392 - The HIDDEN TRUTH About Trauma, Chronic Illness & Microdosing

28:17Yes. And I think understanding that and knowing that is so important because one of the cool things about where we are right now in culture, there are so many incredible therapies depending on what you feel called to, what seems to align with your values or something that you're genuinely interested in. And so many of them are backed by really good science. You know, I remember, I think it was Dr. James Gordon. I might be getting that wrong. But incredible person specifically around trauma who had worked with so many different populations, specifically across Europe in the middle of war zones.

28:56And all of these incredible therapies that cost close to nothing, if not nothing, that we can access for free using the body-mind connection to start to heal some of these traumas that all of us have in our bodies. You know, you wrote something, and I think that this is true. You know, we touched a little bit upon stress. It's like, dude, stress ain't going away, right? If you're alive, you're going to have stress. And as you noted, there's a specific amount of it that's actually positive, that's productive, that can help us grow. How can we start to stress better? Because again, we know that's going to be a part of our lives.

29:31Are there any things that you found you mentioned for you, the optimal amount is like two sessions of meditation twice a day. Like if you're really honest with yourself, you're like, that's what really does it for me. Are there any other things that you would want to say in terms of how we can stress better so it doesn't make us sick before we start moving on to gut and diet and all those good things? Measure. So I think measuring is a really important way of creating objectivity and also accountability. In terms of our stress? in terms of stress. So, you know, what I find is that so many people, I work with both men and women, but so many people have a fake sense of the effect of stress on their body.

30:12I mean, you're pretty sensitive. And so you were able to discern in this period last year that it was too much for your system, but so many of us become disembodied and, um, maybe being a famous hip pop dancer sort of makes that a little more accessible. But, um, you know, I find, so here's another thing I noticed about myself. And then when I noticed it myself, I start to look and see if it's true in my clients. And I was, so I noticed that I dissociate and I would call it functional dissociation. And I'm not talking about, you know, multiple personality disorder, But I would, when I was feeling stressed in my marriage, when I was feeling like, you know, I had two kids that I raised and I was running this busy functional medicine practice.

31:07And I often felt like I had to be in two places at once. And so there was a toll associated with that. And I wasn't really sensing it. So there's this thing called interoception, sort of your ability to sense into the cues of your body. And I think a lot of women, as a result of the way our culture is kind of working against us, that just railroad over that and don't have a sense of how stress is landing in their body. So for that reason, to develop your interoception, to develop kind of that intuitive sense of what's true with your subtle energetic anatomy and, you know, kind of your general anatomy, I like to measure.

31:53So I use a ring to measure heart rate variability. It tells me readiness each morning. I like it for tracking sleep. Aura. It's an aura. And so you use it too. And there's a couple of features I really love. I know that I need two hours of deep sleep for my gut to be in its best state possible. And there's some work that has to be done for that to happen. Is that you specifically or is that something that you've noticed over your clients? I've noticed it in, I would say, the majority of my clients, especially those that are 40 and older. The other thing that I love with the Aura is they do a daytime stress feature.

32:38Yes. Right? I can't wait to tell you about my experience with that. I wanted to throw it against the freaking wall. But yes. Oh, my God. I was like, I thought I'm doing good today. Meanwhile, I looked at my results. This is like all last fall. and I literally, I held the phone up to Josh. He's like, are you okay? I'm like, apparently not. Well, that's the accountability. It creates this loop of integrity where you might be telling yourself, oh, I'm fine. I'm managing. I'm doing okay with all this. And then when you have this objective measure reflected back to you that says, actually you spent most of the day's stress, you engaged a little bit, but you didn't relax and you didn't restore.

33:16I think that's incredibly helpful. It is. And I, but I do, this is this one thing and aura, if you're listening, I don't know, but the one thing that I was paying attention to, because I was really trying to peel into it also because I'm slightly competitive, you know, with myself and being like, I can do better. I noticed that it actually showed real stress. And I guess this makes sense. I'm curious to your perspective on it. Like things when I would talk to my best friend, so it was like, you're stressed. I'm like, I'm actually having a damn good time for once in this hell hole that I'm in right now.

33:45And then the other thing was when I would go to some of my fitness classes, which again, for me was just such an amazing opportunity to let energy get through my body and work through things. And it was like, you know, the stress was off the charts and I was like, I can't win here. Do you know what I mean? So I don't know if it's, it's sometimes counting quote unquote, good stress in the same way, but you know, that's an open question. I don't know the science behind it. Well, there's certainly good stress. So your workouts, you know, the way I approach workouts, I also am stressed when I do my workouts.

34:19I do heavy weightlifting. So of course my system is pretty stressed, but what I see afterwards is that I'm more likely to get into a relaxed or restored state. So it's not so much while it's happening, it's the aftermath that I'm looking at. Okay, good. And then with your best friend, you know, what's interesting about that is there's a part of the brain that's involved in kind of understanding what's happening with you. And then there's a different part of the brain that's involved in healing. And sometimes when you're rehashing what's going on with you, that part, that understanding part, that's kind of reinforcing the trauma that you're already in.

35:02Yes. That can be stressful for the body. That's interesting. So yeah, I mean, I would never say, don't talk to your best friend. Like that's so critical. Um, but there's, uh, we just want to be aware of what's the truth of the body. Yes. And also I wouldn't put all of my eggs in one basket. It's not just what the aura ring is telling me about my daytime stress. It's also how I feel. Yes. We want to find kind of the middle ground. Yeah. I love that you said that because it was funny. Josh had said to me, he's like, I think that ring is stressed. you don't even know. He's like, maybe you got to take it off for a minute.

35:37I was like, maybe you're actually right. I'm Marie Forleo and I quit writing boring copy after I discovered nobody wants to read that. If you have problems writing in a way that's true to your voice and helps convert browsers into buyers, the copy cure may be right for you. Check with your health professional. And after she says she doesn't care about your writing skills, Sign up for our free seven-day writing class at thecopycure.com. That's thecopycure.com.

36:14So we've talked about this a little, but I want to dive deeper. What role do you think of any genetics play in this? Like if you were to kind of divvy that up, would you be like, you know, it does play a huge role. And what are things that we can proactively do, especially if it's like, hey, I'm more genetically predispositioned to have to pay attention to this? Well, genetics are one of the three parts of the stool, the three-legged stool. So, you know, there's nothing you can do about your genetics, of course, but there are a lot of workarounds. So the genetics, the genetic predispositions, which I talk about in the book, people can test and see if they have them.

36:54And then there's, you know, really the book is about the workarounds. Yes. So the levers like food, the embodiment, the sleep, the immunomodulators, things like DHEA and curcumin and vitamin D, and also potentially psychedelic medicine. But let me contextualize that for a moment. Because there's the genetic predisposition. We don't know exactly what percent it contributes to autoimmune disease. I would guess it's somewhere around 20 to maybe 40 percent. Don't know the exact number. And so that means that environment affects probably 60 to 80 percent of the story. Yes. And so you've got a lot of control potentially over environment.

37:43And another piece that's important to mention is epigenetic change. So we know that, for instance, when we look at people like those who survived 9-11, people who survived the Holocaust and their offspring, even a more recent set of data looking at something called the ice storm in Canada that happened in 1998, we know that there are ways that your DNA gets like a little tag put on it, a little sticky note that says we had a problem. And so we're going to change the way that this DNA is expressed going forward. And so what we know from the Holocaust, from 9-11, from Project Ice Storm, is that the genes that are modified, that change the way they talk to the body, are in two different categories.

38:44your immune system and your metabolic system. So for you, it might be the immune system could be dysregulated. For me, it's both the immune system and the metabolic system. Like I've struggled with my weight most of my life. And so it's important to realize that those are the sets of genes that are most vulnerable. But then there are all these things we can do about it. The way I think of it is that they're like soul wounds. So even if your ACE score is zero, even if you feel like you're relatively free of trauma, you might have inherited from your mother or your grandmother or your great-grandmother or further back in your lineage, some sort of vulnerability from an experience with toxic stress or trauma.

39:32I want to talk more about the gut. We know this, right? We know there's not one right way to eat because every body is so different. but let's go into just some areas where I think we all can have confusion from time to time and can go back and forth. At least I have. How about sugar? What do we think about sugar? I think for me, most recently, right now I'm doing, I was telling you this, I think before the camera's turned on, that I'm doing AIP for a little stretch of time. And Sarah, I was blown away. Mark's like, hey, you got to do this. I want you on this for two weeks. Within 24 hours, I saw symptoms.

40:12I was literally like, what? I could not believe how quickly my body started to respond. So let's start with sugar. What's your take? I'm not a fan of sugar. So I think about what our bodies were designed to eat back on the Savannah, what our bodies were designed to eat when our DNA developed. And it's not sugar, it's not gluten, it's not processed foods, it's not packaged foods. So all of those things, I think, are, they really have no place in the body. And, you know, yes, occasionally have a birthday cake, enjoy a cheesecake. But I would say for the most part, sugar is not your friend. Yeah.

40:53For many, many reasons. It's funny, I was reading, I don't know if it was your book or another book, but it was, um, it kind of stuck with me. It was years ago. I remember. So one of the things I do every year is, you know, I write down kind of all of my biggest lessons of the year, like the things that became really apparent to me. And then of course, because sometimes I'm a little hardheaded, I write down the same lessons the next year. You know what I mean? That I learned again and I learn again and I kind of look for the patterns over time. And I remember there was a spiritual book that I was reading and, uh, there was this notion about how alcohol is just toxic.

41:27And like, you know, I grew up in New Jersey. I didn't drink as like a teenager, but when I got to college, OMG, was I a party girl? Do you know what I mean? I was out and about all the places all the time. And then as I started to get into my 30s and 40s, it was like, it's not my friend. Like I don't feel good. It doesn't feel the same. And the moment that I had this thing put together through the spiritual book that I was reading, It was like, you just got to be honest. Like your body's not meant to consume it. And there was something in that for me. Again, there's no judgment to anyone else, but it was this connection point where I was like, oh, I don't want to put a toxin in my body.

42:05That's just how I linked it up. And then this book that I read like a day or two ago or within a few days, it was like had that same connection for me around sugar. And it was the first time that I had that connection. I was looking at it newly going like, I really want to take care of this thing. I love this thing. And I want to give her every ability that she has to feel her best to help me feel at my best. And so just thank you for saying that. It's like, yeah, cake's going to happen. Birthdays are going to happen here and there. But for me, it was a really useful viewpoint to see it as something more toxic.

42:39Again, outside of fruit, outside of naturally occurring sugar that's in whole foods that we eat. Well, alcohol is such a good point to raise because it is toxic for the body. You know, we had decades and decades of seeing the Mediterranean diet. It's the most proven diet that's out there. And yes, of course, you can have a glass or two of red wine. It's full of polyphenols. And then we went back and looked at some of that data and realized that that's not right. Well, you would also need to like drink cases and cases of wine. Yes. Right. To get the resveratrol. Correct. Right. But the other connection I want to make here is that when you think about your gut lining, it's really delicate.

43:25Like it's amazing how delicate it is. You would think it would be more hearty at this point. But the way that we induce leaky gut in animal studies is to give them alcohol because it's so reliable. Really? At poking holes in the gut. So that's one of the key things that alcohol does. It pokes holes in the gut. It, you know, it causes, it shrinks the brain. Women have double the risk of Alzheimer's. It's a toxin. Some people think of it as liquid sugar, especially cocktails and certain wine. And what I would say about alcohol, because a lot of people don't like to hear me say that I don't think alcohol is good.

44:08There's so many other good sacred medicines out there. Yes. And other ways of creating healing states of consciousness. Like if you're looking for a cocktail or a glass of wine to help to state change, you know, at the end of the day, you just want to relax at 6 p.m. Like, let's go. There's so many other things you could do. Yes. Yeah. No, there is. And we're going to talk about that, too. So food first philosophy. I feel like if anyone is experiencing anything on the continuum of autoimmune right now or any of the things that we described at the top of the conversation, tell us about a food first philosophy when it comes to just getting on this healing path.

44:46Because I feel like it's one of the things you don't need to go find a particular provider, right? That's something that you can do yourself. What would you say to people if they're like, I think I should start experimenting? Talk to us about food first. Well, I think food is the most fundamental lever that we want to push when it comes to this dysregulation that we're talking about. What happens with a lot of folks, what I see in my practice is that when you've got increased intestinal permeability and you start reacting to foods, the most common food reactions when it comes to autoimmune disease are gluten, dairy, sugar, and sometimes nightshades.

45:28So I recommend doing an elimination diet. So you mentioned the autoimmune protocol. AIP is a form of an elimination diet. And the cool thing about it is it's free. Like there's no cost associated with this. I mean, you have to be strict and you have to be really stringent about what you're eating. But the benefit is that you feel better so fast. Like you said, 24 hours. 24 hours. And just for everyone, like you got to know, I'm like a food lover. I think, you know, in my life, I've probably used food in different areas, you know, especially when I was talking about that just hellish landscape for six months.

46:07Dude, food was a way that I was soothing myself. So I was absolutely putting things in that I was like, maybe not so good, but it's like, mama needs something at this moment. And I will say this, it's, I had a moment after Mark was like, girl, you need to do, he didn't say this is my vernacular but it was like you needed to be an AFA for the next few weeks and we hung up our call and like I went to look it up and I will tell you immediately Sarah I felt stressed like I was like oh gosh oh boy like I had the whole list of all the social engagements and you know all the things that I had to do I'm like oh now I gotta figure this out now right now but after I got through that little momentary oh and was like everything is figure audible.

46:48You wrote the book on it. Um, get your, get your ass in the game. I was like, this is actually, it can be easy. If I keep it simple, it can be easy. It is figure outable. And I love your book. I feel like the misery of reacting to foods is so much worse than the oceaness of like stepping into following a protocol like this just for a few weeks. And it's not something just for few weeks. It's nothing that necessarily, right, one would be on forever. But for me, it almost felt like a clearing of the cash. Like it felt like an ability to, you know, if your computer is just, you know, you got this spiral of death, nothing is working, everything is not connecting.

47:31And you're like, you know what, maybe if I just turn it off for a moment and let it sit and let everything just calm down, then we can step away and we can come back in and go, okay, what's going to be best moving forward? And that's what it's been feeling like for me. Yeah. So I would add a couple things, if I may. Yeah, of course. So this issue of leaky gut and food reactions, what happens is you tend to react, especially to proteins. So for instance, when I went on a smoothie bender where I was having a smoothie every day and I was drinking pea protein and I started to have a reaction to it.

48:07So when your immune system is primed and you've got increased intestinal permeability, it's often specific proteins that you're reacting to. So what we know with elimination diets, and they're well studied in a multiple trials looking at rheumatoid arthritis and some other conditions, we know that you need a certain length of time that you're on it. And here I'm going to disagree with Mark. I think because you've benefited so much, I would say he may have told you at the beginning, let's do it for two weeks. But once he got you hooked and feeling better, I imagine he's going to say, let's go a little bit longer.

48:50He definitely might. Yeah. So, um, the other pieces, it's not just an elimination diet, it's an elimination provocation diet. And so a really critical part is that when you agree to end it and start to add food back, you want to do that in such a slow and methodical way. Because as you said, you cleared the cash. You don't want to just like throw in all the garbage again. You want to add back. I mean, the way I do it is pretty careful and I take your hand in this book to guide you through it. But I like to add back cooked tomatoes first and then see what happens over the next four days, see what happens in terms of gastrointestinal symptoms, mood, bloating, anything along those lines, pain.

49:42And then after four days, I add back raw tomatoes. And so I'm doing things really slowly and methodically. Eggs are another really common culprit. And so, you know, I add back egg yolks first and then watch for four days and then egg whites. So I think it's important to realize it's not just an elimination diet. You also want to do the provocation. So then you can see what are the foods that you're reacting to. I love this. And I feel like there's also a meta message in what you're sharing about this, the slowing down and the intentionality and the patience, which is something in our culture in general that I think we've been trained away from.

50:27Yes. You know, with technology, the pace of modern life, you know, all of our expectations. We order something on Amazon. Why isn't it here yesterday? You know, so we've just kind of gotten into, many of us, a cycle of quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. And what I love about your emphasis on the reintroduction, the re-challenging, and to do it so intentionally and so slowly so that you're gaining the wisdom that you need. The wisdom, gaining the data, because the medicine I was taught is medicine for the average. It's based on mostly randomized trials, observational studies, like is hormone therapy good, yes or no?

51:07It's based on not the individual, but on the entire population. And when you do something like an elimination diet, you are discovering the truth of your individuality. It is what I call an N of one experiment. And I was also taught when I went to Harvard Medical School that the highest form of evidence is the end of one experiment. So noticing, for instance, what happens to your heart rate variability when you don't drink alcohol for two weeks, or noticing what happens to your system, to your gut health, maybe to your readiness score with the aura, to your daytime stress when you're on an elimination diet.

51:52and I agree that people need to slow down and it's a good reminder for myself too. The other thing that I see a lot as a clinician is that people get the f***gits and they're just like, oh my God, I've been on this elimination diet for three weeks or a month and I just can't take it another second. My kids want pizza, I want pizza and they eat the pizza and the pizza all of a sudden is exposing them to gluten and dairy and tomatoes, maybe some other things. And so I just want to caution people to not get the f**k hits, like to notice when you have those thoughts and to slow it down, to keep it to one reintroduction at a time.

52:34Yeah. It's really, really important. And I feel like, um, it's also just a great reminder, a lesson in terms of our own ability. I'll speak for myself to be really caring and disciplined. And I say that in the highest form of the word. Disciplined, not about being perfect and not about being hard on myself, but really adhering to something that I know intuitively is going to help me heal and it's going to get me on the path that I most want, which is to be my strongest, most powerful, most whole self. Can I add one quick thing to that? Yes, of course. So I love, love, love this concept of discipline.

53:17The other thing it evokes for me is integrity. Yes. Like it creates this loop of integrity where you say, okay, I'm going to follow this elimination diet. I'm going to do it for three weeks. I'm going to be strict about it. Even though I've got all these social engagements, I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to add food back one at a time. Notice for four days what happens. That creates this integrity where you do what you say you're going to do. You commit to your own healing, your own healing states of consciousness, and then you follow through on it. Yes. That's so critical. Yeah, it is.

53:51And you know, it was funny because yesterday an invitation came in for dear friends of ours and they're like, oh, we heard you guys are coming out this weekend. Come over. We're having a dinner party. And I had a pause there for a moment because I never want to be that pain in the ass friend who's like showing up to someone else's dinner party where I know how much it takes, you know what I mean, to prepare a whole event for a bunch of people. And I, I, I text back and said, Hey, I really want to say yes. And here's what's happening for me. I'm happy to bring my own food. You know what I mean?

54:22To not be, to make your life even more hectic. And they were so sweet. They're like, Hey, this is actually what we have on the menu. What works for you? And then we'll make some other, I was just like, thank you so much. But I think it's those kinds of things that if you don't speak up and just express yourself, it could lead you to the f**kets. That's right. Right? Faster. Where there's so many creative ways to be able to, again, stay in integrity with yourself and still have a full life and still be on this path to healing. So I love, one of my favorite parts of the book is stretching out into some, what we'll call, they're becoming more conventional, but historically unconventional treatments in terms of ketamine and psilocybin and MDMA and all of the kind of plant medicines and some not plant-based that can assist us in these healing states of consciousness.

55:18What led you on this path and what have you seen? I know for myself, you know, microdosing psilocybin and I've definitely, like I said, in my earlier days, this was not in a therapeutic sense. This is like Marie running around with glow sticks and clubs. Do you know what I mean? Like that's what was going on in those days. And they were - Are there videos? I wish, you know, it was like pre, it was pre-iPhone. Do you know what I mean? Actually, I wish and I'm like super grateful. But let's talk about that because in this notion of healing our trauma and again, of looking towards healing states of consciousness, we have so many more opportunities now than, than we did years ago.

56:00Yeah. Healing states of consciousness. There's so many ways in, which I think is the first invitation. You know, there are some people who, uh, are more like the way I was before I turned 50. I was kind of square Marie. I wasn't running around in college. Like I was in the library and I, I never took, I didn't smoke pot. I didn't take any psychedelics at all. But when I turned 50 and I had this conflict with a family member and I had that moment of, oh my gosh, if I could heal this, if I could heal this relationship, if I could heal the trauma and the way it drives my behavior and my reactivity, I'm going to do this by any means possible.

56:46And that was juxtaposed with some of the early data on MDMA-assisted therapy. So I would say out of all of these medicines that we're talking about, MDMA is the most proven in the context of being used as therapy. So there was a randomized trial that was published in 2021 showing that with people with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, about two-thirds of them no longer met criteria for PTSD. once they did two to three sessions of MDMA-assisted therapy. That is like revolutionary because nothing works like that does. I mean, if you look at the literature like I did on talk therapy, even trauma-informed therapy and the gold standard right now, which is usually talk therapy plus minus a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the effectiveness is like 30%.

57:45Which is not good. It's not good. I mean, if I were told in my 20s that the next few decades of talk therapy, which, you know, people do at great expense and it takes a ton of time. If I was told that the efficacy was 30 percent, I don't think I would have done it. Yeah, no, it's not promising. It's not promising. And that, you know, the I think it's important to realize that I don't think people get full informed consent. Once again, the part of the brain that's related to understanding and talking about your trauma is different than the part of the brain that's involved in resolving it. And so we have to figure out how to get to the resolution.

58:24And it seems that psychedelic medicine, MDMA-assisted therapy, with an efficacy of 67 and the latest randomized trial is 71 % resolution of symptoms. It's more than double as effective. Yeah. So there was another randomized trial published in 2023, this time in a more diverse patient population, so 50 % non-white. And they found that 71 % resolved their symptoms of PTSD. So this is one of the most effective trauma therapies. It's probably going to get FDA approved sometime in the next year. That's what we hope. And then it's going to be available to more people. I hope so, because that was like the big thing.

59:08you know it's like where do you find the safe stuff you know and I remember again back in the day we didn't uh I'm talking back to my club days you know what I mean like this is back in the world where it wasn't we didn't have these um fears about things kind of off the street with fentanyl and all this stuff and so now um in terms of anyone watching this and we have a global audience would you recommend is it first important for people to just start talking to their doctors or talking to their friends and just kind of taking that figureoutable approach to finding a good provider. That's where you start.

59:44Yeah. You know, I think word of mouth is really critical. You can also join a research program and so many universities now around the world offer psychedelic assisted therapy in a research context. So Johns Hopkins was one of the first. NYU has a great program. I'm in San Francisco at UCSF where we recruited Robin Carhart-Harris, who's kind of the founder of the Default Mode Network and some of the ways that psychedelics can act. So I would say first go to a research-based program. Once it becomes FDA approved in the US, you'll have a wider swath of clinicians that you can go to. There's this whole underground too, which I think is probably worth mentioning.

1:00:29There's some countries where it's legal. there's places like um you can go to amsterdam you can go to costa rica and take psilocybin you can go to places like portugal and have an experience but um there's this above ground scene which i'm part of so i'm i've got like three certifications in psychedelic medicine and there's a lot of licensed therapists who've gone through for instance the maps training and are ready and poised to do MDMAs to therapy. And then there's a vast underground and there's this whole indigenous culture and history of using plant medicines for healing states of consciousness.

1:01:11So I can't speak as much to the underground because I'm a licensed physician, but it certainly exists. Let's talk macro dosing versus micro dosing. One of the things that I was discovering lately, and it was just one thing that I read, so I'm curious to hear your perspective on it, but that in terms of microdosing and taking these very tiny doses of particular medicine, that the goal is actually not to feel anything. That's right. Yeah. Can you unpack that a little bit more? Because that was actually news to me. And again, I think because my history was in the recreation zone and I hadn't understood like, oh, great, what are all of these other ways in that aren't, again, me running around with glow sticks.

1:02:00Let's talk about microdosing and what that can potentially look like in any experience that you've had with your patients. So microdosing is super interesting. There's not a ton of research on it, but what I could find I put in the book, the idea with microdosing is that you're taking what's called a sub-perceptible level of the plant or medicine. So the most data that we have is with psilocybin, with magic mushrooms, microdosing, and also with LSD. So which, you know, depending on your state, you may or may not be able to get access to psilocybin. So Colorado and Oregon are the ones who are kind of leading the charge here.

1:02:47And also the city of Oakland in California has decriminalized psilocybin. So what are we talking about here? We're talking about small doses of what I think of as immunomodulating doses. So they're not enough to trigger the serotonin receptor, the 5-HD2A, and create hallucinations and visualizations. But it's a lower dose that kind of makes you feel what you can describe how you feel on it. I feel sort of sparkly and creative when I do microdosing. and um and like you can see with my aura ring I'm much more likely to be relaxed and restored and it's um it's a little harder to get me to be reactive and stressed that was actually the big thing for me was um the experience of of it was so subtle and that's like oh this is great it was the potential to get frustrated, angry, or impatient felt it was like so far away.

1:03:59And everything else was completely, as I know it, but it was just, there was a heart opening and a sense of spaciousness and patience again, and less reactivity that I was like, that is fascinating. Yeah. So you're pioneering and, you know, we're still in the early stages of understanding what is a microdose? Is it one-tenth of the normal dose? Like how much is the right amount? I'm someone who needs heroic levels of some of these medicines. So I typically, to have my first experience with psilocybin, I needed seven grams. That is a huge amount of mushrooms. That's dried mushrooms. And so when I'm microdosing, I'm taking more like a hundred milligrams.

1:04:44It's a really small amount. So let's talk now about some of the somatic healing. So mind-body therapies, Hakomi, did I pronounce that right? Yes. Talk to us about Hakomi because that is something I'd never been exposed to before or neuroemotional technique. So with Hakomi, I've gone through the level one certification. It is a somatic-based mindfulness approach to self inquiry. And it's, it's a really extraordinary way of, you know, not staying cognitive, I'm hyper cognitive. And so it allows me to really come downstairs and kind of develop this interoception that we're talking about the sense of what's going on in your body.

1:05:29It's designed to look for missing nourishment that you might have from childhood, or maybe from recent experiences, it's not specifically a trauma-informed way of taking care of patients, but it's a form of therapy that I find to be just brilliant. It's systems-based. What does that mean? Meaning that it's, you know, when you think of like cognitive behavioral therapy, it's designed to look at some of these hooks that you have with the way that you think and to kind of unhook and maybe broaden the perspective. Whereas Hakomi is much more about how you feel. It's not really about how you think.

1:06:14And if anything, it tries to get you to come downstairs and think less and just dwell in your body and talk about it from that place. And so neuroemotional technique. Neuroemotional technique is really interesting. It's something that we study at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. and it's a combination of traditional Chinese medicine and kind of these cues that the therapist uses. I haven't learned how to do it. I've seen it demonstrated a lot of times. The chairman of the department has done it with me. I went through a very difficult divorce last year and he did a lot of neuroemotional technique with me, which I found so helpful.

1:07:03And it was developed originally by a chiropractor. So it's what I think of as an integrative treatment. And it's been well proven in a number of studies that we've done at Thomas Jefferson to affect the parts of the brain that are involved in trauma, especially the cerebellum, the brainstem, and with brain imaging, we've seen how people recover. A lot of the studies that we've done with the neuroemotional technique, I wasn't part of them, but the ones that Dr. Diamante, the chair has done, look at people who are cancer survivors, who have significant trauma associated with that process. And neuroemotional technique really allowed them to find freedom and release from the trauma they experienced.

1:07:50That's incredible. For folks watching who might be in a position right now who are suspecting that there are things that are changing within them, right? And we've talked about so many, And again, your book is so beautifully comprehensive. We couldn't even peel into, you know, a fraction of the kind of prescriptive how to's and resources that are in the book. But for someone watching right now, who's like, where do I get started? And I just want to preface this with in my own little journey, I was talking about my experience with my family, you know, wanting to put my head through the wall with traditional medicine.

1:08:25And I even had a experience recently with, you know, primary care doc, right? So most of us have, or some of us, I should say, have multiple providers for different things. And when I started to express what was happening for me gastro-wise, the first thing that came through was a prescription to address the stomach cramps. And I was like, mm-mm, I need to get... And again, it was like me going like... So for someone listening, watching, what would be the first step? Where should they start to peel into this work? What's like the easiest, the least expensive, the place to go, especially if for me, I've often felt mistrustful of traditional medicine and felt like I didn't know who I could trust.

1:09:12And there's so many different things out there to pay attention to and people to ask. The place to start is to measure your trauma, first of all. So I think knowing your ACE score is really critical. There are some people who have more adult events, like you had this experience last year, but you have a sense of how that was dysregulating for you. So I think start with an inventory, see where you are in terms of toxic stress and trauma. Number two, I love wearables. I think wearables, you can't lie. And yes, there's the risk of becoming somewhat obsessive about them, but I would say overall, and I imagine this is probably true for you, there's more benefit than harm in terms of having this objective mirror that tells you what's going on with your physiology.

1:10:03So what we're looking for there is dysregulation. Do you have trauma, toxic stress? Do you then as a result have the signature of trauma living on in your body that's related to dysregulation? And then it depends on what sort of symptoms you have. You know, for some people, it might be just that their cortisol is screwed up. So let's do a cortisol test, or maybe your gut is messed up. So let's do a gut test. I like to look at the microbiome. There's lots of different ways that we can do that. So I think it depends on your particular vulnerabilities, whether that's gut or endocrine or immune or your nervous system, and be guided by what your wearables tell you.

1:10:46Anything else that you want people to take away? Obviously, we hope that they get the autoimmune cure. It's a brilliant, brilliant book, but anything else that you want to leave people with today? Well, I think, you know, we were talking about this in the context of the elimination diet, that the misery of food reactions and your gut, you know, not functioning the way that it's meant to is so much worse than fixing it with something like a food first approach. But I would say it's even broader than that. So let's, you know, let's make this larger. The misery of having toxic stress live on in your body, whether you recognize it or not is so much worse than the steps that you can take to address it to become regulated again and to you know once you feel that regulation like I feel so regulated hanging out with you I feel co-regulated I felt that the first time I met you like 15 plus years ago and once you feel that regulation there's no going back there's no going back you just you You can't have the difficult relationship anymore.

1:11:52You can't have the fight with your spouse. There's no going back. And that's what we want. That's what I want for our listeners and followers. Sarah, thank you so much for your decades and decades of dedication to helping us feel our best and be our best. Your new book is brilliant. And I adore you. And I can't wait to have more and more decades together. Thanks, Marie. Oh my goodness. Sarah is amazing. I hope you felt so too. If you liked this video or any of our videos, hit that subscribe button right now. Thank you so much for tuning in. And until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have.