The Power of Nature in Health and Longevity - Episode 308

So hydration status is not just about drinking. And my rule of thumb still is half your body weight in ounces in water, and I'll call it ionized water, mineralized water, hydrogen water, coconut water, whatever, as opposed to things like coffee or alcohol or soda. I'd like to replenish your fluid that your body has with sort of, I'll call it nutritional water, if you like, that actually has much more potential benefit for. For healing the, you know, the lymphatic system that people say, well, yeah, if I get a cold, I can feel something swollen in my neck or in the groin, per se. But your lymphatic system is a huge part of your immune system, and for lack of a better term, along with your cardiovascular system, it technically is your sewer system. It's how the body removes cellular debris, cellular waste from, you know, where the cell is, whether it's in your big toe or in your brain.

Welcome to the Gladden longevity podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, where our passion is helping you to become an age hacker. On this show, we want to help you optimize your life energy, longevity, health and human performance with impactful and actionable information by answering four questions. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? And how do we live young for a lifetime? Now, here's today's episode of the Glide and Longevity Podcast.

Welcome, everybody, to this edition of the Glide and Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, and we're here answering the questions we're most interested in. Quite honestly, how good can we be? How do we make 100 to new 30? How do we live well beyond 120? How do we live young for a lifetime? And how do we develop a 300-year-old mind? And on today's episode, I'm going to be talking with a dentist who became a naturopath. His name is Dick Tom T H O M. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. He's Canadian by birth. And we're going to talk some things that have such a massive impact on life itself. Joy, satisfaction, health, longevity to an extent. But we're not talking about gene therapy or telomere lengthening or even plasmapheresis or things like that. We're talking about some other things related to nature and the profound impact that being outside in nature can have on our nervous systems. And I think you're going to find it really interesting. We go a lot of different places here. I haven't done it justice in this Introduction, but I was. Very fun conversation. I think you'll enjoy it. Welcome, everybody, to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, and today I'm here with Dick Thom. Dick, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. I always appreciate the opportunity to share with listeners who may be not new to the topic, but maybe I'll give a little bit of spin on from a healthcare perspective.

Yeah, I think you've got an interesting take on, on some things. So where are you in life? You're. I mean, we know you're in Arizona. We know that you've been around the sun a couple of times.

That's right.

So how would you characterize yourself in terms of where you're at?

Well, what I, what I would like to characterize myself is I'm a. I'm a student of learning. I'm a student of learning. I have. 55 years ago, I entered med school initially as a dentist practice dentistry until the late 1970s. Yeah, 1970s and actually 80s to the 1980s. And then, you know, basically went back to school, became a nature path. And for the last six decades, I basically have witnessed a change in the health of the population. And what's curious to me and interesting is as I look over those six decades, the issues that patients came to me for in the 1970s, as hypoglycemia and adrenal stuff changed to chronic fatigue and mold stuff, and every decade we had a new name, but yet it's the same problem. Nothing's really changed. We have the same physiologic and biological problems that we had in the 70s that we have in 2025. Realize that even though I've seen six decades of health, names of diseases, the underlying problem has never changed. And so where I'm at is trying to help people understand that it's more what they do than what any doctor can ever do for them. And so the reality of going back to, you know, real health care is self care. And, you know, a common thing I say to patients now is, but the first thing you should do in the morning is you should look in the mirror and say to that person, what am I going to do for you today?

Yeah.

If it's nothing, you're gonna have a problem.

Yeah, that's a, that's a good perspective. Right. It's a little bit like paying yourself first when you get a paycheck. It's like, well, let me pay myself first now. Right. Until I start paying everybody else or whatever. 100 yeah, so it's really what we're talking about is people coming to grips with the fact that they, their bodies are mortal and prone to breakdown and you know, focusing time and attention on it on a regular basis, on a daily basis, quite honestly, becomes one of the keys. It's kind of like taking care of a horse or a pet or even an automobile for that matter.

Right.

You got time and attention. That's what it takes. And some resources.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what do you like to do when you're doing your self care? What does that consist of?

Well, I start every morning with, you know, I get up and I feed my dogs and then I put my running shoes on and I disappear for the next 45 to 60 minutes. And great. You know, I will walk, jog, run, you know, climb, talk to neighbors. So I'm outside of the house and living in Arizona. I live in a place where it's easy to do every day, middle of a snowstorm or a rainstorm and very enjoyable thing. And so besides having a glass of water before I get started, that's that, that's the first hour of my day.

Of what I do. So there's a couple different things about that, you know, one is getting that early morning sun, as we know, is very helpful for kind of setting up your circadian rhythm, actually starting melatonin production that you'll use the following night and, and then movement, and I think movement early in the morning before you've eaten anything. I tend to exercise when I'm fasting, except for a couple of exceptions where I know I'm going to do something that's going to be pretty protracted, you know, like over an hour, over an hour and a half. And I'll, I'll fuel for that. But other than that and being outside. Right. There's a lot to be said for being outside away from a screen. And at that time of day, you're really not that prone to a sunburn, quite honestly. So. That's right. So, so it's, it's really the safest time to be out in the sun. And if you were to do something barefoot, you know, in Arizona you don't have as much grass. A lot of people have yards that are made out of rocks or things like that. But if you get some grounding, right. If you get a little bit of grounding and that's, that's a good thing too, so.

Well, the, the good thing about that, you're right, I can't walk or run with bare feet, but I, that's the only time I pretty much wear shoes.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay.

I can walk around everywhere else without.

Just being bare feet, which is, you know, that's good. I was talking to a gentleman at a conference a couple years ago who had a number of different health problems. And he became so enamored with the idea of sleeping on the ground as actually being close to this human residence and close to the negative ion charge of the planet and all the different things that we know are actually healthy for us. He started sleeping in a tent on the ground. Not on a, you know, an inflatable mattress or a mattress, but literally, you know, I mean, it was a sleeping bag or something, but. But he was essentially on the ground. Right, right. And he did that, you know, and initially, of course, it was pretty uncomfortable, although he kind of found some land or whatever that wasn't poking him in the back or whatever. But he. He claimed that over the next 30, his entire body transformed just from the healing impact of being grounded like that. So he, you know, he still sleeps on the ground. I met him at a hotel. I don't know if he's. If he had taken a room at the hotel, if he was sleeping, you know, out in the woods next to the hotel. But I didn't ask him that. But I found that I find this idea of getting outside into nature and the grounding impact and the sun and even being out at night. I know it's warm there in Arizona, but if you happen to be awake at 10 o' clock and you walk out and you feel that warm breeze and you see the sun and maybe you go for a walk then too. Right. It's like, oh, my gosh, this is such a good feeling. I think there's so much to be said for that.

I think it's a. It's a natural law. And if you look at areas that, you know, basically are they. What are the blue zones where they have the most centurions that live? That's one of the things that they did. They got out, they. They get outside of their four walls of where they live and literally are experiencing the breathing fresh air.

I think that's critical. Yeah. And so, but that raises, you know, you can't do that everywhere. Right. It's a little harder to do in Manhattan. You can't do it in like, you know, downtown Denver or, you know, even downtown Dallas. Can be difficult. So it comes down to choosing the context in which you're going to reside really, as a health choice as much as an aesthetic choice or a Convenience, choice. Right. So I think that's a really important thing to factor in.

Well, certainly the aspect of, you know, you leaving, leaving in a city, hopefully perhaps not Manhattan, although I've not been there, is like, are you near a park? Are you near where there's trees? Are you grass?

Yeah.

Are you near where, you know, you can actually get away from concrete, away from buildings? And that type of. And so even that is of. In my patient population anyway, has created the aspect of being supportive. And so, you know, I do what we call basic treatment guidelines for. For every patient, which includes things like you mentioned grounding and drinking and moving and moving your body, you know, and eating foods that are ideally more for your temperament, which to me is for everybody is the ideal diet that we should all follow. Which something that.

How does somebody identify that diet based on temperament?

Well, I mean, the easiest way to do it is to fill out, you know, the questionnaire. And I mean, there's dozens of books that have been written on temperaments. And, you know, one of the books that I have a long time ago, it's just, you know, I think it's just called Temperament. Randy Rolfe was the. Was the author, and I think she was a lawyer, but in the middle of the book, she has like 18 questions, 18 things to try and help you identify it. You know, if you. Because. And nobody's a perfect. You know, I mean, we're all a mix of whatever, but that at least gives you a groundwork. And then in that book, or any book on temperaments, it'll say that these. These are the specific foods. And what most people will say, but I don't like those foods or I don't eat those foods. And that's because they're not in balance as far as their own temperament is concerned. And over time, as they move towards that. And so, you know, the. The common one, of course, becomes, you know, with women anyway, and we'll blame, well, pick on them. But you know, menstrual wise, it's very common to hear a woman say, oh, I love to eat chocolate. And then after a period of time of, you know, moving health in a positive direction, they'll come in and say, you know, it's interesting, I don't really like eating chocolate anymore because it doesn't suit her own temperament. But whether chocolate or beef or milk or a vegan or, you know, a carnivore, whatever it is, we are destined by an inherited temperament. People say, what's temperament? Well, if you've read any of Shakespeare's plays. You will. Every character in his play was different temperaments, which they talked a lot about in the Middle Ages. We don't talk about it as much anymore, but it's been prevalent since the time of Hippocrates, you know, 24.

Yeah. I think we've kind of subsumed it into personality almost. Right. Like they have this kind of personality, but.

Right, that's right.

Sort of tease out the temperament element of that.

Exactly.

Yeah. I think that's probably how we do that. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, one of my approaches to eating is to. And it's based on some of the testing that we do here. What we find is that when people eat the same thing over and over again, their immune system will start to actually react to it. And if you have a wider variety of nutrient dense foods where you're not eating the same stuff all the time, we seem to find that people have the most health that way. Their gut biome has the most diversity. Their immune system and food sensitivities are the lowest, you know, kind of. And so. And their nutrient status is good because, you know, they don't eat Brazil nuts every day, but they're having them, you know, a couple times a week and then they're having some artichoke and then they're having some, you know, asparagus and whatever else. Right. So they just keep moving around. It's like you keep moving around and getting this wide variety of nutrient dense foods. And I think that's a good way to eat in general. So you probably temper that with your temperament as well.

So the, you know, one of the other ideas that came out now probably 10 years ago was the idea of the colors. How many different colors of foods are you eating? Phytonutrients. And you know, when I started or years in the 70s, it was more like three foods and then it went to five foods and then went eat for the rainbow. And now the study says the ideal is 10. Statistics are quite relevant to decreasing heart disease, decreasing cancer rates, increasing autoimmune disease, etc, just because of what you just said. A variety of different foods, different variety of different colors, whole variety of different nutrients, as opposed to eating what people unfortunately do, which is the same food over and over because they know how to prepare it.

And that's right, taste and it's convenient. And you know, the interesting thing about our taste buds is that what we eat kind of trains our taste buds to want that flavor. So if you had a burger for lunch yesterday, and it's lunchtime again, and you're hungry, you know, it's. You're going to want something kind of in that vein. Well, I think I'll have pizza today and a burger tomorrow. You know, you kind of stay in that vein. Right. But if you. But if you mix it up intentionally, and it takes a little bit of overriding your appetite to do this initially, and then you start to actually like it. But you've got to say, well, I feel like this, but you know what? What would actually be good is I think I'll have some bell pepper and do some of this and whatever else. I've actually gotten into a thing where I go to Whole Foods and I will get one of their soup containers and I'll put in. You know, they usually have a row of about five or six soups. I put some of all of them in the soup container, I mix them all together, and then I go over to the vegetable section and I start dropping in the cauliflower and the broccoli and the kale, whatever else is there. And so this. This concept is that soup has now become the new salad. And. And when you eat it, oh, my gosh, you've never tasted anything better in your life. It's. It's unbelievable. You should try it. I'll challenge you to try it. Send me a text and see. And if you're listening to this, try it and then send us a message. If you go in and you don't have to do five soups, so just pick a soup you like, fill it up halfway, and go around and stick vegetables in for the rest of it and eat that. It's unbelievably satisfying and flavorful. It's really cool. And it's a good way to get a lot of variety. So kind of cool.

It's a great way. And I like the idea of warm because many of my patient population, probably yours, has so many digestive problems, and they're always looking for something to improve their reflux or their bowel problems or whatever. And I said wider variety of foods. And commonly, because of testing that we do, I often find that their digestive system is very cold. And from a Chinese perspective, eating cold foods like a salad or having a drink is really not good for your digestive system because you're making it so much harder to digest. Whatever great that you're eating. So interesting is totally. I'm a huge fan of never not eating anything out of the refrigerator at any time of year.

Okay, interesting. I guess you're not a big ice cream Guy. But okay. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. So warm foods. Well, anyway, that's a way to kind of mix and match your foods inside. Some soup.

I like the idea of soup with adding different things in there or, you know, you call it a stew or whatever. I think it's a great idea that would help many people's health and their digestive system, for sure.

Yeah. They get a wide variety, and it's warm and it's flavorful. And if you try it, you won't believe how it's like, why haven't I done this before? It tastes so, so good. It's not like, well, I'm gonna have to put up with this. It's not like you take the first bite. It's like, oh, my gosh, this is the best soup. This is the best salad I've ever had in my life.

It's crazy, right? I like the idea. I like that.

So what are some of the other key things that you think are important? We've talked a little bit about outside grounding space away, diet.

So a big issue for people is sleep. I think it's such a chronic health problem for people, and they take all kinds of sleep aids and they can't sleep, or they fall asleep and wake up and they're restless and it's unrefreshing, and it's everything but falling asleep for seven to eight hours. Wake up ready for the day to begin. I would. I find for those people that their biggest challenge typically becomes not their. The fact that they have a sleep problem, but it's. Instead of taking a sleep aid, their issue is their nervous system. They live in this sympathetic place of dominance and they never really get into. And even though people wear a watch or a whoop or an aura ring or something, sort of during their sleep, they say, well, I'm sleeping, but how much deep sleep are you getting? How much REM sleep are you getting? So I think having sleep hygiene is something that's. That's incredibly important. Mostly trying to go to bed more or less at the same time. More or less at the same time, including weekends and weekdays. And turning all your, you know, wi FI devices off or not having them around you in the bedroom. But people use their. Their iPhone or whatever to wake alarm clock, which is. And so can we figure out some other way of doing that? So the idea of sleep becomes critical. And we know that if you. Since we're sleeping one third of our life, ideally 8 hours out of 24 would be an ideal. And it's. And we know that you can only heal during sleep. It's only when you're in the parasympathetic state, rest and relax and heal state. And since many people have such poor sleep, you know, it's no wonder that they're. There's. Their energy is lacking or they don't feel well because they never get really rejuvenated over time. So I think putting sleep as a priority, just as diet and a variety of foods is a huge importance for, for what's going on. I do everything I can. So we're not, for many people, we're shutting everything down by 8 or even 9pm Goal. Be asleep by, in bed by 10, asleep by 10 30. Reading a book, not on, you know, an iPad, but actually reading a real book.

Yeah.

To do things.

Yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot to be said for that, for sure. I, when you started to chat about this and you were talking about people struggling with their sleep, you mentioned the nervous system. And I agree that. And this may have always been true, quite honestly, I don't know that it's more true today than, than ever. But, you know, people have a lot of stress and they are in sympathetic kind of overdrive. We're, we do a test on people when they come in here called a neurocheck, as a brain tap, neuro check. We put two clips on their wrists and they sit there for roughly four to five minutes. And with that we can monitor heartbeat and then they can. We can also get heart rate variability and we can also start to intuit through the software, you know, neurohormonal stress. How much energy is actually in the, in the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system. And it becomes an incredibly useful tool. We just had a guy in who, when I spoke with him initially, and this is not uncommon. He's a very successful gentleman, financially successful, and he said, I no longer have any stress. You know, like 15 years ago, I was working really hard. You know, things have kind of come to fruition. I don't really have any stress. It's like, okay, well, let's, let's test you. Right, right, right. Oh, my gosh. This guy's system is completely stressed out. I mean, and, and it's not uncommon. We had another gentleman in who was a very successful attorney who stopped his litigation practice about 10 or 15, maybe 10 or 12 years ago. Now he wants some very big cases and very hostile environments. And he said, I thrived on that stress, but now that I'm not doing that work. I don't really have any stress. He's kind of now working more on the investment side of things. I said, well, great. Well, let's measure you. Right. So again, just completely stressed. And what I don't think people understand, they do now because they see it and they're actually intrigued, is that when we go through stressful situations, that stuff gets imprinted into our nervous system. And it's not just the fact that the stress is now removed and you feel better. We tend to carry that. And the other thing is that as humans, we tend to normalize what's there. Like we don't, we don't recognize stress because it just feels like a normal day. Of course I feel this way. Right, right. So if you're listening to this, I think the idea of having yourself tested is really, really good. And if you find that you have not enough power in your vagus nerve, which is bringing all that healing parasympathetic energy into your organs, you can train that, right? You can train that. And so we, we recommend people using something called Braintap, which is basically a, a visor and a set of headphones and uses photobiomodulation and binaural beats. You know, the beat in the left ear and the right ear are like a couple hertz different. And you can put yourself into any of the waveforms that you want. So my point about sleep is that you can, in the evening, before you're going to go to bed, you can put yourself in theta, which is the waveform just before you're going to doze off the hypnagogic state. And what I do is if I wake up at three in the morning, you know, I usually get up once a night, go use the bathroom, come back if my head is still kind of engaged, let's say. And I'm thinking about something. One thing I've learned is I can never think my way back to sleep. Right? You can never think your way back to sleep. It's like you have to stop thinking. Right. So anyway, I'll put on the brain tab for 11 minutes and just put on a program, you know, and it's, it's remarkable. It takes your brain and trains your brain into a delta state. Now set it up for delta, which is super slow wave, which is the actual sleep wave. And you actually entrain your brain back into delta. And I take the headset off and I fall asleep again. Right. And so it's, it's to your point, I think it's really about having some hacks to understand the status of your nervous system and then being able to retrain it. So.

Yeah, well, 100. It's about retraining. I would agree, in many aspects. And you know, I often say to a patient, what do you think the first stress in your day is? Well, whatever. Oh, actually, you missed the point. The first stress of your day is when you go from lying to standing. Because then nervous system thinks you have to defend yourself. You're standing up, who's attacking you? So you immediately move in. And I'm sure with your testing and with mine, we see immediately because it's one of the tests we do in the office is hrv also because we find that people go into a stress mode, literally from lying to standing. They said that wasn't your body thinks it was, per se. And. And this gentleman, as you said, who thinks he isn't in stress, those are exactly the people who are the most stressed because they don't realize that their body is stressed.

Yeah, it's one of. It's been one. Quite honestly, when we started doing this test, which we've now done for quite a number of years, but when we first started it, it was actually surprising to me that how somebody felt about their stress and what we actually measured was really so different or could be so different. There are some people that come in that are really relaxed, right. And they're. They've met, they're meditators or they've been using brain tap or whatever, and they look actually quite good. There are also people that have meditated their entire lives that come in and they don't look that great, you know. So just because you meditate doesn't mean you're actually getting there. If you're listening to this, it's pretty interesting getting some testing done to say, oh, okay, well, let me just find out where I'm at. Can be super helpful. And then if you want to use different devices to help pull you in, there are different ones out there. I mentioned braintap. But to kind of pull yourself into these brain states that are very relaxed and restorative, it's a good, great thing to do, quite honestly. You sleep better, you're able to handle stress better. You know, your system isn't upset subconsciously. It's very cool.

Excellent. And so in addition to that, areas that I think people may not be as familiar with, but. Oh. 2. I mean, they're familiar with it, but they don't know what to do about it is we check people's breathing because Pretty much have every patient, every time, once a week check their BOLT score which is like, you know, how many times a minute do they have, do they feel that they have to breathe? And historically, you know, it's patients, it's like 14, 16, yet in reality it should be five or six.

Yeah, yeah.

So teaching people how to breathe properly, most people don't know how to move their diaphragm or can move their diaphragm and they actually don't get enough oxygen. And we're not talking people who necessarily have an illness related to their breathing, but just in general because of the. For what's going on. So I think breathing and training and learning people how to breathe properly is a simple type thing. And I think every stress management will tell you if you slow your breathing down, you'll calm your system down. You'll calm your system out of a sympathetic dominant state and try and get into this parasympathetic state you're talking about through the vagus nerve and all activities that you can do for the vagus nerve. Splash cold water on your face, sing, hum, you know, take a moment, gargle.

Do all kinds of stuff, right.

Deep breathing kind of thing. But I think is important. So that's a, that's another habit that's like, well, you don't have to think about breathing. Well if you're only going to breathe five times a minute, you're going to think about it because your body naturally going to do that in general. So I think that's, that's another important thing that people should. So I have people every day and I tell them, put signs up around their place and said oh, you see the sign breathe, you know, like I have several in my office here, you know, and it's like, oh yeah, I need to stop for the next minute and just slow my breathing down.

Yeah, that's, it's a really good point. My take on that is the way that I slow my breathing down is I breathe more deeply. Right. And I think, you know, we also measure PFTs here to get an idea of somebody's capacity for not only force vital capacity, which is how much air you can move at a breath or FEV1 which is how much you can expel in a second. But we look at their maximum voluntary ventilation. So how much air can you move in a minute? Right. And that's a function of intercostal, the muscles between the ribs and the diaphragm, how strong they are.

Right.

And it's really interesting because if you're not breathing deeply enough, you're not exercising those muscles and you can't really move the amount of air in a minute that it takes to keep up with any kind of, you know, true level of exercise. So we have ways to train that using an elevation training mask where it's, you know, you put it on and then it's harder. The aperture, you close it down, it becomes harder to suck the air in. So you gotta work your muscles to get it in. But the other thing is you breathe more deeply. Because to your point, when you breathe in deeply, you've already paid all the overhead of filling all the pipes. That last 10, 15% that goes in, it all goes to exchanging gases. You're getting oxygen in and CO2 out. So it's, it's really changed the way that I breathe when I mountain bike and things like that. By breathing more deeply, I can climb a hill and not have to speed up my breathing. And when I get to the top, I can, in four or five deep breaths I can get, get my breath back, so to speak. As opposed to a minute of more shallow breathing.

Right, right.

So it's really, it's a very powerful thing. And the other thing that I've learned just recently actually is that by slowing my breath down and breathing really deeply and actually feeling the cool air run in, if you, if you pay attention to this, you can, you can feel the air just running through your nose, down the back of your throat, down into your lungs. And I have this sensation that goes all the way down Right. Lower than my lungs. Right. Or like all the way almost through my entire torso. I can feel that being activated. But when you, when I do that, I find it's actually very comforting. It's right. It's almost like a, it's almost like a self soothing kind of event to take that really slow deep breath. And I think that self soothing goes along with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.

Right.

If you're feeling that sense of soothing and relaxed and comfortable and safe and things like that. Sure. And then you're really kind of moving into that parasympathetic space. So anyway, that's just, I know that's personal that I'm sharing. Not probably everybody does that, but I think it's very cool. There are many traditions that obviously focus on deep breathing. Right.

Well, I think, I think the whole idea of yoga is less about the poses and learning more about how to breathe.

Yeah, that's right.

The original of it. I mean, it's great to do the, the postures. But, and I'll tell somebody, if you want to learn how to breathe properly, go and talk to a yoga instructor.

Yeah, there you go. That's right. That's right. Yeah. No, it's cool stuff. Cool. What else, what else do you like to focus on?

Well, the, one of the biggest challenges is, and I'm sure your testing is mine, I find most people are dehydrated.

Oh, sure. Yeah.

And they, and they'll say, well, I'm not, I'm not hungry, I'm not thirsty. And I said, well, if you are thirsty, you're already dehydrated because you're down about 3% if you're actually getting. So you need to drink routinely throughout the day in order to be able to satisfy yourselves. Since a woman is about 55% body weight is water, and a man it's about 60%. And I rarely find that in a patient population. Young children, sure. Teenagers and athletes, probably, but not otherwise. And addition to that, even the people who are hydrated adequately, men or women, what I find is that the water is in the wrong compartment. And by physiology, most of that percentage of water should be inside your cell. Physiology says, he says it should be about two thirds. And only one third of that water should be on the outside of your cell, which never happens. So in other words, 6633. Sometimes it's the reverse. And sometimes if you have more water outside than inside, I'll say I can get. Without any other tests, I can tell you that your problem is straight toxicity. I don't know, tell you what. But your body can't get rid of even your own endogenous cellular waste of CO2 and urea and lactic acid. Interesting making. And, and so the two creates an.

Ocean to dump them into to dilute it, is what you're saying, correct?

Right. And so what I found, from a clinical perspective, almost always those people are low in protein. They don't eat enough protein for their body mass, and they don't even need enough protein to basically satisfy that the, the proper compartments as far as extracellular water. And the other aspect is when you have the ocean, you dump all these great nutrients in there, but they can't get across the cell because the cell membrane doesn't have the right charge.

Right.

You talked about earlier about the gentleman who's sleeping on the ground, or the, the natural ions in near the water or a waterfall or walking in the forest after a rainstorm where we're getting the natural negative ions to, to replenish that. But with the amount of toxicity that's sort of in our environment and the cell membrane that doesn't allow it in, you can't get nutrients in or hormones in or anything else. And you can't get the stuff out of the cell that you need to, to be able to be, you know, to have a healthy cell. And the stuff that Warburg found in the 30s was that to have a healthy cell, a cell membrane, you need about minus 80, minus 70, minus 80 millivolts. And any unhealthy cells, like a cancer cell, has a. But a minus 15 millivolt.

Right.

No wonder it can never be a healthy cell because you don't even have the right charge. It's like having a. Your laptop where the light comes on and says you're in low battery mode. We can't do all the functions because we don't have power to do it. So hydration status is not just about drinking. And my rule of thumb still is half your body weight in ounces in water and I'll call it ionized water, mineralized water, hydrogen water, coconut water, whatever, as opposed to things like coffee or alcohol or soda. I'd like to replenish your fluid that your body has with sort of, I'll call it nutritional water, if you like, that actually has much more potential benefit for. For healing.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. I think using good quality salts are helpful also. You know, like a good Celtic sea salt or something like that. So you get the right minerals in. A lot of people are mineral deployment depleted, getting the water in, getting the toxins out? Yeah, well, that's cool. It is interesting how good you feel. And if you're listening to this, just remember it's. It's interesting how good you feel when you're in the woods, right, In a cabin or you're about to go fishing, or you're about to go hiking or, you know, whatever it is you're going to do outside or even at the ocean, right? You're going to walk the beach or get in the water. It's interesting how good we feel there, right? I mean, it's like you wake up in that environment, it's like, oh my gosh, this feels great, right? You're surrounded by the trees, they're dumping all this oxygen in the air and the negative ions are out. It's like we're built for this is the point I'm making. We're really built for that. And I think part of our health is actually being inside Structures as little as possible almost on some level. I'm not advocating we go live in a tent, but, you know, the idea of being outside as much as you can is. There's no downside to it, I think.

Well, you know, it's interesting because many people who will report that are not paying attention. They just think I'm on vacation so I have less stress or I'm.

So now I feel better. Yeah.

Why they feel better. But the reality is. Yeah, sure, that's a piece of it, but what you just said is actually the bigger piece. Getting, getting away from, you know, concrete, actually allowing the, the earth to give you the electrons back. The earth, the water, the ease, the oxygen, etc, and you know, even if we look at where's the first place we get electrons from, of course it's the sun. It's light.

Yeah.

Per se. And what, what does this, what do we need sun for? We need sun to grow plants. So we eat the plants because it gives us some electrons and some energy. Yeah, I mean, that's the way sure works. And we've got away from that because, you know, people, you know, they, they stick something in a microwave and think that's nourishment and.

Exactly. Yeah, it's terrible.

Getting those electrons in is absolutely critical in order to. And everything you just said, the cabin, the camp, woods, etc, is. That's why I said if you live in a city, hopefully you can find a park where there's at least some grass and some trees you can get around somewhat what nature ultimately is trying to provide us with.

That's right. You know, we mentioned Manhattan earlier in the, in the podcast here, and I've been in Manhattan. I don't know, I don't know how many times, a lot of times, quite honestly, but I find that Central park is such an amazing park. Like, I, I don't, I think it would be completely unbearable except for Central Park. But if you get in Central Park, I was in there doing a run one day and I just kept taking the fork in the path. I just kept taking the smaller fork and the smaller fork and the smaller fork. I tell you, I ended up in a part of that park where I couldn't see the city, I couldn't hear the city. Wow. I was just surrounded by the trees and the land and I'm like, my gosh, this is in the middle of Manhattan. I can't, I can't hear or see anything but nature here. Right. So. And it felt so good. So the point you're making, if you do Live in a city is to find, you know, what is your escape? Where can you go? Forest bathe, right. So to speak, or whatever it is you want to call it. So, yeah, super important to get that in. I actually started here in the offices. If I have a break, I walk outside just to get a little sunshine for three minutes and you know, get some fresh air and whatever else. It's. I think it's super healthy to, to do that. Every opportunity you get, it's like anything.

It's. They, we. Nature has got away from it and I don't know, you know, growing up in Canada, you know, the. One of the things that we used to do is you go outside and play and now you look at kids and they. What do they do? They come home from school and they go and they sit, they sit on some tablet and they exercise their thumb. You know, where's the, where's the games of tag and basketball and baseball and, you know, soccer. Life of thing that we used to just naturally just go outside and play in the park and it's like, yeah, it happened anymore. You know, you drive around, party, and it's like, how come there's no kids playing? They got dogs in there. But you know, where are the kids that are supposed to be playing? It's like the kids are hiding indoors somewhere. It's like, wow.

I, yeah.

He ever changed, you know, significantly.

I will say this. I've got a son that lives in Denver who's married and they just had their fourth child. They have two boys on either end of the spectrum and then two girls in the middle. And she runs a school. They live in Colorado, but she runs a school in San Francisco because they used to live in that area. And it's a tree school for preschool. So these little two and three year old kids are in the park outside exploring. It's like the, you know, the classes are like two hours long or two and a half hours long, right. And they get a break and they have lunch and they do, you know, snack, whatever they're doing. But the beauty of it is they're out there with the pine cones and the squirrels and they're, you know, feeling. And if it rains a little bit, they put on their hoods and they're getting all that exposure. And so with their four kids in Colorado, they actually live in a house that's right across the street from a park. And then my son, he's a mechanical engineer, he built a pump track in his backyard. So I there. And then they go mountain bike and Then they, you know, so they have their kids outside all the time. Oh, they turn their front yard into regenerative farm and the kids are always out there picking the berries and doing this and that. So, you know, my point is that even if you live in sort of the suburbs or whatever, it's a mindset, you can actually find access to these things. You don't have to have your kids on a tablet and yeah, they're on a tablet, you know, 30 minutes a day or whatever, but they're, you know, they're outside, you know, ten times over that. Right. So, yeah, very cool.

Another area that is probably not talked about very much that I find is pretty routine. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find a person who has an optimal functioning lymphatic system.

Yeah, tell us about that. You mentioned, I saw that in your notes.

The, you know, the lymphatic system that people say, well, yeah, if I get a cold I can feel something swollen in my neck or in the groin per se. But your lymphatic system is a huge part of your immune system and for lack of a better term, along with your cardiovascular system, it technically is your sewer system is how the body removes cellular debris, cellular waste from, you know, where the cell is, whether it's in your big toe or in your brain, and to a way to be excreted from the body, you know, in general. And we know that naturally the way we. Since the lymphatic system, unlike the cardiovascular system, it doesn't have a pump. There's nothing that's pumping the lymph around.

Except the muscles in the legs or whatever.

You know, it's your muscles. So that's why movement becomes so important, because that's one of the ways you are actually moving your lymph is why sitting still all day, you get lymph congestion in your ankle and or you see the outline of your socks at the end of the day if you haven't moved enough to, to move your lymph out. So, you know, we recommend things like dry skin, brushing it before bed, and we recommend castor oil packs and you know, those types of things which historically have been using to support the lymphatic system. And you know, I find a lot of people, whether it's brain fog or headaches or different types of things, you often see that their lymph is congested in their head and neck area and they get it in or out. And it's only in 2013 that they so called discovered that we have a lymphatic system in our brain.

Yeah, the glymphatic system.

Yeah, right, the, that aspect and what I just read recently is that system was discovered when they were doing research for Alzheimer's and dementia and they realized with the studies that are nighttime, our brain cells actually shrink, which gives more space for the lymph to move around. I've seen a picture of how active the lymphatic system is at nighttime, which is going back to sleep, how important sleep is because that's when your body is removing all this cellular debris, moving it, you know, towards your colon, moving it towards your lung, moving it towards your kidney. So that in the morning, you know, you first morning urine is strongest. The first bowel movement ideally is earlier in the day. Our breath is stronger in the morning because we're removing all these waste products from the body. So yeah, boarding a lymphatic system. And what's interesting in medicine, it's the one specialty where there's no specialist.

That's right. No, there is no a lymphologist.

No lymphologist. Every other organ has a specialist except that one, the.

Well actually there's no FASC ologist either, I don't think.

Right, no, that put them into the rheumatologist category. But I don't think I'll just deal too much with the fascia. They just deal with the joints and the muscles.

That's right. You know, it's interesting point. You know, I was at a conference with Shelly Jordan and they were talking about the glymphatic system and I forget who the presenter was, this was several years ago, but they were talking about the fact, and I actually put this in my book, that the glymphatic system of course works at night during slow wave sleep as you were talking about, but it seems to work best when your right cheek is on the pillow as opposed to your left cheek. You actually improved lymphatic flow with the right cheek on the pillow. So I had been sleeping with the left cheek on the pillow when I heard that and I thought, you know what, I'm going to swap it around. And you know, it's a little, you know how it is when you're sleeping and used to a position, when you change positions, it's a little, not disorienting, but it's just a little, you know, less comfortable. Right. So anyway. But you kind of break through that after a night or two. And anyway, I've been doing that ever since for that very reason.

Never heard that before. I'll have to try that myself.

Yeah, try it. See what you think. So you're going to put vegetables in your soup and you're going to sleep with your right cheek on the pillow.

Yeah, totally. You know, and the other aspect, that which I ended up writing a book about is the effect of people's thoughts and emotions. And you know, I, to, you know, trauma may be maybe too strong a word, but in reality it's not too strong a word because no, the adverse childhood experiences which people, you know, and I ask a patient about that, no, I had a great, you know, I had a Pollyanna. Everything was great. We had meals together, we went on vacations together. And I said, now those are the big T's, Those are the big traumas. Just the little traumas that add up that you tend to just ignore. But your brain doesn't forget, as we talked about earlier, your brain remembers everything.

That's right. It gets imprinted. It gets imprinted into the nervous system. And interestingly enough, when it's imprinted, then we actually are living in reaction to that. We're making decisions. We're coming into a room full of people on a particular tilt, so to speak, because of an experience we had or whatever it is. Right. So yeah, I think this is super important. I think there's a lot of disease that comes from that. It's self inflicted in a way, although we're also victims of it as well because things happen to us. It got imprinted, but we just haven't gone in and healed it or been able to transcend it and become grateful for it, which is really the ultimate thing in my perspective. But yeah, I think that's a really important thing.

Yeah, yeah. And you, what you just said, I mean, Gabriel Mate, who probably is one of the better known people and has researched and written books about the effect of trauma, his own personal trauma, he was growing up per se, you know, saying up to 80% of people's chronic health problems have some, has a root in some form of trauma. And then piled on top of that are people's experiences. And the experience that, that still to this day amazes me how things get imprinted on the brain is this is years ago when I was still living in Portland, Oregon, for whatever reason. And Portland, Oregon is the city of roses. So I have no idea why this person lived there. Because she had anaphylactic reactions to roses. How could you live in everywhere? Every household has a rose. How can you live here?

That's like setting yourself up. How can, how can I best Set myself up for failure.

So for whatever reason, I don't know why, I had an artificial rose in my office.

Office, okay. And she had an anaphylactic reaction to it.

She walked in, had an anaphylactic reaction, took out her EpiPen. And I said, what the hell? It's the rose. I said, it's an artificial in her brain. That her body responded, there it is. The classic example of there's no reason for it, but yet her brain said, that's a problem.

That's a problem. That's right.

What you said about imprinting on the brain is. Is something that I think we all should look at, not don't think they have an issue, invariably, at least patients. In my experience with chronic illness, it is an issue that we need to be mindful of for sure.

Yeah. I think in the, you know, I forget who wrote the book. The body keeps a score. But I think these traumas all live there. They're in the fascia, they're in the nervous system, they're in the, you know, the way our posture, you know, all these things. And it's so important if you're going to optimize your health to kind of understand, oh, there has to be a deconstruction process where I actually go in and discover what these are and then go back and heal these things. Right. Because if, if you never get to the root cause of it, you're never going to actually be able to get beyond it. And I think that sometimes cognitive therapy is not enough. Right. Because it happened in an experience. And I think the best way to actually get over it once you do the understanding, understand what happened, etc, forgive everybody involved, including yourself, it sometimes is to have another experience that overwrites the software.

Correct. Right.

Because. Yeah, because when you do that, then it's like, oh, I have a new reality. Right. Otherwise, it's like I'm still living in the old reality, even though I know it's not true. But I'm trying to live not in that, but in something else.

But it's.

When you rewrite it, you see what I'm saying? But when you rewrite it, it's like, oh, okay, well, now there's. There's just a different reality. So it's pretty cool.

That's. I mean, the last book I wrote, that's exactly what it was about. It's okay. It's rewriting that. And so you have a new reality when you have the same trigger, whatever. Whatever trigger is that.

That's right.

Without even knowing what the Trigger is half the time. Just like this with the roses. I mean, she knew the trigger, but, like, why did an artificial rose trigger you to have an anaphylactic reaction?

Yeah, exactly. That's. The mind is a powerful thing.

Very much.

Well, Dick, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. Appreciate you coming on the show. Wasn't sure exactly where we were going to go, but we ended up going some interesting places, so it's good.

Well, I appreciate the time. I appreciate the opportunity and, you know, listening to your experiences. I have two new things to try for myself.

The soup. Well, there you go. Good. Likewise.

Like you always learned. That's why I feel I'm. I'm on this planet to keep learning and to try and share as much as I can with other people before I leave and go.

That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it gets fueled by eternal curiosity, really. I'm just eternally curious. Right. And I think if you go into it without attachment to the current construct, but it's like, okay, I'm just eternally curious. What's really out there?

Right.

Then I think you have a really wonderful life of growth and development and, you know, progress. So, yeah, it makes it fun.

That's why I'm still doing this after 55 years. Yeah.

Yeah.

My wife calls it my hobby.

Well, there it is. Nothing better than a good hobby.

Absolutely. 100.

All right, great. Great to see you. Thanks so much.

My pleasure. Thanks for the time.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. If you would like more information on what we've discussed, discussed or other topics, please reference the show notes or go to gladdenlongevitypodcast.com youm can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter by searching Gladden Longevity. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to get future episodes delivered to you and share our podcast or this episode with someone in your life that you may find benefit. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with another exciting episode. The Glide and Longevity Podcast is provided for informational purposes only. IT does not constitute medical advice. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. The use of any information and materials linked to this podcast is at the listener's own risk.