little bit of honey, a little bit of cayenne pepper. And it sounds like it's going to be undrinkable, but actually when you have a cold, it soothes that sore throat, painful throat. It helps you get over the cold more quickly. So our nice, friendly doctor guest here is recommending both waterboarding and drinking poison.

55:50So this is... Oh my goodness, I hope not. I'm just messing with you. That would fit into the not to do. So you mentioned honey. There's actually more to say about the value of honey in the cold and flu situation. Can you hold forth on that? Yes. So most cough medicines don't do much. The exception would be codeine. Codeine is actually a pretty good cough suppressant. But most of the things you're going to get over the counter don't actually do much. Honey does. Honey, any kind of honey that you're going to buy, soothes the throat. It stops that tickle. It's actually been studied in different research trials and been shown to both soothe the sore throat and stop the coughing.

56:41It's also something that's safe to use with children over the age of one. We don't give honey to kids below the age of one. And obviously, it's sweet. And so kids like it. What about cough drops? I think cough drops can be lovely. I do recommend those zinc lozenges, which might fit in that broad category of cough drops. But basically, what you're doing there is you're sucking on something that's going to soothe the throat. Sometimes they have different kinds of menthol components which help soothe the throat. And there are teas that have that component as well. So there'll be teas that are called something like throat coat or throat comfort.

57:22And they're a mixture of different herbal remedies that soothe the tissues in the back of your throat. And on the medical front, Tylenol or Advil, if you have chills, yes or no? So Tylenol and Advil can both make you feel more comfortable. I think especially if you have the flu and you have a high fever and you're very uncomfortable with body aches, they will both help in that way. The thing that's not quite as clear is the purpose of the fever. We know that fever is part of your immune system's rapid recovery reflex. It is part of the way that your body knocks out whatever organism, virus, bacteria is causing the infection.

58:12And so if it's a low-grade fever, if it's not that distressing, it might be better to skip the anti-inflammatory or the Tylenol in favor of letting your immune system fully do its work. If it's high fever, if you're really uncomfortable, your child's really uncomfortable, then I think you say, okay, this is worthwhile. Okay, so that response brings me to a whole other category, which is musculoskeletal pain. And you've got a whole section about the integrative approach to musculoskeletal pain in the book. And one of the things you say is that we might be tempted to reach for Tylenol or ibuprofen or Tylenol or Advil, but we might want to think twice.

59:02Can you say more about that? Yeah, so for many years, our advice, if someone, for example, had an injury, had this acronym RICE, which stood for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. And we now know that that's not actually a good idea or a part of it isn't a good idea. We have a very long, complicated acronym now called peace and love in which you protect. That's the P. The E is elevate because that's going to take down some of the swelling. But the A is avoid, avoid anti-inflammatories. And the reason we have people avoid is that the inflammation is part of the healing process. Earlier, I mentioned how we've all had the experience of watching a cut heal.

59:51Well, if you really pay attention, you'll notice that there's a little bit of redness and probably a little bit of swelling right around that cut. That is part of your body's inflammatory process to heal the cut. The same thing is happening. It's a little less visible, perhaps, when you have an injury, a musculoskeletal injury. You have some swelling. You have some inflammation. You might have some heat. And so we have people avoid anti-inflammatories because we actually don't want to knock out that inflammation that has a healing purpose. We also have people avoid icing, which used to be part of that rice kind of protocol.

1:00:32And ice, it turns out, reduces the swelling and the pain. That's lovely. But in doing so, you have less of an inflammatory response, so you have less of that rapid recovery reflex response. You do want the inflammatory cells to come in to help with the healing. So it's a long way of saying that, again, if the pain is really severe, it may make sense to say, well, I'm going to do this because I need to do something. But often compression, putting an ACE wrap, not allowing it to swell as much because of the external compression from the ACE wrap will be helpful enough. We also don't have people rest as much as we used to.

1:01:13We have people protect the joint with that ACE wrap, perhaps with a walking cast or something like that. And then we have them get up and start moving again because that's going to move some of the fluid out of the joint and it's going to help with the healing process. The only place that isn't true is if you break it. If you break it, then we want to immobilize it. That's so counterintuitive, the fact that continuing ordinary activities actually can lead to more rapid recovery. so I've just now I'm going to overshare on some medical stuff on my side this is much less much less sensitive I have some tendinitis in my elbows which is a pain in the ass because I like to exercise a lot especially with weights I've been surprised by the advice it was the first time actually I've been told by a physical therapist don't take pain medication and I'm not but it really rhymes with what you're saying but he also said like do the same exercises but I had a much lower weight.

1:02:10So I'm doing lateral raises for my deltoids and bicep curls for my biceps, but just with five or 10 pound weights. How does that line up with what you're talking about? What are you noticing? Is it helping? It's been pretty stubborn, so I don't know yet. But I do notice that it doesn't hurt as much as doing it with the weight I would normally do. And it feels right to keep those muscles active. Right. A few things. One is tendinitis is hard because the tendons, which are these pretty fibrous and not well vascularized, which means there's not a lot of blood flow, don't heal as well as the skin, for example, which has lots and lots of blood vessels supplying every absolute bit of it.

1:03:04So tendons are harder. I agree with, you know, don't do something that hurts, which would be the full weight that you were used to. And yet you don't want your muscles to atrophy. And that is something that we've really shifted in medicine. I mean, we used to put people to bed rest after a heart attack. We used to put women to bed rest after they had a baby. And now, you know, you have orthopedic surgery for your knee and your hip. and that very same day, they're getting you out of bed. And it's for several reasons. One is we know if we get you out of bed, you're less likely to have a blood clot.

1:03:38Blood clot is a serious adverse effect that you want to avoid. But also muscle atrophy can happen very quickly and as we age more quickly yet. And so continuing to use the muscles is good advice. I'm going to give you one piece of advice that wasn't given to you by your physical therapist. And that's that I think acupuncture can be really helpful for tendonitis of different kinds. And that's something to consider and something I write about in Heal Faster. And the other is if the acupuncture doesn't do it, there are people who are now using PRP, which is platelet-rich plasma, to help inflammatory problems like a tendonitis.

1:04:20Anything that ends in itis, I-T-I-S, tendonitis, arthritis, arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, anything that has that itis means it's inflamed. And so the plate-rich plasma, PRP, can be used. It's injected locally and it really helps with that kind of inflammatory problem. A lot of sports medicine and orthopedic doctors are using that. That's really interesting. What about heat? Heating pads or sitting in a sauna? I'm a huge fan of heat. I think it's really underused. Heat is going to increase the amount of blood flow to an area. And so it's often a great strategy. We tend not to do it at the first moment because it is going to increase the swelling if there's swelling.

1:05:12But after the first few days, heat is great. Heat's so interesting and pain is interesting. heat travels more quickly along the pain fibers to the brain than pain does so there are these nerve fibers they almost have different channels on them and if you put heat on something you might notice wow i don't feel pain anymore why is that well it's because the signal the heat signal traveling to your brain gets there faster than the pain signal and that's why you don't feel pain so it's a great option for relieving pain. It also increases the blood flow, which increases the healing because that circulation brings all sorts of healing factors to help heal whatever the injury is.

1:06:00So that's awesome. And then sauna, of course, is a way of immersing your whole body in heat. And sauna is really having a moment. We have lots of studies that are happening with sauna. It actually has been shown to help reduce the risk of getting a cold, as we were talking about earlier. It's being used in people who have musculoskeletal injuries. It's being used for people with heart failure under supervision. So it's very interesting to see all of the different indications for that heat immersion as a health-promoting step that one can take. Cold plunges are also having a moment, but we just talked about your dim view of icing.

1:06:44So what do you think about cold plunges? Well, of course, icing and injury is different from a cold plunge, right? The icing and injury is going to interfere with your rapid recovery reflex, where you'd be normally sending all of these white blood cells and cytokines and other messengers for healing to that part of the body. A cold plunge is a kind of healthy stress to the system. So it's uncomfortable. I mean, talked about the sinus rinse being uncomfortable. Plunging into icy cold water is uncomfortable. But your body responds to it with a wave of heat, of course, to restore your temperature, to restore your equilibrium.

1:07:32and it appears to also have an effect on your nervous system in terms of reducing stress. It's a very interesting, and I think it does need more research. I don't know if you've ever looked at Wim Hof, sometimes called the Iceman, but he's the one who's really popularized cold plunges. And there are people who just love the euphoric feeling they get after doing this. It's a little bit of what we call hormesis, which is an intentional stress on the body that then helps your body reset. Not everybody will like it. And if you're an older person, if you have heart disease, you want to be sure that it's safe for you by talking to your doctor.

1:08:17But for young, healthy people, these intentional stresses like a cold plunge, like a hot sauna could actually be very good for resetting our overall system. OK, let's talk about anxiety from your standpoint. Again, from the integrative medicine standpoint, what do you recommend for anxiety? I have so many things to recommend. I mean, one of the things that's so wonderful about integrative medicine is it really gives you a large toolkit. And it's a much bigger toolkit than just talking about medication. And the medications for anxiety, while they can be very effective in the short term, in the long term are quite problematic for a variety of side effect reasons.

1:09:06So from integrative medicine perspective, it's not that we never use medicines. We do, but we like to use the least invasive, most natural, least likely to cause side effect first. So if you're going to have surgery and someone's going to give you an intravenous medicine to help your anxiety, wonderful. But if you're anxious every single day, you want to see how can I manage this? So what can you do? Well, there are mental things, emotional things, physical things, and spiritual things you can do. And each of those has a lot. So, for example, a physical thing, exercise. Many people find when they take a brisk walk or go for a run, they relieve a lot of anxiety.

1:09:53But if you're anxious and can't fall asleep, you're not going to go out for a run. You need something different at that time. So maybe you pull for an emotional thing like listening to some guided imagery on an app, like I mentioned earlier. Or maybe there's a prayer you say before you go to sleep and that spiritual practice helps quiet your nervous system and helps you let go of the things that you're feeling anxious about. There are physical things like dietary supplements that you can use. For example, L-theanine, which is an amino acid in green tea that can help relieve anxiety. So there's a really big toolbox.

1:10:33There's even weighted blankets, which is going to have no side effect other than it may make you feel too hot. Not everyone likes a weighted blanket, but there's evidence to show that that's effective. There are devices like vagus nerve stimulators, which you would put over the vagus nerve as it runs through your neck. But you could do that by humming. Humming activates the vagus nerve. So there's just a wide range of things that are at your fingertips. What do you think about caffeine? I really enjoy my morning coffee. And I'm with a lot of people who enjoy their morning coffee. So the evidence shows that coffee extends our lifespan.

1:11:18It reduces all-cause mortality. Coffee is good for you. It's an antioxidant. It has a lot of good benefits. And there's two exceptions. One is if it makes you anxious, then it's probably not so good for you. And it does make some people anxious. I get anxious if I have too much. You know, if I have one cup of coffee, I'm fine. If I have three cups of coffee, I'm wired and I'm, you know, I'm not so fine. So you have to know where your caffeine sort of limit is. And the second is it really upsets some people's GI systems. And if you're someone who has that effect, it gives you an upset stomach. It makes you go to the bathroom too frequently.

1:11:59Then it also may not be your friend. And the last thing I'll say is it can also interfere with sleep. Coffee has a relatively long half-life. And so if you're someone who's not sleeping well, the morning coffee is probably fine. but you probably don't want to have coffee in the afternoon or certainly not in the evening. Are there supplements or vitamins that we should take that might help with anxiety? There are many. And there you can think about two classes, things you take all the time and things you might take on an as needed basis. So two things to consider for all the time. One are B vitamins and you could take a B50 complex.

1:12:39There are eight different B vitamins. So the B50 gives you 50 milligrams or 50 micrograms of all eight of them. And that has been shown in multiple randomized control trials to reduce the feelings of stress and anxiety in adults. So that's one that you could take regularly. The other would be omega-3 fatty acids, which are usually from fish. We sometimes call it fish oil. And there you have to be sure you get the right dose, which is two grams. So you have to turn the bottle around and be sure that you're getting two grams of EPA and DHA. So those are the regular use. But then there are things on an ad-needed basis.

1:13:19I mentioned L-theanine. That would be one. There's another one that's called inositol. It is in a powder. You take some before you go to sleep at night. It helps you sleep. It helps with anxiety. Valerian, which helps you sleep, can also be taken intermittently and can help with anxiety. There's just many, many in this class of what we call nervines, which are herbal remedies that can help. There are adaptogens that people can take that help relieve stress like schizandra or rhodiola. There's one called ashwagandha, which you take before bed because unlike most of the adaptogens, it actually helps you sleep.

1:14:02We say it's for people who are wired and tired. They're so tired, but they're too wired to fall asleep. So ashwagandha can help them. What's an adaptogen as opposed to a supplement or is it just a kind of supplement? It's a kind of supplement and it's unique in that it has this homeostatic or normalizing function. So it helps bring people back into that mid-state. People who are really stressed, it sort of brings them down a little bit. And there's a whole class of them that are from almost every culture except ours. In Russia, they discovered rhodiola. In China, they have ginseng. In India, they have ashwagandha and holy basil.

1:14:52So there's many different ones. Some are a little more activating. So ginseng, for example, is a little more activating. And some like the ashwagandha are a little bit more quieting. And so you want to have some information about these before you just go to the store and grab one from the shelf. Finally, let's talk about heart conditions. This is, as my understanding is, this is the biggest killer. So what should we know? Well, the first thing to know is that 80 % of heart disease is preventable through your lifestyle. That's a lot. I mean, the number one killer in 80 % could be prevented by eating an appropriate diet, getting appropriate sleep, reducing those environmental chemicals.

1:15:36One in nine deaths is from air pollution. And you could say, what can I do about air pollution? There actually are some things you can do to reduce air pollution. These are things, stress is another one, people who rage or get very angry. And then, of course, you know, managing your cholesterol, all of those things count. But lifestyle makes a huge difference. Exercise, having emotional connections with other people, these all help prevent heart disease. Are there more supplements that we should talk about here? I believe omega-3 fatty acids are helpful in this regard, but also vitamin D, magnesium, red yeast, rice, whatever that is.

1:16:20Yes. So the first thing I would say is for prevention, you don't need any of those. For prevention, you need a healthy lifestyle. OK. And that would be eating a Mediterranean style diet or a DASH diet. DASH stands for dietary approaches to stop hypertension. prevention, both of those have a lot of evidence to show that they help prevent heart disease. They help prevent a recurrence in people who have had a cardiac event, getting physical activity. We argue about whether it's 7 ,000 or 10 ,000 steps, that's the magic number, but getting out there and moving your body prevents heart disease. Managing your stress prevents heart disease.

1:16:58The supplements are really more if you have high blood pressure, if you have high cholesterol, if you have diabetes, all of these conditions increase your risk of heart disease, and then there may be reason to add supplements. This has been great, Dr. Mazes. Anything you were hoping to get to that we haven't gotten to? Well, first, I've so enjoyed talking with you. Thank you for this wonderful conversation. Thank you. The thing I want people to know is that you have this recovery reflex, and there are many things that you can do to be healthy and well. And even if you've gotten down the road a bit with heart disease or with diabetes or high blood pressure or osteoporosis in women, there are things that you can do to recover.

1:17:47And I think too often we sort of buy into, well, it's just all downhill from here. And I disagree with that. I think we have this amazing innate system that allows us to get well again if we do the things that we've now learned need to be done. It's a very hopeful message. Finally, can you remind everybody of the name of your book and also anything else that you've put out there that we should know about? My book is called Heal Faster, published by Simon & Schuster. And I have an earlier book for women who want to have healthy children. It's called Be Fruitful, The Essential Guide to Maximizing Fertility and Giving Birth to a Healthy Child.

1:18:27And then I have a textbook called Integrative Women's Health that's really oriented for healthcare professionals. Doctor, thank you again. Thank you.

1:18:40Thanks again to Dr. Victoria Mazes. Great to talk to her. Don't forget to check out the new app. DanHarris.com is the place to get it. The app is called 10 % with Dan Harris, but you can get it at DanHarris.com. You can also get it if you search 10 % with Dan Harris in your favorite app store. We've got guided meditations, live video meditations, community features, lots of stuff going on. Come check it out, danharris.com. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People.

1:19:17Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.