June 12, 2025 • 52 mins
Dr. Dave Montgomery is a board certified cardiologist, psychology PhD and the author of There Is No Spoon. Dr. Dave opened his own clinic, PREventClinic, Inc where he focuses on nutrition and lifestyle tips and the best medical treatments to keep hearts in tiptop shape.
Connect with The Good Dr. Dave on his website davemontgomerymd.com.
Take a listen to his podcast, Health Mastery Cafe on all major platforms.
Thank you to our sponsor Honor The Brave.
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Connect with The Good Dr. Dave on his website davemontgomerymd.com.
Take a listen to his podcast, Health Mastery Cafe on all major platforms.
Thank you to our sponsor Honor The Brave.
Want more The On Purpose Podcast?
Find full episodes and more!
Check in on Instagram, Facebook
Connect with Jerrod!
Linkedin, Instagram
Get My Book!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to the On Purpose podcast. What's Up, Everybody?
Welcome back to this week's edition of the On Purpose podcast,
where you know it's our pleasure to show up with
you each and every week to get your thinking, get
you moving, get your wondering maybe or just what about this?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
What if? Our job is.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Just to remind you the importance of living life with
a little bit of curiosity, a little bit of why
did our paths cross? Why did this person come in
my life at this point? Why am I hearing this
thing now? Why am I reading this book now? Being
a little more curious and see where that leads us?
And I'm excited that you're here with us. I'm excited
(00:39):
you're curious enough to have been with us for six years,
and thank you so much for being in the community.
Otherwise it's just me talking to myself and or know
has already do that enough. So this week I'm excited
to be joined by a visionary and preventative healthcare someone
who is transforming the way we think about heart health, longevity,
(01:00):
and leadership in medicine. Doctor Dave Montgomery is a board
certified cardiologist, health educator, and the founder of prevent Clinic, Inc.
A practice dedicated to preventing preventative cardiology and primary care.
With both an MD and a PhD in physiology, doctor
Montgomery has spent his career not just treating patients. But
(01:23):
what I'm really curious to learn about today and why
I brought him on the show is one of his
missions is to empower them to take charge of their
health before problems arise. So you know how I feel
about workouts, You know how I feel about diet and nutrition,
and just constantly moving our bodies and our minds and
our spirits so we.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
See whole health right.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Health is a whole thing, not just something that's responsibility
to medical profession. So I'm excited to bring doctor Dave
Montgomery on the show. But before before we do, I
got to ask your help. Get over to your favorite
podcast apps, YouTube like subscribe, share, help us reach more
people around the world. Remember, our mission is to be
one of the most impactful podcasts in the world and
(02:08):
to reach more people that maybe need to hear some
of this is we need your help, So please do
that and then sit back and let me know what
you think about our interview today with doctor Dave Montgomery.
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Speaker 2 (02:31):
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(02:54):
Visit Honor the Brave dot com. We've got your six.
Dave Montgomery, Welcome today on Purpose podcast. My friend, I
can't say you I excited I am to sit down
and talk with you.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Man. I am equally excited to jump into this. I was.
I was looking at all the YouTube's, all the fantastic
guests that you have, and I was thinking to myself, boll,
I better think of something really good to say. I mean,
it really is an honor I know it sounds like platitude,
but it really is, especially given what you're about. And
hopefully I can add something to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Oh no doubt you will, and I wanna. I want
to thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
First off.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I always like to thank my guests, especially when they're
doing something like you are, which is breaking the norm,
getting outside of maybe the traditional message, and really getting
people to empower their wealth before they have to come
see you.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a critical piece I think everybody
when we say we should be, you know, preventive, right,
it makes sense to a lot of people and it
smacks as true, But unfortunately we still don't operate though
like that. We certainly don't operate like that in American healthcare.
It really is reactionary. And as much as we want
(04:03):
to change that, it is like changing a big, big
ship and trying to turn it. It's a big, stodgy thing.
It takes a long time to turn that ship around.
But I think each little bit counts. The name of
my clinic heared, as you know, is prevent clinic, as
in prevention, and we emphasize the pre in the in
(04:24):
the typeset on purpose because we want to get there
before events happen, before one becomes so ill that you're
an extremist, and that's the name of the game.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, And I love what you said there, that analogy
of turning the ship, because that first turn we make
on that wheel the ship, we don't even notice we're
moving in a different direction. But if we keep turning it,
eventually we're heading in a new direction. I think that's
such a key thing for us in the medical field
and how we empower our health is not to look
for an immediate result tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's exactly right. And and and
to further the metaphor, boy, if you stop before you
can you know, see the outcomes because you turn that
wheel and boy, nothing's moving, you can't perceive a change.
But in fact, underneath the surface, the rudders are doing
whatever it's called. You know, they're moving and they're trying.
(05:16):
But if you stop the turn before you can see
it on the outside, then you miss it. And that's
also a part of this. So this is such a
great analogy that we're using and it applies directly to
how we function in our physiology. So it's great.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah, I think it's it's called momentum, right, it's building momentum.
Whatever we do in life starts with one little action,
not a giant leap. And with that mind, I gotta
warm you up. We can't just deliver this big content
to people right away. I got to make sure our
hamstrings are nice and loose. Yeah, I know, right, all right,
doctor Dave, you ready for your warm up?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, let's do it, all right.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
What are you gonna choose? Sunrise or sunset?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Oh? I'm a sunrise guy.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Well? So, I you know, I don't know what it
is about me, but I just I have the most energy,
the most ideas in the morning, you know, in fact,
even before the sun rises. But if I had to choose,
I just am on in the first part of the day.
I get up at four forty five to work out
on you know, three days a week. I get up
(06:24):
at five o'clock on the other days, not just because
it's a task or a cho of responsibilities, just because
I'm ready to get started. I'm anticipating, you know what
I can accomplish the you know, in this day, and
I'm just excited about life, so, you know, getting up
and doing that in the sunrise that's uh, that's for me.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh, I love it. What's a quote that's stuck with
you throughout your life?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Oh man, there's so many. One that is with me
right now is by William James, who is also a physician.
I didn't know he was a physician until recently. William
James is a writer who's writings of just sort of
span time, and he says, compared to what we ought
to be, we're only half awake. That the human individual
(07:12):
is only using a part of his mental and physical abilities.
That stating the thing broadly, he says, if we could
only use the capacity that we have, boy, we could
accomplish some fantastic things. I think that applies broadly to
you know, very many things. And I broke up the
(07:32):
quote a little bit, but that's what it is. We're
we're not even half awake, you know, as to what
we can do. So when it comes to AI and
all these other things, we're only just getting to the surface.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh powerful.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
What's a song that's stuck in your head or on
repeat in your playlist?
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Oh right now, I'm gonna cheat and well, so so
here's what I'll say. So very often I'm not listening
to music. So just to be you know, full disclosure,
I'm listening on Audible to Beyond Entrepreneurship Jim Collins. There's
a two point zero version, and then on my Apple
(08:08):
music is the Science of Being Great by Wallace Waddle,
So that's actually on repeat quite a bit. And I
actually like Eliza Foss's narration because she she really just
knows how to sink it in. So that's that's what
I'm listening to non music.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Though, Yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Favorite book, My favorite book right now is Resurrection by
I'm Good Neville Goddard Goddard Neville Goddard, and Resurrection was
written a really long time ago, but it's really about
(08:44):
your power of imagination, the power that you have to
think a new thought to have a new experience in life.
And it's it's rich. I read it over and over
against like doggy air, it's like falling apart. But Resurrection, yeah,
I've had that.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
That's honestly, that's one of my favorite questions of all
the guests, because I'm always looking for something else to read. Yeah,
I just piggyback off what they're telling me, so that
that's going to move to.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
The top and it's and it's a quick read. You know,
it's small, but boy, that thing gets used up. You know,
it's a it's a small book, but boy, you know
packs a punch.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So I all right, doctor Dave, one last question. You
get to have dinner with somebody, they could be with
us or have passed on. Who would you have dinner with?
And what would you want to ask them?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah? So what would I want to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson? Boy,
I mean this guy, I don't know where he comes from,
because you know what I think of you know, physicists
in general, you know, astrophysicists, that that whole thing is
that they have a different concept of life and what
(09:46):
we really are. So you'll remember Einstein, you know, kind
of uh, you know, took us into a different way
of thinking about matter. He said, there is no matter.
What we call matter is just energy whose vibration has
been so lowered as to be perceptible to the human sensus.
(10:08):
There is no matter. I just think the physicist, I
think they think about life differently. So yeah, I want
to hear about planets and what they think about what's
out there. But I want to evolve my thinking about
what we're here for what are we doing? And the
truth of the matter is there is this through line
for all of us, no matter what the divisions are,
(10:29):
we're just all really the same energy. The quantum physicists
have it right, you know, it's the unified field, right,
It's manifested in the matrix. Remember in the matrix, right,
the first one where Neo right when he really figured
out who he was, he turned into this just field
of energy. Think about it. And once he did that,
(10:52):
here's the here's the message. I think once he got
beyond the surface of the of the humanness and got
to truly who he was, he was able to do
some super like, some phenomenal things. If we could just
get past the things that we used to filter us
away from each other, we could do some phenomenal things.
And I think it'll eventually happen.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, that's interesting you bring him up because he's very
intriguing for sure, Like I'll listen to him and a
lot of it goes way over my comprehension level. But
what I love about him is he's not afraid to
throw it out there and take the criticisms that comes
his way as well.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, well, he's a scientist and
we're born as a little baby scientist. I always tell
people I was a physiologist before I became a cardiologist.
I did a PhD. And if you don't learn to
get thick skin in there, buddy, I mean you just
forget about it, because I mean everything you say is questions.
And so I love that about him too, that he
(11:49):
brings all that experience and says, if I can't defend
what I think is true, what am I doing saying it?
If I can't, you know, withstand a couple questions here
and there, maybe I should rethink this. But everything is
at risk of being questioned. Remember, there was not too
long ago, several hundred years ago, that if you had
a fever, we would just cut your vein open and
(12:10):
let it let your blood drop into a pale. They
call it blood letting. Yeah, And we figured that that
was not the right thing to do because many people were,
you know, super pale. Can't you know, can't think straight.
But you didn't have a fever anymore. So you know,
everything should be at risk. What we think is true
now across every different line of thought you can think of,
is at risk of being changed. And some new thinking.
(12:33):
I love that a scientist could be part of the
people the professions to help us think differently about existence.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So, yeah, it's funny you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I was just doing something the other day and one
of the messages I had for our community was to
to go live curious today, like be ultra curious. Why
did doctor Dave come across my field of view today?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
What am I supposed to learn? What am I supposed
to teach? What if I'm wrong? And everything I think
I already know? Yeah, what I listened differently to you?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah, isn't that amazing, not just learning but also teaching.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The hand it hand?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah, No, it's it's it's it's critical. And and I
think this idea that we would go through some of
are long held deepest, you know, closest thoughts and ideas
about things and people in life, and just be willing
to let it be raked over the call so that
we can evolve. Ooh, that's a that's a fantastic thing.
(13:42):
I'm trying to teach that here at my office. That
you know, although it doesn't feel amazing to be coached
on something as you think you're doing it right and
you know, Sometimes you get coached and you you run
to this idea that what you've been doing is not correct.
Sometimes that can be you know, that can hurt your
feelings a little bit, you know, but if you'll allow
(14:04):
yourself to be human and say, okay, yeah, my ego
gets bruised by that a little bit, but then I'm
gonna be better. So the people who strive to always
be better are people who can be coached, but then
also not afraid to also coach. That's the other thing.
It's a bi directional thing, and it goes way beyond
us how we're taking care of patients. It goes to
(14:25):
what you're saying, it's just everyday life. If I'm willing
to learn from you, Jared, boy, my life can be
different and I evolve from the caterpillar to the larval stage.
You know, boy, just a little bit longer and I'll
and I'll get there, you know, to the butterflies.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
So yeah, yeah, no, and I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
That's such a like you mentioned earlier, the divisiveness of
some of the climate of society nowadays, that's one of
the ways we combat that is not being held so
hard to our beliefs. Yeah, that we're not open to
see anybody else's and we're not even willing to discuss
it with each other and learn from one another. Because
as I've gotten older, what I've realized, doctor Dave, is
(15:05):
I'm wrong far more than I'm right about anything.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, right. And when you first came and when
you first come across that, you're like, holy mon, what
have I been doing?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Right? I want to go back to my decade of
the twenties because I thought I knew so much and
now I'm like, dude, you were wrong about so many things.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
That's right. And guess what. We all get to go
through that, and that is a beautiful thing that we
get to go through that. Listen, and it's painful. I mean,
I don't know what the caterpillar feels like when it
kind of balls up into that thing. Man, you know,
you go from the pupils, stay like, that's got to
be painful, but you know the next stage is more
(15:45):
beautiful still, and if you will just keep going, you'll arrive.
You'll arrive at that fully evolved person. Man. Who I mean,
we've heard plenty of stories where you've got people with
these like staunched draconian views and then somewhere in there
lives they realized that it's just the unified triol and
we're all really just the same. Like it's mind blowing,
(16:08):
like we really are the same. And when you get
to know somebody, you're like, man, you know what, I
would actually think like that, dude like that, Guys like me,
you know, But we just have to take the time
to do it. I think some of the friction and
why things aren't going is because we're fighting against something
that we're intrinsically innately how we are. If you're a
(16:30):
certain way but you keep fighting against it, your course
is going to be rough. If you go against the grain,
it's harder. Yeah. If you go with the flow, the
natural flow of life, man, you could, I mean, you
can go far and it's less of a taxing thing. Right,
So anyway, I'm droning here.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
No, I love that, because you're absolutely right. That is
one of the defaults I think in Western society, you know,
mostly is that we've tried to control all the thing
is a really uncontrollable life, and we spend so much
time trying to control things that we have very little
input on. Yeah, and if we'd release that like if
(17:10):
we released the fact that there might be traffic today,
it doesn't need to cause me stress, Like it's just
part of living in the city. We released that maybe
our neighbors dogs are gonna come in our yard. It
doesn't need to be the end of the world, right,
Like we have all these things we can't control, but
we put so much energy in that, and then what
we can control, like our.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Health, Like there you go, we don't well, we.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Kind of just throw it out there and be like, well,
we'll just see how it goes. And that's kind of
what I wanted to transition here is what inspired you
to bring the Prevent Clinic to life?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, that's such a great question, and you know, I
sometimes pause because I had to really you know, when
people say, you know, what's the origin story? I had
to sit down and think about it. Literally had to
write some notes because it's easy to just go about life, right.
But when I was training at Northwestern in Chicago, my
medical training, I was in my residency. This is before cardiology,
(18:10):
and because I knew I wanted to be a cardiology
cardiologist since grad school. Before that, I was just keen
on everything cardiology, right, so just you know, just prick
of my ears on anything that came across. And what
I learned very early on was that heart disease kills
more people than any other condition in this country and
many other industrialized countries. But here's the kicker. We know
(18:33):
how to stop heart disease from killing people partly because
we know what causes heart disease. Now think about this.
It kills more people than all the cancers combined. And
that blows people's mind when you hear it. We don't
know what causes many of the forms of cancer. We
sort of give a general basket of you know, when
(18:54):
we hear about a celebrity or something on the news
who has cancer, Well, what are the things I should
look out for, which generally, you know, lifestyle things, just general.
We don't know on the cellular molecular level, just exactly
how that happens. And so it makes sense that we
still don't know how to save people from the cancers,
many of them. We know exactly what causes the commonest
(19:15):
killer of people from a heart disease standpoint exactly, and
we know and we're doing it now. How to stop
people from dying. Something is wrong when you kill that
many people when you allow that many people to die,
it' should say, Mark, But you know how to stop it?
But then, so what's the answer, Because as a scientist,
I was always prone to ask and try to answer questions.
(19:38):
It's the scientific method, that's what we do. And one
of the things that buoy to the top and all
of my sort of machinations around this thing was that
we don't test people enough that in the American healthcare
system we would rather save a dollar than to do
a test, or to make the test more affordable. And
then once we find the disease not aggressive enough, and
(20:01):
that's really nuanced, I'm i'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of
zooming out, But that's exactly what it is. And part
of the reason is because we don't want to use
certain strategies to help people prevent it. But that's also
a failing of American medicine. And so I just decided
I couldn't be a part of the cabal, right and
just do things the same way that we've always done it.
(20:24):
And it was in the you know, you kind of
get this this desire that just won't leave you alone, right,
And it just kept coming since residency, and literally I think,
you know, Providence, the universe, God is like, listen, you're
gonna either do this. I'm gonna make you physically ill.
I got physically I'll sall right, I'm gonna do it. Okay,
I'm gonna go and open this thing. And I was
(20:46):
scared to death because the industry was going in the
opposite direction. There were no little groups, you know, small
private practices coming, you know, popping up. They were being absorbed,
They're being bought and purchased, and because of that, you
are a part of I'm using the word cabal. But
I did it, and three months into it, I was like,
why did I do this five years ago? You know,
(21:08):
It's funny how that works. And then we started to
see that it was successful, not because of Dave Montgomery,
but because it was an idea whose time had come.
That people have been looking for somebody who's just going
to test them and when they get tested and find
something or be super aggressive, and that's what we did.
So that's the origin story there.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Let's talk about facing that fear of going to be different,
because I think for all of our community, no matter
what they're facing today, that courage to be different it's
going to be tested.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I'll tell you buy That
brings up so many things. I'll start with this story.
When I had decided, I remember when I got I
went to the federal website and I got my EI IN.
This was January of the year that I that was it.
I said, if I'm going to get this EI in,
(21:59):
I gotta do it right. So once I got the
ei N, I started planning and strategizing, and I also
planned when I was going to tell people. When I
started telling people, my colleagues, the vast majority of them like,
what are you talking about? Why would you do that?
Like one of my closer colleagues whom I still hold deer,
(22:21):
said but what's the benefit? And I said, the benefit
is I get to practice in the way that I think.
They No, no, no, no, no, what's the benefit? I mean
she was she was angry, okay, And I said no, no, really,
like I get tot you no, what's the benefit? Like so,
you know, it just didn't It didn't click to anybody else.
(22:41):
And I said, it's not my job to try to
convince everybody else of this. It's my job to focus
on that that that what you know what was before
me to do, and it was very clear that this
was my Uh it sounds hokey, doesn't it destiny like
I had to do this and uh and and it
(23:04):
is being different. And so some of those people, you know,
they're not we're not friendly anymore. And I couldn't understand why.
And my wife said, you know, maybe it's a reflection
on them. I was like, nobody's reflecting on anything that
I'm doing. But maybe it is. Maybe they feel like
it's a reflection on what they're doing. I don't. I
don't know what it is. But being different takes courage.
(23:25):
It is lonely, if I could say this at the top.
It's lonely when you're at the top of an idea.
It's lonely when you're at the first through the gate
and you and and you're going through that fire. But
it is also worth it when you know that eagle
soar alone and only those heights that an eagle can
(23:48):
fly are for an eagle. And I guess I'm doing
eagle stuff. I don't know. It sounds ridiculous when it
comes out of your mouth, but that's that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
I think. No, and I think you're right, and I think,
what are your thoughts on this? That it's lonely if
you get to the top and try to stay in
the same circle with people that didn't also want to come.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
To the top.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
But if you get to the top and you embrace
a new circle, you cannot find other eagles come up there too.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
That's right, that's right. You'll be among eagles. You'll notice
that there are many other eagles when you get up there.
It's like if you buy a green car. Oh my god,
all these green cars. I never saw some green cars,
you know, and it is it is. That's exactly right.
I would agree with you there, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And I love I love having the courage to be different.
I love having what you said there is you felt
like you had to do it, like you just would
go to sleep and would tell you, like you better
do this.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah no, no, I physically became ill like it was
and it was visible.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Okay, So in just a very short line, one of
my eyeballs stopped doing what I wanted it to do.
With my brain, it just starts going inside. And I
went to all listen, Jared, I went to every doctor
you can imagine. I had every scan MRIs. They were
poking needles in doing what they call single fiber studies,
(25:12):
you know, these little things, trying to figure out what
it was. And I started this is my first year
of doing purely plant based, all vegan, no process plants.
And in that was also a period where I had
to do some introspection and started sort of weeding things out,
(25:32):
kind of that thing which you were talking about controlling,
like stop trying to control things you don't have any
chance of controlling. But also in that stillness, in that quietude,
I found the message was you want to come back
to this idea we've been talking about to you inside
your head for the last fifteen years. And boy, I
(25:53):
literally as soon as I decided to do it, I've
got on this vegan diet. The eyeball shifted back over.
It's not completely normally because I was like, Domina, it's
gonna remind you, buddy, okay that if you if you
don't keep on this road. I'm being a little bit silly.
But I literally was physically ill and it was visible,
right and you know, whether this is a part of
(26:16):
some you know, higher plan or not. I took it
as that And when I started doing what I was
supposed to do from this message that had been there
for so long, the illness went away, and I started
being able to control what I can control, what I
am to control, you know, you know it's it's interesting
(26:39):
because if I go back even further, I started off
with the idea that I was going to be a
bench scientist, a basic research scientist. I did a PhD
in Physiology and Biophysics department at the University of Illinois, Chicago,
and my dream was to not just be a clinical doctor,
but to also be a researcher that's at the hutting
(27:00):
edge of cellular molecular discovery. And I was very fortunate.
I had some fantastic mentors. We were successful in that
in that realm published a lot who started publishing early
first authors, you know, all of the you know the things.
And I started my clinical work with the idea that
(27:24):
I was going to do that. And then I realized
that although you're good at something, it doesn't mean that
that's for you. Although you can do something well, that
may not be your jam. And when I started listening
to what my jam was, when I say listen to
that internal listening, being still I realized that I would
(27:48):
often get into the flow state when I was with patients,
forget about what's going on. It's like the poem by
John Yoo about Jackson. You remember the movie about Pollock,
which is go into this different zone. And in the
poem he says, when I am painting, I am not
(28:12):
doing what I am. I'm in what I'm doing. When
I'm painting, if I'm doing what I am, I'm not
in what I'm doing. And I'm like, and the pointment
is like really deep, it gets real deep. But but
I mean it makes your spinding. And I'm like, that's
exactly it. Like when I forget that I'm a doctor
(28:36):
and just doctor. It's unbelievable. And the feeling like it's, yes,
you're helping people, but at the same time you are
getting fed here. It's a sole level thing. And I said,
who doesn't want to do this all the time. So
it was hard for me to break with this idea,
for me to change my mind about what my career
would look like, that I'd spent this time in research
(28:59):
and understanding my philosophy about science and medicine, and you know,
somebody said, well, you know, you waste it all that time.
It wasn't wasted at all. In fact, I'm using it
even today as I'm talking to you. Just the reasoning
and the thinking and my philosophy about life. And when
I decided I was just going to focus on what
(29:19):
I was supposed to do, then all of that made
sense now that I had to get ill because you're
going to try to be some you know, bench scientists. No, no,
I don't want you to be a bench scientist. I
want you to go and sit with people, whether it's
on a large scale or on one on one, and
deliver a message that I'm going to use you to
(29:40):
be a vehicle for. That's what it was.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
That's amazing. And there's a couple of things that really
stand out to me. That first off is that just
because you were successful didn't solve your appetite to be
something different. Right, It's okay to walk away from being
successful in one or it doesn't mean we can't do
multiple things. And yeah, it's weird that people sometimes get
hamstrung by their success.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it's a I think it's
also a fear, and it's it's how we're you know,
you know, the people around you because I went to
medical school. As an aside. I went to medical school
with some really good, smart people who wished that they
could be concert violinists. M and they were really good, Like,
(30:26):
I mean, well, we would have our talent shows at
Northwestern Finberg School of Medicine. Let me tell you something, man,
the I mean, and you would be like that dude's
in a float like he is jammin over here. But
they didn't do that because, uh, you know, maybe somebody
told you must be a physician, you must be a surgeon,
you must be a you know. So I think that's
(30:46):
that's more common than we think.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
No, I think absolutely is. I think it's it's weird.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Right. Sometimes we've got people are like feel the hamstrung
by their shortcomings that are failures and they carry them
with them throughout life and they can't release it. Then
we have others that are hamstrung by their success and
they won't go be who they want to be because
they've had success maybe in another area that they didn't
choose to be, or they they were drip pushed to. Yeah,
(31:12):
and then what happens at the end of life there?
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Yeah, boy, I mean, and that's that's big because you know,
I think you know, it's a societal thing as well.
We just have these these occupations that we just think,
you know, you're supposed to do this, and there there's
certain you know, you know, families said listen, you got
you have to be one of four things. And that
(31:38):
comes from you know, historical reference, you know, like their
historical reference. And I and I understand that. But how
many examples can we point to across sectors, industries where
somebody decided waste management, for example, somebody just said I'm
going to be the best darn waste management garbage that
(32:00):
you could ever imagine, Like I'm gonna and that's a
billion dollar company, like somebody's you know what I'm saying,
Like somebody is making Do you remember the I forget
the story of this posted thing. Somebody said, I'm just
gonna make this post it like whatever you are to do,
do it. Henry David Thureau says we are constantly invited
(32:22):
to be what we are as to something noble and worthy.
I never he says, it's really important, I might get
this part he was talking about being deterred from it.
No one ever deterred me from being who I'm supposed
(32:43):
to be. But I still lagged and I tagged after
that thing. So we're constantly being invited to be exactly
who we're supposed to be. And that thing that was,
you know, yearning in me, it had to be birth.
It was an idea whose time had come. And I'm
still searching. Can I still be who I am to be?
Who I can be, who I should be? And that's
(33:05):
part of it.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
I love it, and I love your story that this
purpose in your life, that this drive kept coming back
to you and even caused medical issues for you to
really push it that way. How important is having a
purpose in our lives and having a reason why we're
going to sacrifice and move ourselves forward and maybe face
(33:29):
our fears so important not just for our lives, but
our health and our well being.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah, you know, I wish I knew the answer. I'll say,
you know this, we all have one. And I think
that's what ties back to this idea that not everybody's
supposed to be an orthopedic surgeon, that in fact, there
is a really important place for a concert violinist, or
else we wouldn't go to the symphony, or else we
(33:57):
wouldn't have you know, the school of movies with violins
in it. There is somebody, believe it or not, who's
supposed to be a center on a basketball team, or else,
we wouldn't spend billions of dollars going to watch it.
There is somebody who's supposed to pick up the waste,
or else we live in scum. Yeah, your purpose is there,
(34:21):
and I think, how do you find it? It's not
a finding, it's an uncovering, it's an unfiltering. It's there
already and you can just harken to it. When it's
when you find yourself doing something that you lose time
with that flow state. We talk about the flow state
(34:41):
when you just forget about what's happening. Now. I had
a debate with somebody. You know what if that's I'm
playing my video game. Well, it depends, right, if you're
playing a video game and you're within the game and you're,
you know, experiencing that game very differently than somebody else.
You're supposed to be a gamer because there's something there,
there's some a place for the person who's supposed to
(35:03):
be a gamer, or else, we wouldn't spend millions and
millions of dollars on games. Do you see what I'm saying?
So whatever you whatever is is you know, you know,
really jazz is you and you lose time you're like, oh,
let me, let me hurry up and get out of here.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
That is the breadcrumbs. Follow them to what you're supposed
to do, and no matter what it is, if you
will just acknowledge it and just say, boy, maybe let
me just explore this just a little bit. What harm
would it take or would it do if I just
explored this a little bit. So I don't know that
(35:44):
that larger question, but I know we all have one.
If you fight against your purpose, it's like fighting against
who you are. We're constantly invited to be who we are. Why,
because we're supposed to go through this evolution from caterpillar
to larval stage to pupil stage ultimately this beautiful butterfly.
(36:08):
And if you don't do it because of the fear
of pain to evolve, then you don't. You don't survive like,
you don't really thrive like you could be, and so
you become physically ill. Things seem just so hard. Every
facet of life is really really difficult for you because
you keep turning your your your back to what you're
(36:29):
truly here to do. And uh boy, I think it's
more common than we think.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
But that ties back to energy. Right If we really
accept that we are all energy and we're spending our
energy fighting against things, Yeah, well that's the energy we create, right,
so then our body thinks it should fight is a
fighting guest itself. Right?
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Are we causing our own health issues?
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Absolutely? Because every thought you think, if you talk to
the neurobiology, just every single thought you think has a
biochemical footprint. Right, So if you think negatively about yourself
in any vein, for that moment, you are that thing.
(37:15):
It's not just a you know, just a quote as
a man thinketh so is he period? That is a
physiologic truth as much as it is a soul spiritual truth.
It is very true that if you continue to think
that you're not worth it, I can't believe myself. You know,
why am I such an idiot? If you think the
words why am I such an idiot? The biochemical footprint
(37:37):
of an idiot is released in your body. The more
you think that. The more you release that biochemical footprint,
you keep doing something and you become that thing. You
keep thinking something you become that thing. You keep saying something,
whether you say it internally much more than you say
it outside, or you say it outside, you become that thing.
And that's an internal job. Is an inside job. After all,
(38:02):
I'm writing some stuff now, and health is an inside
job is one of the section titles. And the truth is,
we look outside ourselves very much when it comes to health.
We start, you know, we say, you know, exercise more,
we say get some sleep, eat less, you know, potato
chips for me, right, But we're missing the core and
that is the way that we view ourselves, the way
(38:24):
that we view life and our health, and when we
think about it on a basic level, it feels very otherworldly.
It feels sort of mystical, right you know, Oh I
can do you know, it's like the the mind body
connection is it freaks people out right. But the truth
is we're doing it all the time, you know, in
(38:47):
little ways, medium ways, and big ways. We're doing it
all the time. We're realizing that what we process inside
ourselves becomes who we are. And if you go through traditions,
I mean there's all kinds of people who've said this, right,
you know, uh, you know, Buddha says, you know, you
know you, you know what you are is a result
(39:09):
of what you have thought. It's a long quote, right,
you think about that. So if you if you maintain
and you keep an illness, then it's because you've attached
yourself to that illness. And that's a really hard thing too.
That's a bitter pill if you if you don't focus yourself.
Because let me let me back up for a second,
(39:31):
because that that's that's nuanced. I'll just say this because
I'll i'll take up too much time. There's two ways
to to not use your thoughts properly in this. You
can misuse them. Why am I such an idiot? You
know you know I'm I'm I'm fat anyway, so I
don't really care what I eat. I'm just gonna eat anything.
Or you cannot use them at all. You cannot use
(39:53):
your thinking to exact the kind of health changes you want. Now,
I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying that that
happens a lot. But the flip side is also true.
We've all had the very beginnings of a cold and
we've decided Nope, I'm not gonna do it. And what
do we do you go do whatever you want. I
(40:15):
don't care if you can drink vitamin C TE. People
have all kinds of concoctioners. But you know what the
through line is, You know what the common denominator is
that they think in here that I will not have
this cold. It's not going to happen. Guess what. The
biochemistry of a bolstered immune system, an indecrine system that's
fighting becomes who you are, and whatever that infection was
(40:38):
gets defeated faster. We do it in small situations like that,
and we do it in big situations. I have many
patients who have been diagnosed with fatal cancers and you'll
see them and they're like, hey, how you doing. Yeah,
life is great now. Did they have to go through
a process. Yes, But they are who they say they are.
They are who they think they are. And guess what
those are the people who have the incredible recoveries. You
(41:03):
were supposed to die ten years ago. We've heard this
over and over again. There's something that that is. There's
a common denominator there, and it's not for special people.
It's not only for special people.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
So yeah, I love that. I was watching a special
on the Blue Zones yeah and yeah. And one of
the people they interviewed was like, how did you live
to be one hundred and two?
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Whatevers?
Speaker 1 (41:29):
That I just didn't know I was supposed to die.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
He did wake up every day going I should have
been dead today. He was like, I'm alive, like I
expect to live.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true of many people who
have those long lives, that they have imagined for a
long time that they would live for a long time.
I don't think in any way that you that you
that you that you put it. So they either say, hey, listen,
I'm I'm just going to be alive today, I'm I'm
excited to get up today. I'm excited to go and
be a part of the community. Dan Buener kind of
(42:02):
highlights this idea of ekey guy, right, this Japanese concept
and the moi that develops around having meaning, you know,
in a community, like they need me, let me get
up and do this, and I'm ninety eight years old,
let me go to the rice fields, for example. And
I also think the opposite is true. This is a
(42:22):
misuse of your thought when you use it in a
poor way. When people think that because there is diabetes
in their family that they have to have it and
they're probably not going to live very long. So then
they don't make the right choices, and guess what, they
don't live very long?
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Right?
Speaker 1 (42:39):
How important did you say community as for as we age?
Community is for our overall well being?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Yeah? No, that's big I think. And I'm learning that
you know as well as you are from people like
Dan as he goes around and you know, to these
blue zones. And if we look back into the literature,
we'll see, for example, it just came out that grandparents
who live close to their grandchildren live much longer. They
(43:10):
have a purpose, their meaning although it changed from when
they were hustling bustling at you and I in our
younger years. Their meaning is now different, but it's still meaning.
Nonetheless that this idea of having a purpose is fuel
for life, right boy? I tell you, you know, and
you know if you can, if you can attach yourself
to a purpose, you can retire from a really difficult
(43:33):
job and still have meaning and live a really long time.
So I think there's a lot there.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yeah, what do you think on this, doctor, what do
you think having a current purpose?
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Right?
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Not holding on to what I used to do, right,
kind of like you said, that's a misuse of my thoughts,
Like I'm holding on to what I used to do,
but finding one today, allowing myself, giving myself permission to
move on to anew what is it that fulfills me today?
Speaker 3 (43:59):
And yeah, and yeah, yeah, no, I didn't mean to
cut you off. But but no matter what that is,
you know, if that's I'm gonna travel the world like
I have a purpose, I'm you know, my purpose is
to enjoy the fruits of my labors, of all of
these years, no matter what that is. Some people just
want to give all of their money away.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
And we hear stories right of people who have done
some fantastic things. Carnegie for example, right, who poured into
Napoleon Hill. Everybody knows Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill tells that story,
right of this man who just poured into him. You
didn't have to do that, are you kidding me? But
he did? And you know, just finding what that what
(44:45):
that purpose is, no matter what it is, but being
being deliberate and the word that everybody uses now is
intentional about having one right.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So, and one of the things on purpose is sometimes
I think we try to make it too big, right,
Like my purpose is to put somebody on Mars. So
maybe maybe your purpose is, like you just said, to
run your grandkids to practice so they don't miss their sport. Yeah,
because maybe that grandkids going to become the next Michael
(45:17):
Jordan and change the whole trajectory of family genealogy for generations.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely we you know, that's a
very human thing, you know, putting magnitude on things small, medium, large.
But you know, divine mind, consciousness is it doesn't know
anything about size, which is why when we do these
incredible things like somebody you know, you know, lives for
(45:47):
twenty years past, you know, you know, a diagnosis, a
fatal diagnosis that we were like, oh that was amazing. Well,
it's really part and parcel of the of the same
power that we all have access to in this unified
field of consciousness that if we would just realize the truth.
Remember this part in the Matrix. You know, there is
(46:08):
a scene remember when Neo went to see the oracle.
This is when he really was going to be told, listen,
you have you've got something, kiddo. And he was sitting
in the waiting room. It's not a weighting room, because
this is a home. He was sitting in like waiting
for the oracle. And there was this kid that they
called the Young Potential, and the young Potential had the
spoon and you remember this here, and he's bending the spoon.
(46:31):
He wasn't he right? And obviously we're all looking at
healthy doing this. And he says, do not try and
bend the spoon. That is impossible. Rather realize the truth.
And Neo says, what what truth? That there is no spoon,
no spoon. What are you talking about? Then you will
(46:52):
see that it's not the spoon that bends. It is
only yourself. Holy, you're spine tangled. You like me right right?
That's exactly in the matrix, you know, just like very
other story, many other stories that we've heard throughout throughout years.
It's not just about Neo. It's about who we can
(47:13):
be and this idea that if we would just open
up to whatever that is. Our current purpose right now
is doing what you and I are doing. We've never
met before, but there is a purpose in what we're
doing right now. And guess what, we're in a flow state,
you and I on purpose. Yeah, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
What are what are a couple things you'd recommend for
our listeners actionable steps they could do to either assess
their cardiovascular health or start working towards improving it.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Yeah, we didn't. We didn't talk very much more about
cardiovascular health because we're we're having I think, a really
great conversation. But everybody should go hire a doctor that
they trust. There's a lot of reason to be dissuaded
from doing that. The healthcare community, the group of professionals
that we are, have earned the distrust that we're labeled
with and it's our job to get it back. But
(48:10):
for you and your family, you want to be the
healthiest you can be, So go find somebody you trust
to help guide you through this maze of craziness that's
out there, right. You want somebody who's been trained, So
go hire a doctor your trust, and when you get there,
go get your heart screened. And not every physician is
going to send you for a heart screen. If you
(48:32):
are over the age of forty, go get a heart screen.
I think that screen contains three things, a stress test,
an echo cardiogram, and something called a coronary calcium score.
Stress test is generally onto treadmill, but there's different ways,
and we're testing blood flow, electricity, and exercise capacity. The
(48:52):
echo or echo cardiogram is a heart ultrasound. We're looking
at the inside of the heart seeing if there's structural abnormalodies.
We can catch things early. And then the coronary calcium CT.
You get a plaque score. How much plaque does he
have or does she have? And if there is some there,
what's the score? How much? What's the magnitude? And when
(49:13):
you get those and there's an abnormality, the last point
is do something about it and be as aggressive as
you can because it is the number one killer, but
it is preventable.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
What are the basic things that I can do in
a every day Obviously exercise is a big one.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah, what I want you to do is when you
wake up in the morning, I want you to be
thinking about health. We say health is your wealth, but
I'm not really sure we do that. We get up
in the morning and many of us grab our phones
and we're off to some other place. One of the
first things I would advise you to do is take
(49:54):
a moment just to be with yourself in some kind
of mindfulness. Whether you just sit, whether you on purpose meditate,
you know, whether you you know plan your day, whether
you take out a sheet of paper or you start
typing and do what Julia, Uh, Julia. What's Julia's name
from artists Way, Julia. So she calls the morning pages right,
(50:17):
morning pages is as you start writing, it's a mindfulness
technique and and and and focus on your health. What
am I going to do for my health today? What
am I going to do to be the healthiest human
being that I can today? What's my plan? And if
you have a plan, in that plan, it's going to
(50:38):
be what am I going to focus my mind on?
What am I going to think? What am I going
to fuel my body with? What am I going to eat?
And what am I going to do with my body?
How am I going to challenge my body today? How
am I going to exercise? Then? How am I going
to rest? How am I going to let my body
take whatever happened throughout the course of the day and
(50:58):
repair itself, restore itself so I can do it over again.
And the more and more I do that, the more
of those days I'll have the people who focus on
those things. As we see in these blue zones are
the people who have more life. Right, you have more
life and that's the key focus on your health when
you wake up in the morning, then go to scrolling
(51:19):
scrow later.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah, it's always going to be.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
There for the rest of time.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Okay, Doctor David, it's been such a pleasure to have
you on the show, my friend. Where can our audience
follow along and all the good that you're doing for
the world.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Yeah, no, I really appreciate being here. You can contact
me best on social media. It's it's sort of the
portal to all of our other outlets. If you go
to Instagram and Facebook, it's The Good Doctor Dave, The
Good d r Dave. And then we have a podcast
on a podcast it's about health, wellness and mindset topics
(51:56):
and we do it in sort of a relaxed environment
for an expanded audience. And it's called the Health Mastery Cafe.
So you can find us on YouTube, the Health Mastery Cafe.
You can find us on Instagram Health Mastery Cafe and
let's connect, let's have more conversation just like this.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Thank you so much for joining us today. It's been
a true pleasure getting to know you, my friend, and
I can't wait to see what you do in the future.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
The pleasures in mind, Jared, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
And remember team life is far too short to live
any other way than on purpose.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
We'll see you all again next week.
You are listening to the On Purpose podcast. What's Up, Everybody?
Welcome back to this week's edition of the On Purpose podcast,
where you know it's our pleasure to show up with
you each and every week to get your thinking, get
you moving, get your wondering maybe or just what about this?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
What if? Our job is.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Just to remind you the importance of living life with
a little bit of curiosity, a little bit of why
did our paths cross? Why did this person come in
my life at this point? Why am I hearing this
thing now? Why am I reading this book now? Being
a little more curious and see where that leads us?
And I'm excited that you're here with us. I'm excited
(00:39):
you're curious enough to have been with us for six years,
and thank you so much for being in the community.
Otherwise it's just me talking to myself and or know
has already do that enough. So this week I'm excited
to be joined by a visionary and preventative healthcare someone
who is transforming the way we think about heart health, longevity,
(01:00):
and leadership in medicine. Doctor Dave Montgomery is a board
certified cardiologist, health educator, and the founder of prevent Clinic, Inc.
A practice dedicated to preventing preventative cardiology and primary care.
With both an MD and a PhD in physiology, doctor
Montgomery has spent his career not just treating patients. But
(01:23):
what I'm really curious to learn about today and why
I brought him on the show is one of his
missions is to empower them to take charge of their
health before problems arise. So you know how I feel
about workouts, You know how I feel about diet and nutrition,
and just constantly moving our bodies and our minds and
our spirits so we.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
See whole health right.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Health is a whole thing, not just something that's responsibility
to medical profession. So I'm excited to bring doctor Dave
Montgomery on the show. But before before we do, I
got to ask your help. Get over to your favorite
podcast apps, YouTube like subscribe, share, help us reach more
people around the world. Remember, our mission is to be
one of the most impactful podcasts in the world and
(02:08):
to reach more people that maybe need to hear some
of this is we need your help, So please do
that and then sit back and let me know what
you think about our interview today with doctor Dave Montgomery.
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Jeff Wolfgang and his wife Xana after Jeff was injured
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back to the first responder and military community through real estate.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
If you're a.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
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a home, Honor the Brave connects you with trusted realtors
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(02:54):
Visit Honor the Brave dot com. We've got your six.
Dave Montgomery, Welcome today on Purpose podcast. My friend, I
can't say you I excited I am to sit down
and talk with you.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Man. I am equally excited to jump into this. I was.
I was looking at all the YouTube's, all the fantastic
guests that you have, and I was thinking to myself, boll,
I better think of something really good to say. I mean,
it really is an honor I know it sounds like platitude,
but it really is, especially given what you're about. And
hopefully I can add something to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Oh no doubt you will, and I wanna. I want
to thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
First off.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I always like to thank my guests, especially when they're
doing something like you are, which is breaking the norm,
getting outside of maybe the traditional message, and really getting
people to empower their wealth before they have to come
see you.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a critical piece I think everybody
when we say we should be, you know, preventive, right,
it makes sense to a lot of people and it
smacks as true, But unfortunately we still don't operate though
like that. We certainly don't operate like that in American healthcare.
It really is reactionary. And as much as we want
(04:03):
to change that, it is like changing a big, big
ship and trying to turn it. It's a big, stodgy thing.
It takes a long time to turn that ship around.
But I think each little bit counts. The name of
my clinic heared, as you know, is prevent clinic, as
in prevention, and we emphasize the pre in the in
(04:24):
the typeset on purpose because we want to get there
before events happen, before one becomes so ill that you're
an extremist, and that's the name of the game.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, And I love what you said there, that analogy
of turning the ship, because that first turn we make
on that wheel the ship, we don't even notice we're
moving in a different direction. But if we keep turning it,
eventually we're heading in a new direction. I think that's
such a key thing for us in the medical field
and how we empower our health is not to look
for an immediate result tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's exactly right. And and and
to further the metaphor, boy, if you stop before you
can you know, see the outcomes because you turn that
wheel and boy, nothing's moving, you can't perceive a change.
But in fact, underneath the surface, the rudders are doing
whatever it's called. You know, they're moving and they're trying.
(05:16):
But if you stop the turn before you can see
it on the outside, then you miss it. And that's
also a part of this. So this is such a
great analogy that we're using and it applies directly to
how we function in our physiology. So it's great.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah, I think it's it's called momentum, right, it's building momentum.
Whatever we do in life starts with one little action,
not a giant leap. And with that mind, I gotta
warm you up. We can't just deliver this big content
to people right away. I got to make sure our
hamstrings are nice and loose. Yeah, I know, right, all right,
doctor Dave, you ready for your warm up?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, let's do it, all right.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
What are you gonna choose? Sunrise or sunset?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Oh? I'm a sunrise guy.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Well? So, I you know, I don't know what it
is about me, but I just I have the most energy,
the most ideas in the morning, you know, in fact,
even before the sun rises. But if I had to choose,
I just am on in the first part of the day.
I get up at four forty five to work out
on you know, three days a week. I get up
(06:24):
at five o'clock on the other days, not just because
it's a task or a cho of responsibilities, just because
I'm ready to get started. I'm anticipating, you know what
I can accomplish the you know, in this day, and
I'm just excited about life, so, you know, getting up
and doing that in the sunrise that's uh, that's for me.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh, I love it. What's a quote that's stuck with
you throughout your life?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Oh man, there's so many. One that is with me
right now is by William James, who is also a physician.
I didn't know he was a physician until recently. William
James is a writer who's writings of just sort of
span time, and he says, compared to what we ought
to be, we're only half awake. That the human individual
(07:12):
is only using a part of his mental and physical abilities.
That stating the thing broadly, he says, if we could
only use the capacity that we have, boy, we could
accomplish some fantastic things. I think that applies broadly to
you know, very many things. And I broke up the
(07:32):
quote a little bit, but that's what it is. We're
we're not even half awake, you know, as to what
we can do. So when it comes to AI and
all these other things, we're only just getting to the surface.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh powerful.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
What's a song that's stuck in your head or on
repeat in your playlist?
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Oh right now, I'm gonna cheat and well, so so
here's what I'll say. So very often I'm not listening
to music. So just to be you know, full disclosure,
I'm listening on Audible to Beyond Entrepreneurship Jim Collins. There's
a two point zero version, and then on my Apple
(08:08):
music is the Science of Being Great by Wallace Waddle,
So that's actually on repeat quite a bit. And I
actually like Eliza Foss's narration because she she really just
knows how to sink it in. So that's that's what
I'm listening to non music.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Though, Yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Favorite book, My favorite book right now is Resurrection by
I'm Good Neville Goddard Goddard Neville Goddard, and Resurrection was
written a really long time ago, but it's really about
(08:44):
your power of imagination, the power that you have to
think a new thought to have a new experience in life.
And it's it's rich. I read it over and over
against like doggy air, it's like falling apart. But Resurrection, yeah,
I've had that.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
That's honestly, that's one of my favorite questions of all
the guests, because I'm always looking for something else to read. Yeah,
I just piggyback off what they're telling me, so that
that's going to move to.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
The top and it's and it's a quick read. You know,
it's small, but boy, that thing gets used up. You know,
it's a it's a small book, but boy, you know
packs a punch.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So I all right, doctor Dave, one last question. You
get to have dinner with somebody, they could be with
us or have passed on. Who would you have dinner with?
And what would you want to ask them?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah? So what would I want to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson? Boy,
I mean this guy, I don't know where he comes from,
because you know what I think of you know, physicists
in general, you know, astrophysicists, that that whole thing is
that they have a different concept of life and what
(09:46):
we really are. So you'll remember Einstein, you know, kind
of uh, you know, took us into a different way
of thinking about matter. He said, there is no matter.
What we call matter is just energy whose vibration has
been so lowered as to be perceptible to the human sensus.
(10:08):
There is no matter. I just think the physicist, I
think they think about life differently. So yeah, I want
to hear about planets and what they think about what's
out there. But I want to evolve my thinking about
what we're here for what are we doing? And the
truth of the matter is there is this through line
for all of us, no matter what the divisions are,
(10:29):
we're just all really the same energy. The quantum physicists
have it right, you know, it's the unified field, right,
It's manifested in the matrix. Remember in the matrix, right,
the first one where Neo right when he really figured
out who he was, he turned into this just field
of energy. Think about it. And once he did that,
(10:52):
here's the here's the message. I think once he got
beyond the surface of the of the humanness and got
to truly who he was, he was able to do
some super like, some phenomenal things. If we could just
get past the things that we used to filter us
away from each other, we could do some phenomenal things.
And I think it'll eventually happen.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, that's interesting you bring him up because he's very
intriguing for sure, Like I'll listen to him and a
lot of it goes way over my comprehension level. But
what I love about him is he's not afraid to
throw it out there and take the criticisms that comes
his way as well.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, well, he's a scientist and
we're born as a little baby scientist. I always tell
people I was a physiologist before I became a cardiologist.
I did a PhD. And if you don't learn to
get thick skin in there, buddy, I mean you just
forget about it, because I mean everything you say is questions.
And so I love that about him too, that he
(11:49):
brings all that experience and says, if I can't defend
what I think is true, what am I doing saying it?
If I can't, you know, withstand a couple questions here
and there, maybe I should rethink this. But everything is
at risk of being questioned. Remember, there was not too
long ago, several hundred years ago, that if you had
a fever, we would just cut your vein open and
(12:10):
let it let your blood drop into a pale. They
call it blood letting. Yeah, And we figured that that
was not the right thing to do because many people were,
you know, super pale. Can't you know, can't think straight.
But you didn't have a fever anymore. So you know,
everything should be at risk. What we think is true
now across every different line of thought you can think of,
is at risk of being changed. And some new thinking.
(12:33):
I love that a scientist could be part of the
people the professions to help us think differently about existence.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So, yeah, it's funny you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I was just doing something the other day and one
of the messages I had for our community was to
to go live curious today, like be ultra curious. Why
did doctor Dave come across my field of view today?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
What am I supposed to learn? What am I supposed
to teach? What if I'm wrong? And everything I think
I already know? Yeah, what I listened differently to you?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Yeah, isn't that amazing, not just learning but also teaching.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The hand it hand?
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah, No, it's it's it's it's critical. And and I
think this idea that we would go through some of
are long held deepest, you know, closest thoughts and ideas
about things and people in life, and just be willing
to let it be raked over the call so that
we can evolve. Ooh, that's a that's a fantastic thing.
(13:42):
I'm trying to teach that here at my office. That
you know, although it doesn't feel amazing to be coached
on something as you think you're doing it right and
you know, Sometimes you get coached and you you run
to this idea that what you've been doing is not correct.
Sometimes that can be you know, that can hurt your
feelings a little bit, you know, but if you'll allow
(14:04):
yourself to be human and say, okay, yeah, my ego
gets bruised by that a little bit, but then I'm
gonna be better. So the people who strive to always
be better are people who can be coached, but then
also not afraid to also coach. That's the other thing.
It's a bi directional thing, and it goes way beyond
us how we're taking care of patients. It goes to
(14:25):
what you're saying, it's just everyday life. If I'm willing
to learn from you, Jared, boy, my life can be
different and I evolve from the caterpillar to the larval stage.
You know, boy, just a little bit longer and I'll
and I'll get there, you know, to the butterflies.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
So yeah, yeah, no, and I love it.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
That's such a like you mentioned earlier, the divisiveness of
some of the climate of society nowadays, that's one of
the ways we combat that is not being held so
hard to our beliefs. Yeah, that we're not open to
see anybody else's and we're not even willing to discuss
it with each other and learn from one another. Because
as I've gotten older, what I've realized, doctor Dave, is
(15:05):
I'm wrong far more than I'm right about anything.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, right. And when you first came and when
you first come across that, you're like, holy mon, what
have I been doing?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Right? I want to go back to my decade of
the twenties because I thought I knew so much and
now I'm like, dude, you were wrong about so many things.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
That's right. And guess what. We all get to go
through that, and that is a beautiful thing that we
get to go through that. Listen, and it's painful. I mean,
I don't know what the caterpillar feels like when it
kind of balls up into that thing. Man, you know,
you go from the pupils, stay like, that's got to
be painful, but you know the next stage is more
(15:45):
beautiful still, and if you will just keep going, you'll arrive.
You'll arrive at that fully evolved person. Man. Who I mean,
we've heard plenty of stories where you've got people with
these like staunched draconian views and then somewhere in there
lives they realized that it's just the unified triol and
we're all really just the same. Like it's mind blowing,
(16:08):
like we really are the same. And when you get
to know somebody, you're like, man, you know what, I
would actually think like that, dude like that, Guys like me,
you know, But we just have to take the time
to do it. I think some of the friction and
why things aren't going is because we're fighting against something
that we're intrinsically innately how we are. If you're a
(16:30):
certain way but you keep fighting against it, your course
is going to be rough. If you go against the grain,
it's harder. Yeah. If you go with the flow, the
natural flow of life, man, you could, I mean, you
can go far and it's less of a taxing thing. Right,
So anyway, I'm droning here.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
No, I love that, because you're absolutely right. That is
one of the defaults I think in Western society, you know,
mostly is that we've tried to control all the thing
is a really uncontrollable life, and we spend so much
time trying to control things that we have very little
input on. Yeah, and if we'd release that like if
(17:10):
we released the fact that there might be traffic today,
it doesn't need to cause me stress, Like it's just
part of living in the city. We released that maybe
our neighbors dogs are gonna come in our yard. It
doesn't need to be the end of the world, right,
Like we have all these things we can't control, but
we put so much energy in that, and then what
we can control, like our.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Health, Like there you go, we don't well, we.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Kind of just throw it out there and be like, well,
we'll just see how it goes. And that's kind of
what I wanted to transition here is what inspired you
to bring the Prevent Clinic to life?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, that's such a great question, and you know, I
sometimes pause because I had to really you know, when
people say, you know, what's the origin story? I had
to sit down and think about it. Literally had to
write some notes because it's easy to just go about life, right.
But when I was training at Northwestern in Chicago, my
medical training, I was in my residency. This is before cardiology,
(18:10):
and because I knew I wanted to be a cardiology
cardiologist since grad school. Before that, I was just keen
on everything cardiology, right, so just you know, just prick
of my ears on anything that came across. And what
I learned very early on was that heart disease kills
more people than any other condition in this country and
many other industrialized countries. But here's the kicker. We know
(18:33):
how to stop heart disease from killing people partly because
we know what causes heart disease. Now think about this.
It kills more people than all the cancers combined. And
that blows people's mind when you hear it. We don't
know what causes many of the forms of cancer. We
sort of give a general basket of you know, when
(18:54):
we hear about a celebrity or something on the news
who has cancer, Well, what are the things I should
look out for, which generally, you know, lifestyle things, just general.
We don't know on the cellular molecular level, just exactly
how that happens. And so it makes sense that we
still don't know how to save people from the cancers,
many of them. We know exactly what causes the commonest
(19:15):
killer of people from a heart disease standpoint exactly, and
we know and we're doing it now. How to stop
people from dying. Something is wrong when you kill that
many people when you allow that many people to die,
it' should say, Mark, But you know how to stop it?
But then, so what's the answer, Because as a scientist,
I was always prone to ask and try to answer questions.
(19:38):
It's the scientific method, that's what we do. And one
of the things that buoy to the top and all
of my sort of machinations around this thing was that
we don't test people enough that in the American healthcare
system we would rather save a dollar than to do
a test, or to make the test more affordable. And
then once we find the disease not aggressive enough, and
(20:01):
that's really nuanced, I'm i'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of
zooming out, But that's exactly what it is. And part
of the reason is because we don't want to use
certain strategies to help people prevent it. But that's also
a failing of American medicine. And so I just decided
I couldn't be a part of the cabal, right and
just do things the same way that we've always done it.
(20:24):
And it was in the you know, you kind of
get this this desire that just won't leave you alone, right,
And it just kept coming since residency, and literally I think,
you know, Providence, the universe, God is like, listen, you're
gonna either do this. I'm gonna make you physically ill.
I got physically I'll sall right, I'm gonna do it. Okay,
I'm gonna go and open this thing. And I was
(20:46):
scared to death because the industry was going in the
opposite direction. There were no little groups, you know, small
private practices coming, you know, popping up. They were being absorbed,
They're being bought and purchased, and because of that, you
are a part of I'm using the word cabal. But
I did it, and three months into it, I was like,
why did I do this five years ago? You know,
(21:08):
It's funny how that works. And then we started to
see that it was successful, not because of Dave Montgomery,
but because it was an idea whose time had come.
That people have been looking for somebody who's just going
to test them and when they get tested and find
something or be super aggressive, and that's what we did.
So that's the origin story there.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Let's talk about facing that fear of going to be different,
because I think for all of our community, no matter
what they're facing today, that courage to be different it's
going to be tested.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I'll tell you buy That
brings up so many things. I'll start with this story.
When I had decided, I remember when I got I
went to the federal website and I got my EI IN.
This was January of the year that I that was it.
I said, if I'm going to get this EI in,
(21:59):
I gotta do it right. So once I got the
ei N, I started planning and strategizing, and I also
planned when I was going to tell people. When I
started telling people, my colleagues, the vast majority of them like,
what are you talking about? Why would you do that?
Like one of my closer colleagues whom I still hold deer,
(22:21):
said but what's the benefit? And I said, the benefit
is I get to practice in the way that I think.
They No, no, no, no, no, what's the benefit? I mean
she was she was angry, okay, And I said no, no, really,
like I get tot you no, what's the benefit? Like so,
you know, it just didn't It didn't click to anybody else.
(22:41):
And I said, it's not my job to try to
convince everybody else of this. It's my job to focus
on that that that what you know what was before
me to do, and it was very clear that this
was my Uh it sounds hokey, doesn't it destiny like
I had to do this and uh and and it
(23:04):
is being different. And so some of those people, you know,
they're not we're not friendly anymore. And I couldn't understand why.
And my wife said, you know, maybe it's a reflection
on them. I was like, nobody's reflecting on anything that
I'm doing. But maybe it is. Maybe they feel like
it's a reflection on what they're doing. I don't. I
don't know what it is. But being different takes courage.
(23:25):
It is lonely, if I could say this at the top.
It's lonely when you're at the top of an idea.
It's lonely when you're at the first through the gate
and you and and you're going through that fire. But
it is also worth it when you know that eagle
soar alone and only those heights that an eagle can
(23:48):
fly are for an eagle. And I guess I'm doing
eagle stuff. I don't know. It sounds ridiculous when it
comes out of your mouth, but that's that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
I think. No, and I think you're right, and I think,
what are your thoughts on this? That it's lonely if
you get to the top and try to stay in
the same circle with people that didn't also want to come.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
To the top.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
But if you get to the top and you embrace
a new circle, you cannot find other eagles come up there too.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
That's right, that's right. You'll be among eagles. You'll notice
that there are many other eagles when you get up there.
It's like if you buy a green car. Oh my god,
all these green cars. I never saw some green cars,
you know, and it is it is. That's exactly right.
I would agree with you there, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
And I love I love having the courage to be different.
I love having what you said there is you felt
like you had to do it, like you just would
go to sleep and would tell you, like you better
do this.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah no, no, I physically became ill like it was
and it was visible.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Okay, So in just a very short line, one of
my eyeballs stopped doing what I wanted it to do.
With my brain, it just starts going inside. And I
went to all listen, Jared, I went to every doctor
you can imagine. I had every scan MRIs. They were
poking needles in doing what they call single fiber studies,
(25:12):
you know, these little things, trying to figure out what
it was. And I started this is my first year
of doing purely plant based, all vegan, no process plants.
And in that was also a period where I had
to do some introspection and started sort of weeding things out,
(25:32):
kind of that thing which you were talking about controlling,
like stop trying to control things you don't have any
chance of controlling. But also in that stillness, in that quietude,
I found the message was you want to come back
to this idea we've been talking about to you inside
your head for the last fifteen years. And boy, I
(25:53):
literally as soon as I decided to do it, I've
got on this vegan diet. The eyeball shifted back over.
It's not completely normally because I was like, Domina, it's
gonna remind you, buddy, okay that if you if you
don't keep on this road. I'm being a little bit silly.
But I literally was physically ill and it was visible,
right and you know, whether this is a part of
(26:16):
some you know, higher plan or not. I took it
as that And when I started doing what I was
supposed to do from this message that had been there
for so long, the illness went away, and I started
being able to control what I can control, what I
am to control, you know, you know it's it's interesting
(26:39):
because if I go back even further, I started off
with the idea that I was going to be a
bench scientist, a basic research scientist. I did a PhD
in Physiology and Biophysics department at the University of Illinois, Chicago,
and my dream was to not just be a clinical doctor,
but to also be a researcher that's at the hutting
(27:00):
edge of cellular molecular discovery. And I was very fortunate.
I had some fantastic mentors. We were successful in that
in that realm published a lot who started publishing early
first authors, you know, all of the you know the things.
And I started my clinical work with the idea that
(27:24):
I was going to do that. And then I realized
that although you're good at something, it doesn't mean that
that's for you. Although you can do something well, that
may not be your jam. And when I started listening
to what my jam was, when I say listen to
that internal listening, being still I realized that I would
(27:48):
often get into the flow state when I was with patients,
forget about what's going on. It's like the poem by
John Yoo about Jackson. You remember the movie about Pollock,
which is go into this different zone. And in the
poem he says, when I am painting, I am not
(28:12):
doing what I am. I'm in what I'm doing. When
I'm painting, if I'm doing what I am, I'm not
in what I'm doing. And I'm like, and the pointment
is like really deep, it gets real deep. But but
I mean it makes your spinding. And I'm like, that's
exactly it. Like when I forget that I'm a doctor
(28:36):
and just doctor. It's unbelievable. And the feeling like it's, yes,
you're helping people, but at the same time you are
getting fed here. It's a sole level thing. And I said,
who doesn't want to do this all the time. So
it was hard for me to break with this idea,
for me to change my mind about what my career
would look like, that I'd spent this time in research
(28:59):
and understanding my philosophy about science and medicine, and you know,
somebody said, well, you know, you waste it all that time.
It wasn't wasted at all. In fact, I'm using it
even today as I'm talking to you. Just the reasoning
and the thinking and my philosophy about life. And when
I decided I was just going to focus on what
(29:19):
I was supposed to do, then all of that made
sense now that I had to get ill because you're
going to try to be some you know, bench scientists. No, no,
I don't want you to be a bench scientist. I
want you to go and sit with people, whether it's
on a large scale or on one on one, and
deliver a message that I'm going to use you to
(29:40):
be a vehicle for. That's what it was.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
That's amazing. And there's a couple of things that really
stand out to me. That first off is that just
because you were successful didn't solve your appetite to be
something different. Right, It's okay to walk away from being
successful in one or it doesn't mean we can't do
multiple things. And yeah, it's weird that people sometimes get
hamstrung by their success.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it's a I think it's
also a fear, and it's it's how we're you know,
you know, the people around you because I went to
medical school. As an aside. I went to medical school
with some really good, smart people who wished that they
could be concert violinists. M and they were really good, Like,
(30:26):
I mean, well, we would have our talent shows at
Northwestern Finberg School of Medicine. Let me tell you something, man,
the I mean, and you would be like that dude's
in a float like he is jammin over here. But
they didn't do that because, uh, you know, maybe somebody
told you must be a physician, you must be a surgeon,
you must be a you know. So I think that's
(30:46):
that's more common than we think.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
No, I think absolutely is. I think it's it's weird.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Right. Sometimes we've got people are like feel the hamstrung
by their shortcomings that are failures and they carry them
with them throughout life and they can't release it. Then
we have others that are hamstrung by their success and
they won't go be who they want to be because
they've had success maybe in another area that they didn't
choose to be, or they they were drip pushed to. Yeah,
(31:12):
and then what happens at the end of life there?
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Yeah, boy, I mean, and that's that's big because you know,
I think you know, it's a societal thing as well.
We just have these these occupations that we just think,
you know, you're supposed to do this, and there there's
certain you know, you know, families said listen, you got
you have to be one of four things. And that
(31:38):
comes from you know, historical reference, you know, like their
historical reference. And I and I understand that. But how
many examples can we point to across sectors, industries where
somebody decided waste management, for example, somebody just said I'm
going to be the best darn waste management garbage that
(32:00):
you could ever imagine, Like I'm gonna and that's a
billion dollar company, like somebody's you know what I'm saying,
Like somebody is making Do you remember the I forget
the story of this posted thing. Somebody said, I'm just
gonna make this post it like whatever you are to do,
do it. Henry David Thureau says we are constantly invited
(32:22):
to be what we are as to something noble and worthy.
I never he says, it's really important, I might get
this part he was talking about being deterred from it.
No one ever deterred me from being who I'm supposed
(32:43):
to be. But I still lagged and I tagged after
that thing. So we're constantly being invited to be exactly
who we're supposed to be. And that thing that was,
you know, yearning in me, it had to be birth.
It was an idea whose time had come. And I'm
still searching. Can I still be who I am to be?
Who I can be, who I should be? And that's
(33:05):
part of it.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
I love it, and I love your story that this
purpose in your life, that this drive kept coming back
to you and even caused medical issues for you to
really push it that way. How important is having a
purpose in our lives and having a reason why we're
going to sacrifice and move ourselves forward and maybe face
(33:29):
our fears so important not just for our lives, but
our health and our well being.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah, you know, I wish I knew the answer. I'll say,
you know this, we all have one. And I think
that's what ties back to this idea that not everybody's
supposed to be an orthopedic surgeon, that in fact, there
is a really important place for a concert violinist, or
else we wouldn't go to the symphony, or else we
(33:57):
wouldn't have you know, the school of movies with violins
in it. There is somebody, believe it or not, who's
supposed to be a center on a basketball team, or else,
we wouldn't spend billions of dollars going to watch it.
There is somebody who's supposed to pick up the waste,
or else we live in scum. Yeah, your purpose is there,
(34:21):
and I think, how do you find it? It's not
a finding, it's an uncovering, it's an unfiltering. It's there
already and you can just harken to it. When it's
when you find yourself doing something that you lose time
with that flow state. We talk about the flow state
(34:41):
when you just forget about what's happening. Now. I had
a debate with somebody. You know what if that's I'm
playing my video game. Well, it depends, right, if you're
playing a video game and you're within the game and you're,
you know, experiencing that game very differently than somebody else.
You're supposed to be a gamer because there's something there,
there's some a place for the person who's supposed to
(35:03):
be a gamer, or else, we wouldn't spend millions and
millions of dollars on games. Do you see what I'm saying?
So whatever you whatever is is you know, you know,
really jazz is you and you lose time you're like, oh,
let me, let me hurry up and get out of here.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
That is the breadcrumbs. Follow them to what you're supposed
to do, and no matter what it is, if you
will just acknowledge it and just say, boy, maybe let
me just explore this just a little bit. What harm
would it take or would it do if I just
explored this a little bit. So I don't know that
(35:44):
that larger question, but I know we all have one.
If you fight against your purpose, it's like fighting against
who you are. We're constantly invited to be who we are. Why,
because we're supposed to go through this evolution from caterpillar
to larval stage to pupil stage ultimately this beautiful butterfly.
(36:08):
And if you don't do it because of the fear
of pain to evolve, then you don't. You don't survive like,
you don't really thrive like you could be, and so
you become physically ill. Things seem just so hard. Every
facet of life is really really difficult for you because
you keep turning your your your back to what you're
(36:29):
truly here to do. And uh boy, I think it's
more common than we think.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
But that ties back to energy. Right If we really
accept that we are all energy and we're spending our
energy fighting against things, Yeah, well that's the energy we create, right,
so then our body thinks it should fight is a
fighting guest itself. Right?
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Are we causing our own health issues?
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Absolutely? Because every thought you think, if you talk to
the neurobiology, just every single thought you think has a
biochemical footprint. Right, So if you think negatively about yourself
in any vein, for that moment, you are that thing.
(37:15):
It's not just a you know, just a quote as
a man thinketh so is he period? That is a
physiologic truth as much as it is a soul spiritual truth.
It is very true that if you continue to think
that you're not worth it, I can't believe myself. You know,
why am I such an idiot? If you think the
words why am I such an idiot? The biochemical footprint
(37:37):
of an idiot is released in your body. The more
you think that. The more you release that biochemical footprint,
you keep doing something and you become that thing. You
keep thinking something you become that thing. You keep saying something,
whether you say it internally much more than you say
it outside, or you say it outside, you become that thing.
And that's an internal job. Is an inside job. After all,
(38:02):
I'm writing some stuff now, and health is an inside
job is one of the section titles. And the truth is,
we look outside ourselves very much when it comes to health.
We start, you know, we say, you know, exercise more,
we say get some sleep, eat less, you know, potato
chips for me, right, But we're missing the core and
that is the way that we view ourselves, the way
(38:24):
that we view life and our health, and when we
think about it on a basic level, it feels very otherworldly.
It feels sort of mystical, right you know, Oh I
can do you know, it's like the the mind body
connection is it freaks people out right. But the truth
is we're doing it all the time, you know, in
(38:47):
little ways, medium ways, and big ways. We're doing it
all the time. We're realizing that what we process inside
ourselves becomes who we are. And if you go through traditions,
I mean there's all kinds of people who've said this, right,
you know, uh, you know, Buddha says, you know, you
know you, you know what you are is a result
(39:09):
of what you have thought. It's a long quote, right,
you think about that. So if you if you maintain
and you keep an illness, then it's because you've attached
yourself to that illness. And that's a really hard thing too.
That's a bitter pill if you if you don't focus yourself.
Because let me let me back up for a second,
(39:31):
because that that's that's nuanced. I'll just say this because
I'll i'll take up too much time. There's two ways
to to not use your thoughts properly in this. You
can misuse them. Why am I such an idiot? You
know you know I'm I'm I'm fat anyway, so I
don't really care what I eat. I'm just gonna eat anything.
Or you cannot use them at all. You cannot use
(39:53):
your thinking to exact the kind of health changes you want. Now,
I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying that that
happens a lot. But the flip side is also true.
We've all had the very beginnings of a cold and
we've decided Nope, I'm not gonna do it. And what
do we do you go do whatever you want. I
(40:15):
don't care if you can drink vitamin C TE. People
have all kinds of concoctioners. But you know what the
through line is, You know what the common denominator is
that they think in here that I will not have
this cold. It's not going to happen. Guess what. The
biochemistry of a bolstered immune system, an indecrine system that's
fighting becomes who you are, and whatever that infection was
(40:38):
gets defeated faster. We do it in small situations like that,
and we do it in big situations. I have many
patients who have been diagnosed with fatal cancers and you'll
see them and they're like, hey, how you doing. Yeah,
life is great now. Did they have to go through
a process. Yes, But they are who they say they are.
They are who they think they are. And guess what
those are the people who have the incredible recoveries. You
(41:03):
were supposed to die ten years ago. We've heard this
over and over again. There's something that that is. There's
a common denominator there, and it's not for special people.
It's not only for special people.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
So yeah, I love that. I was watching a special
on the Blue Zones yeah and yeah. And one of
the people they interviewed was like, how did you live
to be one hundred and two?
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Whatevers?
Speaker 1 (41:29):
That I just didn't know I was supposed to die.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
He did wake up every day going I should have
been dead today. He was like, I'm alive, like I
expect to live.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true of many people who
have those long lives, that they have imagined for a
long time that they would live for a long time.
I don't think in any way that you that you
that you that you put it. So they either say, hey, listen,
I'm I'm just going to be alive today, I'm I'm
excited to get up today. I'm excited to go and
be a part of the community. Dan Buener kind of
(42:02):
highlights this idea of ekey guy, right, this Japanese concept
and the moi that develops around having meaning, you know,
in a community, like they need me, let me get
up and do this, and I'm ninety eight years old,
let me go to the rice fields, for example. And
I also think the opposite is true. This is a
(42:22):
misuse of your thought when you use it in a
poor way. When people think that because there is diabetes
in their family that they have to have it and
they're probably not going to live very long. So then
they don't make the right choices, and guess what, they
don't live very long?
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Right?
Speaker 1 (42:39):
How important did you say community as for as we age?
Community is for our overall well being?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Yeah? No, that's big I think. And I'm learning that
you know as well as you are from people like
Dan as he goes around and you know, to these
blue zones. And if we look back into the literature,
we'll see, for example, it just came out that grandparents
who live close to their grandchildren live much longer. They
(43:10):
have a purpose, their meaning although it changed from when
they were hustling bustling at you and I in our
younger years. Their meaning is now different, but it's still meaning.
Nonetheless that this idea of having a purpose is fuel
for life, right boy? I tell you, you know, and
you know if you can, if you can attach yourself
to a purpose, you can retire from a really difficult
(43:33):
job and still have meaning and live a really long time.
So I think there's a lot there.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Yeah, what do you think on this, doctor, what do
you think having a current purpose?
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Right?
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Not holding on to what I used to do, right,
kind of like you said, that's a misuse of my thoughts,
Like I'm holding on to what I used to do,
but finding one today, allowing myself, giving myself permission to
move on to anew what is it that fulfills me today?
Speaker 3 (43:59):
And yeah, and yeah, yeah, no, I didn't mean to
cut you off. But but no matter what that is,
you know, if that's I'm gonna travel the world like
I have a purpose, I'm you know, my purpose is
to enjoy the fruits of my labors, of all of
these years, no matter what that is. Some people just
want to give all of their money away.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
And we hear stories right of people who have done
some fantastic things. Carnegie for example, right, who poured into
Napoleon Hill. Everybody knows Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill tells that story,
right of this man who just poured into him. You
didn't have to do that, are you kidding me? But
he did? And you know, just finding what that what
(44:45):
that purpose is, no matter what it is, but being
being deliberate and the word that everybody uses now is
intentional about having one right.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
So, and one of the things on purpose is sometimes
I think we try to make it too big, right,
Like my purpose is to put somebody on Mars. So
maybe maybe your purpose is, like you just said, to
run your grandkids to practice so they don't miss their sport. Yeah,
because maybe that grandkids going to become the next Michael
(45:17):
Jordan and change the whole trajectory of family genealogy for generations.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely we you know, that's a
very human thing, you know, putting magnitude on things small, medium, large.
But you know, divine mind, consciousness is it doesn't know
anything about size, which is why when we do these
incredible things like somebody you know, you know, lives for
(45:47):
twenty years past, you know, you know, a diagnosis, a
fatal diagnosis that we were like, oh that was amazing. Well,
it's really part and parcel of the of the same
power that we all have access to in this unified
field of consciousness that if we would just realize the truth.
Remember this part in the Matrix. You know, there is
(46:08):
a scene remember when Neo went to see the oracle.
This is when he really was going to be told, listen,
you have you've got something, kiddo. And he was sitting
in the waiting room. It's not a weighting room, because
this is a home. He was sitting in like waiting
for the oracle. And there was this kid that they
called the Young Potential, and the young Potential had the
spoon and you remember this here, and he's bending the spoon.
(46:31):
He wasn't he right? And obviously we're all looking at
healthy doing this. And he says, do not try and
bend the spoon. That is impossible. Rather realize the truth.
And Neo says, what what truth? That there is no spoon,
no spoon. What are you talking about? Then you will
(46:52):
see that it's not the spoon that bends. It is
only yourself. Holy, you're spine tangled. You like me right right?
That's exactly in the matrix, you know, just like very
other story, many other stories that we've heard throughout throughout years.
It's not just about Neo. It's about who we can
(47:13):
be and this idea that if we would just open
up to whatever that is. Our current purpose right now
is doing what you and I are doing. We've never
met before, but there is a purpose in what we're
doing right now. And guess what, we're in a flow state,
you and I on purpose. Yeah, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
What are what are a couple things you'd recommend for
our listeners actionable steps they could do to either assess
their cardiovascular health or start working towards improving it.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Yeah, we didn't. We didn't talk very much more about
cardiovascular health because we're we're having I think, a really
great conversation. But everybody should go hire a doctor that
they trust. There's a lot of reason to be dissuaded
from doing that. The healthcare community, the group of professionals
that we are, have earned the distrust that we're labeled
with and it's our job to get it back. But
(48:10):
for you and your family, you want to be the
healthiest you can be, So go find somebody you trust
to help guide you through this maze of craziness that's
out there, right. You want somebody who's been trained, So
go hire a doctor your trust, and when you get there,
go get your heart screened. And not every physician is
going to send you for a heart screen. If you
(48:32):
are over the age of forty, go get a heart screen.
I think that screen contains three things, a stress test,
an echo cardiogram, and something called a coronary calcium score.
Stress test is generally onto treadmill, but there's different ways,
and we're testing blood flow, electricity, and exercise capacity. The
(48:52):
echo or echo cardiogram is a heart ultrasound. We're looking
at the inside of the heart seeing if there's structural abnormalodies.
We can catch things early. And then the coronary calcium CT.
You get a plaque score. How much plaque does he
have or does she have? And if there is some there,
what's the score? How much? What's the magnitude? And when
(49:13):
you get those and there's an abnormality, the last point
is do something about it and be as aggressive as
you can because it is the number one killer, but
it is preventable.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
What are the basic things that I can do in
a every day Obviously exercise is a big one.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah, what I want you to do is when you
wake up in the morning, I want you to be
thinking about health. We say health is your wealth, but
I'm not really sure we do that. We get up
in the morning and many of us grab our phones
and we're off to some other place. One of the
first things I would advise you to do is take
(49:54):
a moment just to be with yourself in some kind
of mindfulness. Whether you just sit, whether you on purpose meditate,
you know, whether you you know plan your day, whether
you take out a sheet of paper or you start
typing and do what Julia, Uh, Julia. What's Julia's name
from artists Way, Julia. So she calls the morning pages right,
(50:17):
morning pages is as you start writing, it's a mindfulness
technique and and and and focus on your health. What
am I going to do for my health today? What
am I going to do to be the healthiest human
being that I can today? What's my plan? And if
you have a plan, in that plan, it's going to
(50:38):
be what am I going to focus my mind on?
What am I going to think? What am I going
to fuel my body with? What am I going to eat?
And what am I going to do with my body?
How am I going to challenge my body today? How
am I going to exercise? Then? How am I going
to rest? How am I going to let my body
take whatever happened throughout the course of the day and
(50:58):
repair itself, restore itself so I can do it over again.
And the more and more I do that, the more
of those days I'll have the people who focus on
those things. As we see in these blue zones are
the people who have more life. Right, you have more
life and that's the key focus on your health when
you wake up in the morning, then go to scrolling
(51:19):
scrow later.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah, it's always going to be.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
There for the rest of time.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Okay, Doctor David, it's been such a pleasure to have
you on the show, my friend. Where can our audience
follow along and all the good that you're doing for
the world.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Yeah, no, I really appreciate being here. You can contact
me best on social media. It's it's sort of the
portal to all of our other outlets. If you go
to Instagram and Facebook, it's The Good Doctor Dave, The
Good d r Dave. And then we have a podcast
on a podcast it's about health, wellness and mindset topics
(51:56):
and we do it in sort of a relaxed environment
for an expanded audience. And it's called the Health Mastery Cafe.
So you can find us on YouTube, the Health Mastery Cafe.
You can find us on Instagram Health Mastery Cafe and
let's connect, let's have more conversation just like this.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Thank you so much for joining us today. It's been
a true pleasure getting to know you, my friend, and
I can't wait to see what you do in the future.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
The pleasures in mind, Jared, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
And remember team life is far too short to live
any other way than on purpose.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
We'll see you all again next week.
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