January 16, 2019 • 33 mins
Author of The Detox Prescription and founder of the Center for Health and Healing discusses living an optimal lifestyle.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The problem is that people think, well, I'm not that stressed.
I handful stressed pretty well. I have a lot of stress,
but I deal with it. And then all of a
sudden they begin to feel not well. They may feel tired,
they may moves, maybe down, and maybe more anxious. They
don't sleep as well. That's because what happens is that
you have all the stress you've ever had in your
life every day and you add to it. Welcome to You,
(00:33):
turns the podcast that we talk about changing. I'm Lisa
Oz and I am Jill Herzig and Lisa and I
are very good friends. But there's one thing that is
super different about us. You can detox and I cannot.
Lisa is able to say today and possibly tomorrow and
(00:53):
the next day, I'm not going to eat any solid food.
It will be good for me. I will cleanse my
body and I can, as you well know, I can't
go more than I don't know, maybe two and a
half hours without eating something, and I panic. I mean,
I'm such a bad Jew. I can't even do this
when I'm supposed to on the day of a tone.
I have never been able. But you're so good about
(01:15):
what you eat normally you don't even need to detox
your mom, You're so clean. I don't know if I
don't need to detox. I think, I think maybe I
do well. Detox is just one of the many things
that I try to incorporate into my life to keep
myself healthy because I have been guided by one of
the great gurus of health, Dr Woodson Merrill, and today
he's going to help guide us through what we need
(01:38):
to do, both of us, UM, to keep healthy during
periods of transition. Dr Merrill, When when we were when
we're trying to get through changes in the most healthy
and robust way. UM, what do you thank you so
much for being here today? To be here? Thanks for
having me. Dr Meryll is the founding executive director of
the Center for Health and Healing and UM and literally
(02:02):
the authority on all things wellness, one of them. So
how do we stay healthy when we're under stress and
we're going through life changes and and everything else is
up in the air. Well, it really is all about
managing lifestyle and the stresses. As a core to that
spiritual and stress your life should be balanced. You have
(02:23):
to have not just stress balance, but you have to
have all aspects of your lifestyle to be ultimately healthy.
People ask me what's the most important one, and that's
the one you're not doing. So really it's it's managing stress,
it's eating correctly, it's removing toxics or detoxing, exercising enough,
sleeping enough, and being connected. So if you're exercising great,
(02:45):
and you're eating well, but you're sleeping for hours or not,
you're you're not going to get there. So it's about
my life and balance and be being censured and stresses
of course of the core of so much of that.
Can we break those down all the like, unpack all
six of those? Do you want to start with? Detoxing?
For Joe hates my personal benefit, It's not that I
hate it, it's that I've never been able to do
(03:06):
it for more than two hours. So you know, when
I wrote the detox prescription, it lays out a juice cleanse,
but I think it's a great way of doing it,
and that when you do actually take in food in
liquid form every every two or three hours, so you
don't actually feel hungry, but you don't have to do
with what juice. You can do with foods, and you
can do with food to help the body to clean itself.
(03:26):
Where your body spends so much of our time trying
to get rid of toxins that are in in our diet.
It's uh, it's really shocking what's happening to the state
of food and how many pesticides and plasticides that there
are in our dialect microplastics are and almost all the
water now. So body spends a good amount of time
removing what shouldn't be in our system to get to
(03:47):
what should be. So the idea is to try to
be first all remove the toxins from your life. It's
pretty obvious, but there's a couple of good guides to that.
Environmental Defense Fund's got a great website e d f
do or that tells you about personal care and household
cleaning products, and Environmental Working Group w g dot org
about safe fish for example, to eat and organic foods.
(04:09):
So using Thosese guides to get rid of a lot
of things you wouldn't think about, like household cleaning products
that can affect estrogen distructures in our system, etcetera. And
then eating um foods that are healthy your body will detox.
Food is very powerful for helping it to detox, but
most people don't do the balance they need. And the
key there is fruits and vegetables and herbs and spices,
(04:31):
and most people, more than half the population is woefully
short on those things that could do it without some complex,
complex cleansing regimen. All right, I'm going to continue to
pull out your personal prescription for me with food. I
focus on healthy foods, lots of fruits and vegetables. Do
I need to Is it so important that I eat
(04:54):
organic that that that is the number one thing to
think about? Because I remember, you know, publishing actually when
I was the editor of the Oz magazine. The fact
that the most important thing is to get tons of
fruits and vegetables. If worrying about whether they're organic or
not is preventing you from doing that, don't worry about it.
(05:14):
Just eat as many as possible. But are you saying,
actually for detoxing purposes, do worry about that over detoxing? Yeah,
you really should be trying to remove toxins and to
put them back in the form of food that's not organic.
Is kind of countermans that what you're trying to do
so you don't have to be healthy. The key is
to have eight or nine helpings ideally of fruits and
(05:35):
vegetables today, uh, and to have them as organic as possible.
One of the things that eat w details us is
the clean fifteen and the dirty doesn't. So there are
some foods you don't really have to have organic, like
thick skin fruits, and others you really need to have organic,
like thin skin fruits. So I think it's more important
to get the total rainbow collection or fruits and vegetables
in a plant based diet every day and be as
(05:56):
organic as you can without being fanatic for sure. But
wouldn't that be a recommendation for all the time, not
just for a period of detox. You would because the
way that Joe lives is like a like a healthy
living three sixty um with detox it seems like it's
a limited period of time. It should You shouldn't be
(06:17):
detoxing your whole life, you know, so you can you
can actually a diet it's so clean you almost don't
need to detox. So the detox that if you're in
a situation where you actually feel like you've accumulated a
lot of unhealthy habits and foods and exposures, then the
idea of going on a cleanse is a great thing
to do, and you could do a five day clans,
do a one week cleanse. There's something called the fasting
(06:37):
mimicking diet of Aulter Longo, DIRECTORR of USC Longevity Institute.
I'm a huge fan of. You get to eighty cours
a day with the tricks to body, and you're thinking
you're starving, so the body resets the entire immune system
as though it's re saving you from starvation, and in
a five day cleanse. So there are many ways, many
ways of doing it, and do you're correct though The
(06:58):
key is all year long is lead a clean, healthy
dietary life. But think it's more important almost to have
the number of fresh fruits and vegetables than to have
them all be organic. We call it detoxing because that's
what's happening technically. But fasting has been a huge part
of human evolutions. I think every culture has had event
(07:20):
periods like celebrations or or um rituals, rituals of fasting um.
And naturally we when we were paleolotic, we would have
been fasting because we couldn't catch, you know, an antelope
that day. So I do think our body is kind
of designed too fast for periods of time. It's Holy
Correct and their re Society. They're very exciting showing at
(07:42):
twelve or fourteen hour fast it has Canna drumac results.
And that's just not eating from a p m to
eight am, so it's not going on some crazy juice
cleans are fast for for a week. It's actually incorporating
into your life very simple practices you can do on
a regular basis without having to fast for two or
three days. Sometimes water fast, if you've only to really
unhealthy and we can be, can make you feel worse
(08:03):
because you release a lot of the toxins that come
out of the system and then they can go into
other cells before the body can actually eliminate them. So
a water fast isn't really for everyone, which is why
I prefer to have some form of food if you're
actually trying to to remove toxic but very clean food,
so you the body spends much less time time trying
to get rid of additional problems and allows it to
(08:24):
clean out what's what's accumulated. Well, that's all music to
my ears that there is going to be some foods
um What is a sign that you might feel physically
or mentally that you that you kind of need to
to do with detox. If you're feeling tired or not
eating well, you're you're just not eating one you know,
you're you're having a problem, um fatigue, joint pain, rashes.
(08:45):
So it's kind of vague. Functional disorders can be can
be balance set, indiggestion, bloating, cramping, gas, being more reactive
to the environment than you should be with nasal stuffiness
can pretty much manifest itself in in any organ system
of the body. Just being off balance. Yeah, that feeling
off I think is something that at some point we've
(09:05):
all experienced that we have. You have to take assesse
of your If your diet is incredibly cleaning your environments clean,
then that's not where the money is in terms of
trying to make a transformation and maybe sleep or stress
or exercise. But if clearly you're challenging. You know, they
did a study recently all California, all wines, all organic
wines in California have glyfe stated in them. So, um,
(09:26):
you know, it's it's just it's difficult to get away
from everything. Everything has life stated it explain explain for
everybody with that which is because glid which is a
pesticide that's used um primarily that it's used on wheat,
but on many many vegetables, vegetables in particular grains, and
it's use it a lot higher doses. It's one of
the controversies behind the GMO GMOs or Look, if you're
(09:49):
using GMO to make wheat to grow in sub Saharan
Africa to feed the people with almost no water available,
and it saves up probably that's a amazing use of GM.
But if you using it so you can put much
more heurbicides or pesticides on the plant to kill the
animals before you kill the plant. Uh. And the problem
is that the animals have modified their their genes and
(10:10):
it takes more pesticide, So the GMO gets ramped up
to allow the plant to take more pesticides before it
gets harmed. It's also used to to make the wheat
dry fat dry out faster, to desiccate it before they
harvest it. So it makes it more lucrative and productive,
but not better for you. Yes, it's very tied into
the to the media right now because of the GMO
(10:31):
and the and the widespread use of it. One of
the most widespread used pesticides genermous side and Europe is
is uh disallowing it. But there are plenty of other
things in the environment, household cleaners or you know, there's
plenty of things that were exposed to on a daily
basis that are there are issues for a body and
having a difficult time removing. So they look and they say,
what the average for the CDC show there's an average
of over a hundred sixty toxic chemicals potentially toxic chemicals
(10:55):
in our body, but none of them, almost ever are
at a level where we technically cause a problem. But
the question is they haven't done is they looking at well,
is there an accumulative effect of all of these being
in your body at the same time? You know, if
you're if normal mercuries ten and your level is nine
and you have a hundred and sixty other chemicals, is
that somehow at nine is not so safe? He's not not.
(11:16):
Even if you think you're living pretty healthfully, you're being
exposed toxins. Okay, we're gonna come back and we're gonna
dig a little bit deeper into that. Before the break,
(11:36):
we are digging into detoxing and the need to detox
Even if you seem to be living a healthy life
like Jill, we are. Our environment is bombarding us with
toxins all the time, and we are speaking with Dr
Woodson Merrill. Are there things besides eating clean food? Are
there things we can do to accelerate the detoxing process.
Are there certain supplements or herbs we should be taking
(11:59):
to help us clear out therese toxins. So yes, And
when you when you said her as, you might have
been thinking of verbal herbal supsmans are capsuled. But I
just want to say that herbs and spices are Nature's
healing gift to it. They are so powerful, They're almost
more powerful than food in terms of cleaning out the
body as antioxidants and anti inflammatories. Tumeric, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, oregano,
(12:21):
rosemary unbelievably powerful in helping our body to repair itself.
So I think that food being your medicine, you can
they sell those, certainly capsule form. I think that tumeric
or cure crecuman, which is the active ingredient, is one
of my favorite new nutrients. It really is nature's gift
to us. It's it's an anti inflammatory. It helps the
body to detoxify. I love tumoric. It's pretty hard to
(12:43):
eat too. Tea spoons of tumeric to day and everything
you could, but it's take it. Yes, So I think
I encourage people to actually use what I call it
Indo Mediterranean diet where they actually use lots of herbs
and spices, because they really do help the body in
all of its repair process. US is dramatically. There are
supplements that you normally have people do it through through diet,
(13:05):
but one of my favorites it's very rare to cause
an interaction with things, is n A C knack or
an ascetial systeine UM. It really helps the body with
its detoxification processes, and it's converted to gluto than which
is the body's master antioxident. We can't make vitamin C
instead of that, we make glutathion, so n A C
(13:26):
is a precursor to that. It really helps the repair process.
And then it depends on specific things you're looking at.
For example, modified citrus pectin is helpful UM for pulling
out heavy metals at a little bit, not not as
much as the medications, but it can be cilantro it's
heavy metal. Clancio is Cilanio is great with heavy metals
Clarrela and spirolina. That actually buying the heavy metals and
(13:48):
the guts so they don't they don't get absorbed or
important if you're trying, if you're still being exposed to
those substances. It sounds all like things to be found
in Lisa OS's kitchen, Like say, she's I've seen the incredible,
incredible cook and her cookbooks are full of all these ingredients,
and now I know that she's secretly medicating all of us.
That's what that's all about. So can you talk to
(14:10):
us about some of the other fundamentals. So there's detoxing,
which I'm I promised to get into, but um, sleep stress,
Let's let's talk about some of the others as well. Uh,
pick stress because it's so pervasive and particularly you know,
people say it's it's worse now that it's ever been,
and it's you know, people's chress lovers incredibly high. I
(14:32):
don't think the Depression was a picnic or World War two,
so you know, it isn't like we haven't been subjected
to massive levels of stress. But I think it's it's
all pervasive now and we're exposed to so much more
with the media on a daily basis that it actually
is is very destructive uh, towards to our lives. UH.
And the problem is that people think, well, I'm not
that stressed. I handle stressed pretty well. I have a
(14:54):
lot of stress, but I deal with it. And then
all of a sudden they begin to feel not well.
They may feel tired, they made it moves, maybe down,
may be more anxious, they don't sleep as well, and
they see nothing has changed. And yet that's because what
happens is that you have all the stress you've ever
had in your life every day and you add to it.
So because cumulative like Dan Harris who wrote the book
Temper sent Happier, who all of a sudden had a
(15:15):
panic attack on TV, Like, where did that come from?
I thought everything was cool? And it's a It's an accumulation.
So the key for stresses is nipping it in the
bud before it happens. And certainly exercise is helpful, sleeping enough,
but you know, some form of relaxation exercise such as meditation,
which is the ultimate one, is critically important. I see
(15:37):
t I tell every patient that I see virtually to
begin to begin meditation. And what's interesting is that the
beginning of the day is the most important time to
do it. I know twice the day is exactly when
I find it the hardest to tack off. IM just
started to do t M on my bed and I'm
like out, Yeah, so doing in your bed that's called sleeping.
(15:59):
It doesn't count. Know, you're sitting up in you deeply meditating.
She's not a bit. So you know, the highest incidents
of heart attack by fo on awakening, really yeah, because
you make most of your hormones between three and five
am cortisol, growth hormone, thyroid, and you're coming out of
(16:21):
the dream state where you're trying to work out all
your anxiety unsuccessfully. I've include myself, and then you're you're
loading all the conscious subconscious thoughts, worries and concerns. They're
gonna pop out of your mind all day long. And
if you have a bad heart, bam. So every spiritual practice,
meditative practice always has you doing it early in the morning.
So when you first wake up, just to sit um
(16:44):
minute your comfortable chair across the leg on the floor
and just go to your breath for ideally, you know
ten to fifteen minutes and don't think of it as
a burden. In some days you just can't get to it,
even if you say, at the edge of your bed
for two minutes and go to your breath. Just the
intentionality that you're trying your life. And then the more
you do like exercise, the more of your day things
just don't get to you because your gervousister just doesn't
(17:06):
want them to. Why am I pretty sure that you're
going to tell me that I can't be drinking coffee
while you're doing it? Probably not are just or not
not ideal? Yeah, that wouldn't be managing. But coffee is
not that bad. It's just the amount of coffee that
that one does if one's kind of living on it.
As a stimulu side, I would say that, Um, the
majority of my people come into my office or dehydrated.
(17:28):
They don't drink enough water. I cannot tell you how
many hundreds of my patients feel like a three o'clock
They need a cup of coffee or a Snickers bar.
They get a brain fog or fatigue, and they're shocked
to see an eight ounce glass of water. The energy
and the mind just zooms back. They're literally just dehydrate
who drinks five to six classes, so's non caffeinated, minimy
sweet and beverage by three pm. Not not most, but
(17:50):
you need a lot of water water war yes, I
say water, but it's any non caffeinated sweep, decaf coffee
or herb tea, things like that, because the caffeine fly
just the water out of us. It doesn't count calvas
a diuretic, so it's kind of you kind of barely
even yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, you mentioned sleep as while
(18:10):
we were talking about meditation, not related, but can we
delve into that pillar. Yeah, so before the electric light
bulb was invented, the average hours asleep that the that
the American gout was the ten point two hours and
now and now at six point nine for women at
six point seven for men. So it isn't like that
our genetics have changed, actually, just that our our lifestyle
(18:32):
is changed and we still need sleep and all this
all the most. All the studies. Now, there's there's some
outlying studies to say you can get buying five or six,
but most of the show, really eight hours is the
sweet spot for really getting repair and regeneration of your
mind from stress. And also from physically, and so I
think that we're definitely an undersept nation. There was just
(18:52):
some article that popped up on my news feed actually
yesterday that said that people who got more than eight
hours of sleep had a higher mortality rate. I don't
know if I don't know if you saw that, what
the relevance of that is. I didn't go into details
of it, but I would bet that that's not most
people's problem. Uh So, I think in excess of anything,
but I can't eight to nine hours have been shown
(19:13):
to be fine. I love nine. I think if somebody
seeing even you have to, you may need to make
sure that things are okay. Why why are they needing that?
You said the average person has left that much before
their life folds. Yeah, I know. We're probably designed for
that evolutionarily. No, So that one study I haven't looked
at yet. I need to because I don't. I don't
get it. So I would say most people have trouble sleeping, though, um,
(19:37):
I know Moment talks about it all the time. When
your patients come in who are really struggling either to
fall asleep or wake up in the middle of the
night and can't get back to sleep. How do you
help them? So most people can get to sleep, especially
if they're not sleeping, because they're usually pretty exhausted. Um,
if you can't get to sleep, you can do relaxing things,
or take a take a relaxing bath with with lavender
(19:58):
or fs and salt in, or put on a gawn
They'll read a book. Um, do meditation, do breathwork, do
a little bit of yoga. Just to turn off the
mine and turn off the blue lights. For God's sakes,
the blue light from they come from computers and iPhones
is very, very agitating to the brain. You could turn
on a blue light blocker on Apple devices. It's called
a night shift and turn block the blue light, which
(20:19):
is the light that emanates from electronic devices. It's very agitating,
so turn that off an hour before you go to bed. Also,
the bigger problem to cuddling at least that without the
blue light blocker as a compromise. Um, like with my kids.
Sometimes the bigger problem people have as they wake up
three or four in the morning after a couple of
(20:39):
rem cycles and can't get back to sleep. Yes, this
is my d so. So the thing is when you're
when you're coming out. When you're waking up, you're always
coming out of a rem cycle. So you go down
deep stage one to three four deep sleep, and then
you come up through a rem cycle up to just
plow a consciously and go back down one to three.
You go through these rhythms a very hour and a
half or so during the night when you're coming up
(21:02):
from a rim cycle. Then it's often after tourist, your
recycled people pop up to consciousness if you wake up
and you start thinking, and almost always the thought myself included.
It's not a great thought. It's not like, oh my God,
the most wonderful I can't wait to get back. It's
any the problem you couldn't have fixed the day before.
It's almost always a negative thought you've had. I almost
(21:22):
can't help you. You need No, not that bad. There's
that I'm not going to do. But the thing, the
thing is, the thing is what what the best thing
to do is what I call dream remembrance, and that
is as you just get the glimmer that you're about
to come out of the dream, you'll get the awareness.
And now that I've told you, if you don't say
you remember your you'll you'll be aware of this to
be coming out of a dream. If it's just the
(21:44):
glimmer of a lamppost or a scary dream, it doesn't matter.
Hang onto the dream. You'll see a thought wanting to come.
You'll see that, you know, mortgage payment, thing issue coming
up or whatever. You've got to push it back like
a mind control exercise. Keeping the dream, keeping the dream,
and fifty percent of the time annual take you back
in the next RAM cycle. If you wake up and
start worrying, I've never heard that before. I think that
(22:05):
you're gonna have to do but which can be helpful.
But you've got dream remembrances is really important, and not
doing things that today you would sleep, like having you
to drink Lady Nights not. It may help you get
to sleep, but it wears off and after two RAM
cycles and you pop up, Yeah, you pop up more
quickly into consciousness. When we come back, we are going
(22:29):
to tackle the other three pillars of health with Dr
Woodson Merrow. We are back and we are talking about
staying healthy with Dr Woodson Merrow. We have covered three
(22:51):
of the pillars of health, sleep, stress, and detox. We've
got three more. What would be your what's our next
on your priority list? Um? Well, I think connection is
really important because you know, I'm very spiritual by nature.
But even if you're an atheist, being connected it could
(23:12):
be connected to nature, to your family, to a higher power.
I think that connection has been shown to a patent
animal is very powerful effect on helping longevity, the immune system,
heart disease. It's really key to be to be connected.
And whether you do it through prayer or you do
it through being out of nature. With the thing about
forest bathing that came from Japan and their Scotland now
(23:35):
doctors prescribing taking a walk in the works, I think
that being being connected to nature, we're just disconnected. We
leave fast, busy lives and were alienated from each other.
We're very insular often and we don't we're not connected
with nature. We don't really part of the problem with
people not appreciating what's happening with the climate, they're just
not connected. I love Larry Darsky saying that anybody who
(23:56):
could should vote on anything to do with the environments
is required to go camping for one week a year
to appreciate absolutely nature. I think I saw that we
spend you know, I don't. I think the average person
is outside less than an hour a day now and
outside tragic from one building another on concrete sidebox. One
(24:17):
of my what you know people that I love is
is justice William or Douglas and just being court justice.
And what he used to do is every day take
a walk in the woods. And he said he made
all his important decisions while he was walking in the woods.
It was just just mindfulness walk. It would just come together. Yeah,
so it's what if you're living in a city though,
I mean a lot of our listeners, maybe like Joe
(24:38):
lives in part of Brooklyn. Yeah, the Prospect Park means
a lot to me. I have to say, No, it's true.
Is it artless? You did every day? Part of the
part of the thing about being being connected is really
about being a gracious and grateful and that's part it
needs to be incorporated as part of your life. You
just need to be, on a daily basis feel connected
and want to be of a giving nature and full
(25:01):
um for what you have and gracious and then try
to make the world a better place. And that's the
easy platitude, but really it's it's what we people need
to do. It's a very selfish world we're in right now.
And if we need to be much more outgoing with
others and being connected in any way we can, whether
we have a pet or we haven't. You been in
touch with the family member, even at work? How you
(25:22):
how you act to the people around you. Facebook doesn't count,
right boy? Quite the yes, it's quite anti connect all right.
So give us another pillar than of health. Um, Now, exercise.
Well that's uh, that's interesting because you know you don't
have to do a lot of exercise to be healthy.
A brisk walk twenty minutes a day is enough to
(25:45):
reduce the risk of heart disease and increased longevity. So
more is better, but being active is the key, um.
And kind of an ideal that I would tell most
of my patients is try to do aerobics for twenty
or thirty minutes, ideally three or four times a week.
It could be anything. Could be biking, it could be
a more like a race, walk, swimming, it doesn't matter,
(26:07):
just so you get your heart rate up. Um and uh,
for you get your heart rate up, well, the goal
is to twenty mine is your age and then of
that for but for most people, let's say we're in
the middle age, it's about twenties, so you can stop
and take your pulse for ten seconds to see if
it's having twenty beats, and you want to do that
for about twenty thirty minutes, and then you want to
(26:30):
do if you did that, a couple of sets of
crunches where your backstays on the floor, and knee push
knee push ups or the plank. That's it. That's like
a full workout, so it doesn't take a lot. You know,
it's funny because you're talking about these pillars as if
there's something separate, but it looks like they're all connected.
Because when you're talking about exercise, it's probably the best
(26:52):
and most effective way to deal with both stress and
sleep right, and you're talking about detox the most effective
way to keep your body detoxified is how you eat.
So it seems like all of these pillars are actually
more not rather than pillars, are kind of interconnected completely.
It's a it's a it's a web, just like our
body is a web kind of in psycho neuroimminology, the mind,
the nervous system uses they're the same thing. They're just interconnected.
(27:14):
And so for all the lifestyle factors like exercising enough
will burn calories, but it also suppress the the appetite
to eat more. Well well, okay, just from personal experience,
I've I've asked my husband and he said it's actually
true for women, but not for men. I find I
cannot lose weight if I'm exercising. I don't know. It
(27:35):
doesn't feel like I'm eating more, but apparently i am.
And if I want to drop weight fast, I just
don't exercise when I'm eating less. And what is that about,
bag That's one that's difficult to explain. Obviously, you're putting
on muscle. It's not about the weight disremember, and so
one shouldn't be a slave to the scale. It's about
body fat. So really it's about your waistline. So if
(27:55):
your pants are getting tired, it's not muscle, right, you
really want to be aware of what your kind of
body fab percentage is without without looking at this. Really,
excercise does make me hungry. You know some people, it
does some people. They particularly they go into not having eaten.
So one of the things to do is actually to
have a bit of something for and you actually then
say shape the need for calories with the with which
(28:18):
you need for the exercise, So maybe like an hour
before you don't sort of get yourself into a deficit
hall Yes, and cocute ten is interesting. Studies on coins
and cute ten showing actually improves exercise recovery, so some
people will use that an hour before exercise as well.
Does it help make the exercise more effective? It helps
the recovery of the muscles because it helps the technically,
(28:40):
it helps the amount of condy to produce energy better
for the recovery that's needed when you traumatize the muscles
from exercise and it has to repair, it gives the
more energy for the repair process to then make you
stronger for the next exercise. And so diet is the
final sort of pillar of good health. But it seems like,
(29:02):
you know, it's all about the fruits and vegetables that
you were talking about in the Detox. It is Michael
Poul and it's you know, basically it's a plant based diet.
Um the more fruits and vegetables you either, there's no
way you can match the power of the phytochemicals that
aret fruits and vegetables with really any other food. It's
interesting because a lot of people are going to keto
(29:23):
diets and paleo diets um. And first they work, but
but that at the sacrifice of a more balanced diet.
I think there's for a lot of people when they
get older, you know, and the metabolism is tanking rapidly
after forty or fifty um. And believe me, I've been there,
and it's not it's not not a pretty picture. What
you have to do to stay you know, trim hopefully's
(29:47):
atrium is that um. You really have to be aware
the grain grains or something that for a lot of
people are really just sabotage some bread, poster rice, rolls, potatoes,
those that goes to fat so quickly if you're not
really burning up a lot of all reads and and
also hidden the oils. Oils are highly clark they're very
very healthy, but they're they're very caloric. So that's something
(30:07):
a little bit on on why on the diets of
people are using to try to lose weight. But the
goal is to ultimately have a balanced diet, have a
rainbow diet with fruits, invent genic diets acerently not balanced,
lean protein, lean protein, clean fish if you can get it.
If you have someone that will come to you a
patient who is morbidly obese and they need to drop weight, Um,
(30:31):
would you put them on a ket ketogenic diet to
get to a healthier playing weight and then have the
meat more sustainably or would you just say let's do
this really slowly. You want something sustainable. So you know,
most people who are morbidly obese have been through some
kind of weight loss fat in the past and they've
regained the weight. The problem is when you used to
(30:52):
use work at a weight of liquid weight loss centerway
when I was in my residency mood lighting it, what
would happen is people who is wait very quickly. The
problem is when you lose weight fast, you lose more muscle,
and when you put weight back on you lose you
gain fat. So if you if you do a YO,
you actually have a higher body fat percentage and you
did when you when you before you lost the weight.
Over time, you're changing the makeup of your body. Yeah,
(31:15):
and so you really need to to actually do something.
Because I love weight watchers, I mean for products, but
I think and we did not arrange this ahead of time.
I think it's an amazing organization because what they do
is they teach you to eat for life. And I
think that there are many other organizations. I'm sure that
they are quite good like that also, but I think
to actually make a change that you can get sustainable
(31:37):
and they have you enjoy. The food deprivation is not fun.
The key too, diet is not really is not fun.
You know, fats and protein with a little with some
with a lot of vegetables, it's not with some people enjoy.
But with something like a balanced diet with weight watches,
you just change your your life gradually and eventually you
get it's really a behavior change company. It's not a diet.
(31:58):
Come yes. And you know, for example, a tablespoon of
any oil, whether it's olive oil and beef hat has
about the same cows but on hundreds. So just one
tablespoon a day of oil is equivalent of twelve pounds
a month or twelve pounds a year of fat. So
you can actually make small changes that have big results.
If you're not doing something as a quick fat you
(32:20):
if you want to lose it fast, you can do
something like the Keto diet, or some people get lucky
in the a b O diet works for them. It's
very idiosyncratic whether those work. The keyto diet work for
a lot of people, but it really puts you in
an altered metabolics, which, first of all, for some people
with health conditions is not safe um, but other people
are just really. The other thing about the key too,
dies that you want to be in ketosis, which means
(32:42):
you want to be eating a lot of fat. As
soon as you you come out of that. All the
fat you're eating has a much greater chance of going
to fat than as opposed to fat burning when you're
in ketosis. So if you slip from it, you're actually
one potato chip and it's all over. It's like an orthodoxy. Yes,
about balance, all about life and balance. Such great information
(33:04):
for giving us healthy during our Personal U Turns. Dr
Woodson Merrill, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr Merrill's book The Detax Prescription is available and I
think I think we all wish you were a personal
doctor in this book is probably the closest you can
get to it. Thanks again, Dr, thanks for having me
great connect with us. Tell us your health transformation stories
(33:25):
at U Turns Podcast.
The problem is that people think, well, I'm not that stressed.
I handful stressed pretty well. I have a lot of stress,
but I deal with it. And then all of a
sudden they begin to feel not well. They may feel tired,
they may moves, maybe down, and maybe more anxious. They
don't sleep as well. That's because what happens is that
you have all the stress you've ever had in your
life every day and you add to it. Welcome to You,
(00:33):
turns the podcast that we talk about changing. I'm Lisa
Oz and I am Jill Herzig and Lisa and I
are very good friends. But there's one thing that is
super different about us. You can detox and I cannot.
Lisa is able to say today and possibly tomorrow and
(00:53):
the next day, I'm not going to eat any solid food.
It will be good for me. I will cleanse my
body and I can, as you well know, I can't
go more than I don't know, maybe two and a
half hours without eating something, and I panic. I mean,
I'm such a bad Jew. I can't even do this
when I'm supposed to on the day of a tone.
I have never been able. But you're so good about
(01:15):
what you eat normally you don't even need to detox
your mom, You're so clean. I don't know if I
don't need to detox. I think, I think maybe I
do well. Detox is just one of the many things
that I try to incorporate into my life to keep
myself healthy because I have been guided by one of
the great gurus of health, Dr Woodson Merrill, and today
he's going to help guide us through what we need
(01:38):
to do, both of us, UM, to keep healthy during
periods of transition. Dr Merrill, When when we were when
we're trying to get through changes in the most healthy
and robust way. UM, what do you thank you so
much for being here today? To be here? Thanks for
having me. Dr Meryll is the founding executive director of
the Center for Health and Healing and UM and literally
(02:02):
the authority on all things wellness, one of them. So
how do we stay healthy when we're under stress and
we're going through life changes and and everything else is
up in the air. Well, it really is all about
managing lifestyle and the stresses. As a core to that
spiritual and stress your life should be balanced. You have
(02:23):
to have not just stress balance, but you have to
have all aspects of your lifestyle to be ultimately healthy.
People ask me what's the most important one, and that's
the one you're not doing. So really it's it's managing stress,
it's eating correctly, it's removing toxics or detoxing, exercising enough,
sleeping enough, and being connected. So if you're exercising great,
(02:45):
and you're eating well, but you're sleeping for hours or not,
you're you're not going to get there. So it's about
my life and balance and be being censured and stresses
of course of the core of so much of that.
Can we break those down all the like, unpack all
six of those? Do you want to start with? Detoxing?
For Joe hates my personal benefit, It's not that I
hate it, it's that I've never been able to do
(03:06):
it for more than two hours. So you know, when
I wrote the detox prescription, it lays out a juice cleanse,
but I think it's a great way of doing it,
and that when you do actually take in food in
liquid form every every two or three hours, so you
don't actually feel hungry, but you don't have to do
with what juice. You can do with foods, and you
can do with food to help the body to clean itself.
(03:26):
Where your body spends so much of our time trying
to get rid of toxins that are in in our diet.
It's uh, it's really shocking what's happening to the state
of food and how many pesticides and plasticides that there
are in our dialect microplastics are and almost all the
water now. So body spends a good amount of time
removing what shouldn't be in our system to get to
(03:47):
what should be. So the idea is to try to
be first all remove the toxins from your life. It's
pretty obvious, but there's a couple of good guides to that.
Environmental Defense Fund's got a great website e d f
do or that tells you about personal care and household
cleaning products, and Environmental Working Group w g dot org
about safe fish for example, to eat and organic foods.
(04:09):
So using Thosese guides to get rid of a lot
of things you wouldn't think about, like household cleaning products
that can affect estrogen distructures in our system, etcetera. And
then eating um foods that are healthy your body will detox.
Food is very powerful for helping it to detox, but
most people don't do the balance they need. And the
key there is fruits and vegetables and herbs and spices,
(04:31):
and most people, more than half the population is woefully
short on those things that could do it without some complex,
complex cleansing regimen. All right, I'm going to continue to
pull out your personal prescription for me with food. I
focus on healthy foods, lots of fruits and vegetables. Do
I need to Is it so important that I eat
(04:54):
organic that that that is the number one thing to
think about? Because I remember, you know, publishing actually when
I was the editor of the Oz magazine. The fact
that the most important thing is to get tons of
fruits and vegetables. If worrying about whether they're organic or
not is preventing you from doing that, don't worry about it.
(05:14):
Just eat as many as possible. But are you saying,
actually for detoxing purposes, do worry about that over detoxing? Yeah,
you really should be trying to remove toxins and to
put them back in the form of food that's not organic.
Is kind of countermans that what you're trying to do
so you don't have to be healthy. The key is
to have eight or nine helpings ideally of fruits and
(05:35):
vegetables today, uh, and to have them as organic as possible.
One of the things that eat w details us is
the clean fifteen and the dirty doesn't. So there are
some foods you don't really have to have organic, like
thick skin fruits, and others you really need to have organic,
like thin skin fruits. So I think it's more important
to get the total rainbow collection or fruits and vegetables
in a plant based diet every day and be as
(05:56):
organic as you can without being fanatic for sure. But
wouldn't that be a recommendation for all the time, not
just for a period of detox. You would because the
way that Joe lives is like a like a healthy
living three sixty um with detox it seems like it's
a limited period of time. It should You shouldn't be
(06:17):
detoxing your whole life, you know, so you can you
can actually a diet it's so clean you almost don't
need to detox. So the detox that if you're in
a situation where you actually feel like you've accumulated a
lot of unhealthy habits and foods and exposures, then the
idea of going on a cleanse is a great thing
to do, and you could do a five day clans,
do a one week cleanse. There's something called the fasting
(06:37):
mimicking diet of Aulter Longo, DIRECTORR of USC Longevity Institute.
I'm a huge fan of. You get to eighty cours
a day with the tricks to body, and you're thinking
you're starving, so the body resets the entire immune system
as though it's re saving you from starvation, and in
a five day cleanse. So there are many ways, many
ways of doing it, and do you're correct though The
(06:58):
key is all year long is lead a clean, healthy
dietary life. But think it's more important almost to have
the number of fresh fruits and vegetables than to have
them all be organic. We call it detoxing because that's
what's happening technically. But fasting has been a huge part
of human evolutions. I think every culture has had event
(07:20):
periods like celebrations or or um rituals, rituals of fasting um.
And naturally we when we were paleolotic, we would have
been fasting because we couldn't catch, you know, an antelope
that day. So I do think our body is kind
of designed too fast for periods of time. It's Holy
Correct and their re Society. They're very exciting showing at
(07:42):
twelve or fourteen hour fast it has Canna drumac results.
And that's just not eating from a p m to
eight am, so it's not going on some crazy juice
cleans are fast for for a week. It's actually incorporating
into your life very simple practices you can do on
a regular basis without having to fast for two or
three days. Sometimes water fast, if you've only to really
unhealthy and we can be, can make you feel worse
(08:03):
because you release a lot of the toxins that come
out of the system and then they can go into
other cells before the body can actually eliminate them. So
a water fast isn't really for everyone, which is why
I prefer to have some form of food if you're
actually trying to to remove toxic but very clean food,
so you the body spends much less time time trying
to get rid of additional problems and allows it to
(08:24):
clean out what's what's accumulated. Well, that's all music to
my ears that there is going to be some foods
um What is a sign that you might feel physically
or mentally that you that you kind of need to
to do with detox. If you're feeling tired or not
eating well, you're you're just not eating one you know,
you're you're having a problem, um fatigue, joint pain, rashes.
(08:45):
So it's kind of vague. Functional disorders can be can
be balance set, indiggestion, bloating, cramping, gas, being more reactive
to the environment than you should be with nasal stuffiness
can pretty much manifest itself in in any organ system
of the body. Just being off balance. Yeah, that feeling
off I think is something that at some point we've
(09:05):
all experienced that we have. You have to take assesse
of your If your diet is incredibly cleaning your environments clean,
then that's not where the money is in terms of
trying to make a transformation and maybe sleep or stress
or exercise. But if clearly you're challenging. You know, they
did a study recently all California, all wines, all organic
wines in California have glyfe stated in them. So, um,
(09:26):
you know, it's it's just it's difficult to get away
from everything. Everything has life stated it explain explain for
everybody with that which is because glid which is a
pesticide that's used um primarily that it's used on wheat,
but on many many vegetables, vegetables in particular grains, and
it's use it a lot higher doses. It's one of
the controversies behind the GMO GMOs or Look, if you're
(09:49):
using GMO to make wheat to grow in sub Saharan
Africa to feed the people with almost no water available,
and it saves up probably that's a amazing use of GM.
But if you using it so you can put much
more heurbicides or pesticides on the plant to kill the
animals before you kill the plant. Uh. And the problem
is that the animals have modified their their genes and
(10:10):
it takes more pesticide, So the GMO gets ramped up
to allow the plant to take more pesticides before it
gets harmed. It's also used to to make the wheat
dry fat dry out faster, to desiccate it before they
harvest it. So it makes it more lucrative and productive,
but not better for you. Yes, it's very tied into
the to the media right now because of the GMO
(10:31):
and the and the widespread use of it. One of
the most widespread used pesticides genermous side and Europe is
is uh disallowing it. But there are plenty of other
things in the environment, household cleaners or you know, there's
plenty of things that were exposed to on a daily
basis that are there are issues for a body and
having a difficult time removing. So they look and they say,
what the average for the CDC show there's an average
of over a hundred sixty toxic chemicals potentially toxic chemicals
(10:55):
in our body, but none of them, almost ever are
at a level where we technically cause a problem. But
the question is they haven't done is they looking at well,
is there an accumulative effect of all of these being
in your body at the same time? You know, if
you're if normal mercuries ten and your level is nine
and you have a hundred and sixty other chemicals, is
that somehow at nine is not so safe? He's not not.
(11:16):
Even if you think you're living pretty healthfully, you're being
exposed toxins. Okay, we're gonna come back and we're gonna
dig a little bit deeper into that. Before the break,
(11:36):
we are digging into detoxing and the need to detox
Even if you seem to be living a healthy life
like Jill, we are. Our environment is bombarding us with
toxins all the time, and we are speaking with Dr
Woodson Merrill. Are there things besides eating clean food? Are
there things we can do to accelerate the detoxing process.
Are there certain supplements or herbs we should be taking
(11:59):
to help us clear out therese toxins. So yes, And
when you when you said her as, you might have
been thinking of verbal herbal supsmans are capsuled. But I
just want to say that herbs and spices are Nature's
healing gift to it. They are so powerful, They're almost
more powerful than food in terms of cleaning out the
body as antioxidants and anti inflammatories. Tumeric, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, oregano,
(12:21):
rosemary unbelievably powerful in helping our body to repair itself.
So I think that food being your medicine, you can
they sell those, certainly capsule form. I think that tumeric
or cure crecuman, which is the active ingredient, is one
of my favorite new nutrients. It really is nature's gift
to us. It's it's an anti inflammatory. It helps the
body to detoxify. I love tumoric. It's pretty hard to
(12:43):
eat too. Tea spoons of tumeric to day and everything
you could, but it's take it. Yes, So I think
I encourage people to actually use what I call it
Indo Mediterranean diet where they actually use lots of herbs
and spices, because they really do help the body in
all of its repair process. US is dramatically. There are
supplements that you normally have people do it through through diet,
(13:05):
but one of my favorites it's very rare to cause
an interaction with things, is n A C knack or
an ascetial systeine UM. It really helps the body with
its detoxification processes, and it's converted to gluto than which
is the body's master antioxident. We can't make vitamin C
instead of that, we make glutathion, so n A C
(13:26):
is a precursor to that. It really helps the repair process.
And then it depends on specific things you're looking at.
For example, modified citrus pectin is helpful UM for pulling
out heavy metals at a little bit, not not as
much as the medications, but it can be cilantro it's
heavy metal. Clancio is Cilanio is great with heavy metals
Clarrela and spirolina. That actually buying the heavy metals and
(13:48):
the guts so they don't they don't get absorbed or
important if you're trying, if you're still being exposed to
those substances. It sounds all like things to be found
in Lisa OS's kitchen, Like say, she's I've seen the incredible,
incredible cook and her cookbooks are full of all these ingredients,
and now I know that she's secretly medicating all of us.
That's what that's all about. So can you talk to
(14:10):
us about some of the other fundamentals. So there's detoxing,
which I'm I promised to get into, but um, sleep stress,
Let's let's talk about some of the others as well. Uh,
pick stress because it's so pervasive and particularly you know,
people say it's it's worse now that it's ever been,
and it's you know, people's chress lovers incredibly high. I
(14:32):
don't think the Depression was a picnic or World War two,
so you know, it isn't like we haven't been subjected
to massive levels of stress. But I think it's it's
all pervasive now and we're exposed to so much more
with the media on a daily basis that it actually
is is very destructive uh, towards to our lives. UH.
And the problem is that people think, well, I'm not
that stressed. I handle stressed pretty well. I have a
(14:54):
lot of stress, but I deal with it. And then
all of a sudden they begin to feel not well.
They may feel tired, they made it moves, maybe down,
may be more anxious, they don't sleep as well, and
they see nothing has changed. And yet that's because what
happens is that you have all the stress you've ever
had in your life every day and you add to it.
So because cumulative like Dan Harris who wrote the book
Temper sent Happier, who all of a sudden had a
(15:15):
panic attack on TV, Like, where did that come from?
I thought everything was cool? And it's a It's an accumulation.
So the key for stresses is nipping it in the
bud before it happens. And certainly exercise is helpful, sleeping enough,
but you know, some form of relaxation exercise such as meditation,
which is the ultimate one, is critically important. I see
(15:37):
t I tell every patient that I see virtually to
begin to begin meditation. And what's interesting is that the
beginning of the day is the most important time to
do it. I know twice the day is exactly when
I find it the hardest to tack off. IM just
started to do t M on my bed and I'm
like out, Yeah, so doing in your bed that's called sleeping.
(15:59):
It doesn't count. Know, you're sitting up in you deeply meditating.
She's not a bit. So you know, the highest incidents
of heart attack by fo on awakening, really yeah, because
you make most of your hormones between three and five
am cortisol, growth hormone, thyroid, and you're coming out of
(16:21):
the dream state where you're trying to work out all
your anxiety unsuccessfully. I've include myself, and then you're you're
loading all the conscious subconscious thoughts, worries and concerns. They're
gonna pop out of your mind all day long. And
if you have a bad heart, bam. So every spiritual practice,
meditative practice always has you doing it early in the morning.
So when you first wake up, just to sit um
(16:44):
minute your comfortable chair across the leg on the floor
and just go to your breath for ideally, you know
ten to fifteen minutes and don't think of it as
a burden. In some days you just can't get to it,
even if you say, at the edge of your bed
for two minutes and go to your breath. Just the
intentionality that you're trying your life. And then the more
you do like exercise, the more of your day things
just don't get to you because your gervousister just doesn't
(17:06):
want them to. Why am I pretty sure that you're
going to tell me that I can't be drinking coffee
while you're doing it? Probably not are just or not
not ideal? Yeah, that wouldn't be managing. But coffee is
not that bad. It's just the amount of coffee that
that one does if one's kind of living on it.
As a stimulu side, I would say that, Um, the
majority of my people come into my office or dehydrated.
(17:28):
They don't drink enough water. I cannot tell you how
many hundreds of my patients feel like a three o'clock
They need a cup of coffee or a Snickers bar.
They get a brain fog or fatigue, and they're shocked
to see an eight ounce glass of water. The energy
and the mind just zooms back. They're literally just dehydrate
who drinks five to six classes, so's non caffeinated, minimy
sweet and beverage by three pm. Not not most, but
(17:50):
you need a lot of water water war yes, I
say water, but it's any non caffeinated sweep, decaf coffee
or herb tea, things like that, because the caffeine fly
just the water out of us. It doesn't count calvas
a diuretic, so it's kind of you kind of barely
even yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, you mentioned sleep as while
(18:10):
we were talking about meditation, not related, but can we
delve into that pillar. Yeah, so before the electric light
bulb was invented, the average hours asleep that the that
the American gout was the ten point two hours and
now and now at six point nine for women at
six point seven for men. So it isn't like that
our genetics have changed, actually, just that our our lifestyle
(18:32):
is changed and we still need sleep and all this
all the most. All the studies. Now, there's there's some
outlying studies to say you can get buying five or six,
but most of the show, really eight hours is the
sweet spot for really getting repair and regeneration of your
mind from stress. And also from physically, and so I
think that we're definitely an undersept nation. There was just
(18:52):
some article that popped up on my news feed actually
yesterday that said that people who got more than eight
hours of sleep had a higher mortality rate. I don't
know if I don't know if you saw that, what
the relevance of that is. I didn't go into details
of it, but I would bet that that's not most
people's problem. Uh So, I think in excess of anything,
but I can't eight to nine hours have been shown
(19:13):
to be fine. I love nine. I think if somebody
seeing even you have to, you may need to make
sure that things are okay. Why why are they needing that?
You said the average person has left that much before
their life folds. Yeah, I know. We're probably designed for
that evolutionarily. No, So that one study I haven't looked
at yet. I need to because I don't. I don't
get it. So I would say most people have trouble sleeping, though, um,
(19:37):
I know Moment talks about it all the time. When
your patients come in who are really struggling either to
fall asleep or wake up in the middle of the
night and can't get back to sleep. How do you
help them? So most people can get to sleep, especially
if they're not sleeping, because they're usually pretty exhausted. Um,
if you can't get to sleep, you can do relaxing things,
or take a take a relaxing bath with with lavender
(19:58):
or fs and salt in, or put on a gawn
They'll read a book. Um, do meditation, do breathwork, do
a little bit of yoga. Just to turn off the
mine and turn off the blue lights. For God's sakes,
the blue light from they come from computers and iPhones
is very, very agitating to the brain. You could turn
on a blue light blocker on Apple devices. It's called
a night shift and turn block the blue light, which
(20:19):
is the light that emanates from electronic devices. It's very agitating,
so turn that off an hour before you go to bed. Also,
the bigger problem to cuddling at least that without the
blue light blocker as a compromise. Um, like with my kids.
Sometimes the bigger problem people have as they wake up
three or four in the morning after a couple of
(20:39):
rem cycles and can't get back to sleep. Yes, this
is my d so. So the thing is when you're
when you're coming out. When you're waking up, you're always
coming out of a rem cycle. So you go down
deep stage one to three four deep sleep, and then
you come up through a rem cycle up to just
plow a consciously and go back down one to three.
You go through these rhythms a very hour and a
half or so during the night when you're coming up
(21:02):
from a rim cycle. Then it's often after tourist, your
recycled people pop up to consciousness if you wake up
and you start thinking, and almost always the thought myself included.
It's not a great thought. It's not like, oh my God,
the most wonderful I can't wait to get back. It's
any the problem you couldn't have fixed the day before.
It's almost always a negative thought you've had. I almost
(21:22):
can't help you. You need No, not that bad. There's
that I'm not going to do. But the thing, the
thing is, the thing is what what the best thing
to do is what I call dream remembrance, and that
is as you just get the glimmer that you're about
to come out of the dream, you'll get the awareness.
And now that I've told you, if you don't say
you remember your you'll you'll be aware of this to
be coming out of a dream. If it's just the
(21:44):
glimmer of a lamppost or a scary dream, it doesn't matter.
Hang onto the dream. You'll see a thought wanting to come.
You'll see that, you know, mortgage payment, thing issue coming
up or whatever. You've got to push it back like
a mind control exercise. Keeping the dream, keeping the dream,
and fifty percent of the time annual take you back
in the next RAM cycle. If you wake up and
start worrying, I've never heard that before. I think that
(22:05):
you're gonna have to do but which can be helpful.
But you've got dream remembrances is really important, and not
doing things that today you would sleep, like having you
to drink Lady Nights not. It may help you get
to sleep, but it wears off and after two RAM
cycles and you pop up, Yeah, you pop up more
quickly into consciousness. When we come back, we are going
(22:29):
to tackle the other three pillars of health with Dr
Woodson Merrow. We are back and we are talking about
staying healthy with Dr Woodson Merrow. We have covered three
(22:51):
of the pillars of health, sleep, stress, and detox. We've
got three more. What would be your what's our next
on your priority list? Um? Well, I think connection is
really important because you know, I'm very spiritual by nature.
But even if you're an atheist, being connected it could
(23:12):
be connected to nature, to your family, to a higher power.
I think that connection has been shown to a patent
animal is very powerful effect on helping longevity, the immune system,
heart disease. It's really key to be to be connected.
And whether you do it through prayer or you do
it through being out of nature. With the thing about
forest bathing that came from Japan and their Scotland now
(23:35):
doctors prescribing taking a walk in the works, I think
that being being connected to nature, we're just disconnected. We
leave fast, busy lives and were alienated from each other.
We're very insular often and we don't we're not connected
with nature. We don't really part of the problem with
people not appreciating what's happening with the climate, they're just
not connected. I love Larry Darsky saying that anybody who
(23:56):
could should vote on anything to do with the environments
is required to go camping for one week a year
to appreciate absolutely nature. I think I saw that we
spend you know, I don't. I think the average person
is outside less than an hour a day now and
outside tragic from one building another on concrete sidebox. One
(24:17):
of my what you know people that I love is
is justice William or Douglas and just being court justice.
And what he used to do is every day take
a walk in the woods. And he said he made
all his important decisions while he was walking in the woods.
It was just just mindfulness walk. It would just come together. Yeah,
so it's what if you're living in a city though,
I mean a lot of our listeners, maybe like Joe
(24:38):
lives in part of Brooklyn. Yeah, the Prospect Park means
a lot to me. I have to say, No, it's true.
Is it artless? You did every day? Part of the
part of the thing about being being connected is really
about being a gracious and grateful and that's part it
needs to be incorporated as part of your life. You
just need to be, on a daily basis feel connected
and want to be of a giving nature and full
(25:01):
um for what you have and gracious and then try
to make the world a better place. And that's the
easy platitude, but really it's it's what we people need
to do. It's a very selfish world we're in right now.
And if we need to be much more outgoing with
others and being connected in any way we can, whether
we have a pet or we haven't. You been in
touch with the family member, even at work? How you
(25:22):
how you act to the people around you. Facebook doesn't count,
right boy? Quite the yes, it's quite anti connect all right.
So give us another pillar than of health. Um, Now, exercise.
Well that's uh, that's interesting because you know you don't
have to do a lot of exercise to be healthy.
A brisk walk twenty minutes a day is enough to
(25:45):
reduce the risk of heart disease and increased longevity. So
more is better, but being active is the key, um.
And kind of an ideal that I would tell most
of my patients is try to do aerobics for twenty
or thirty minutes, ideally three or four times a week.
It could be anything. Could be biking, it could be
a more like a race, walk, swimming, it doesn't matter,
(26:07):
just so you get your heart rate up. Um and uh,
for you get your heart rate up, well, the goal
is to twenty mine is your age and then of
that for but for most people, let's say we're in
the middle age, it's about twenties, so you can stop
and take your pulse for ten seconds to see if
it's having twenty beats, and you want to do that
for about twenty thirty minutes, and then you want to
(26:30):
do if you did that, a couple of sets of
crunches where your backstays on the floor, and knee push
knee push ups or the plank. That's it. That's like
a full workout, so it doesn't take a lot. You know,
it's funny because you're talking about these pillars as if
there's something separate, but it looks like they're all connected.
Because when you're talking about exercise, it's probably the best
(26:52):
and most effective way to deal with both stress and
sleep right, and you're talking about detox the most effective
way to keep your body detoxified is how you eat.
So it seems like all of these pillars are actually
more not rather than pillars, are kind of interconnected completely.
It's a it's a it's a web, just like our
body is a web kind of in psycho neuroimminology, the mind,
the nervous system uses they're the same thing. They're just interconnected.
(27:14):
And so for all the lifestyle factors like exercising enough
will burn calories, but it also suppress the the appetite
to eat more. Well well, okay, just from personal experience,
I've I've asked my husband and he said it's actually
true for women, but not for men. I find I
cannot lose weight if I'm exercising. I don't know. It
(27:35):
doesn't feel like I'm eating more, but apparently i am.
And if I want to drop weight fast, I just
don't exercise when I'm eating less. And what is that about,
bag That's one that's difficult to explain. Obviously, you're putting
on muscle. It's not about the weight disremember, and so
one shouldn't be a slave to the scale. It's about
body fat. So really it's about your waistline. So if
(27:55):
your pants are getting tired, it's not muscle, right, you
really want to be aware of what your kind of
body fab percentage is without without looking at this. Really,
excercise does make me hungry. You know some people, it
does some people. They particularly they go into not having eaten.
So one of the things to do is actually to
have a bit of something for and you actually then
say shape the need for calories with the with which
(28:18):
you need for the exercise, So maybe like an hour
before you don't sort of get yourself into a deficit
hall Yes, and cocute ten is interesting. Studies on coins
and cute ten showing actually improves exercise recovery, so some
people will use that an hour before exercise as well.
Does it help make the exercise more effective? It helps
the recovery of the muscles because it helps the technically,
(28:40):
it helps the amount of condy to produce energy better
for the recovery that's needed when you traumatize the muscles
from exercise and it has to repair, it gives the
more energy for the repair process to then make you
stronger for the next exercise. And so diet is the
final sort of pillar of good health. But it seems like,
(29:02):
you know, it's all about the fruits and vegetables that
you were talking about in the Detox. It is Michael
Poul and it's you know, basically it's a plant based diet.
Um the more fruits and vegetables you either, there's no
way you can match the power of the phytochemicals that
aret fruits and vegetables with really any other food. It's
interesting because a lot of people are going to keto
(29:23):
diets and paleo diets um. And first they work, but
but that at the sacrifice of a more balanced diet.
I think there's for a lot of people when they
get older, you know, and the metabolism is tanking rapidly
after forty or fifty um. And believe me, I've been there,
and it's not it's not not a pretty picture. What
you have to do to stay you know, trim hopefully's
(29:47):
atrium is that um. You really have to be aware
the grain grains or something that for a lot of
people are really just sabotage some bread, poster rice, rolls, potatoes,
those that goes to fat so quickly if you're not
really burning up a lot of all reads and and
also hidden the oils. Oils are highly clark they're very
very healthy, but they're they're very caloric. So that's something
(30:07):
a little bit on on why on the diets of
people are using to try to lose weight. But the
goal is to ultimately have a balanced diet, have a
rainbow diet with fruits, invent genic diets acerently not balanced,
lean protein, lean protein, clean fish if you can get it.
If you have someone that will come to you a
patient who is morbidly obese and they need to drop weight, Um,
(30:31):
would you put them on a ket ketogenic diet to
get to a healthier playing weight and then have the
meat more sustainably or would you just say let's do
this really slowly. You want something sustainable. So you know,
most people who are morbidly obese have been through some
kind of weight loss fat in the past and they've
regained the weight. The problem is when you used to
(30:52):
use work at a weight of liquid weight loss centerway
when I was in my residency mood lighting it, what
would happen is people who is wait very quickly. The
problem is when you lose weight fast, you lose more muscle,
and when you put weight back on you lose you
gain fat. So if you if you do a YO,
you actually have a higher body fat percentage and you
did when you when you before you lost the weight.
Over time, you're changing the makeup of your body. Yeah,
(31:15):
and so you really need to to actually do something.
Because I love weight watchers, I mean for products, but
I think and we did not arrange this ahead of time.
I think it's an amazing organization because what they do
is they teach you to eat for life. And I
think that there are many other organizations. I'm sure that
they are quite good like that also, but I think
to actually make a change that you can get sustainable
(31:37):
and they have you enjoy. The food deprivation is not fun.
The key too, diet is not really is not fun.
You know, fats and protein with a little with some
with a lot of vegetables, it's not with some people enjoy.
But with something like a balanced diet with weight watches,
you just change your your life gradually and eventually you
get it's really a behavior change company. It's not a diet.
(31:58):
Come yes. And you know, for example, a tablespoon of
any oil, whether it's olive oil and beef hat has
about the same cows but on hundreds. So just one
tablespoon a day of oil is equivalent of twelve pounds
a month or twelve pounds a year of fat. So
you can actually make small changes that have big results.
If you're not doing something as a quick fat you
(32:20):
if you want to lose it fast, you can do
something like the Keto diet, or some people get lucky
in the a b O diet works for them. It's
very idiosyncratic whether those work. The keyto diet work for
a lot of people, but it really puts you in
an altered metabolics, which, first of all, for some people
with health conditions is not safe um, but other people
are just really. The other thing about the key too,
dies that you want to be in ketosis, which means
(32:42):
you want to be eating a lot of fat. As
soon as you you come out of that. All the
fat you're eating has a much greater chance of going
to fat than as opposed to fat burning when you're
in ketosis. So if you slip from it, you're actually
one potato chip and it's all over. It's like an orthodoxy. Yes,
about balance, all about life and balance. Such great information
(33:04):
for giving us healthy during our Personal U Turns. Dr
Woodson Merrill, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr Merrill's book The Detax Prescription is available and I
think I think we all wish you were a personal
doctor in this book is probably the closest you can
get to it. Thanks again, Dr, thanks for having me
great connect with us. Tell us your health transformation stories
(33:25):
at U Turns Podcast.
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