#226 Cellular Health and Longevity: Wellbeing Tips to Reduce Oxidative Stress with Dr. Monisha Bhanote

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself and in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donni Wilson and today I'm really looking forward to introducing you to Dr. Manisha Benot. She is the best selling author of the Anatomy of well Being and she also is a quintuple medical board certified practitioner physician in integrative medicine, culinary medicine, as well as cytopathology and clinical pathology. And she now spends specializes in helping people with gut health and longevity, which I'm very intrigued by because I think longevity is a concept that we're hearing more and more about and it's especially something I love to talk about. And Monisha, you're going to help connect us connect the dots between gut health and longevity, which is, I don't think, something that we usually hear about or think about. So thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me on this podcast, Dr. Dani. I look forward to our conversation.

Absolutely. Tell us a little bit more, if you don't mind, like about your path to where you are now, like how you know your path of. Because you've done a lot of learning and discovering and along the way to find, hey, this is what, how it all comes together in terms of how you can help people. So just give us a sense of like, you and your path to becoming this, the healer that you are.

Yeah, absolutely. So almost an extra 19 years of cumulative training after high school. Right. So if you can add that all up, it's a lot of time after high school and you know, I, I come from a generation where you get three choices, you become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer. My dad was an engineer. I'm like, I'm not doing that. And I was pre med and pre law in college.

Law was way too much reading for me, so I wanted to go with a pretty picture. So that's how I ended up in the direction of medical school. And so always fascinated by the human body and really kind trying to get to how can we make it function with ease and be healthy and happy? So that kind of took me on the conventional path of going to medical school.

Going and being a doctor, where I was treating patients in, you know, the emergency room and the clinics and then going, wow, nobody's getting better. I. I've given them the protocol, and yet nobody is not. Not everybody, but a majority, let's just say a significant number of people were not getting better the way you would expect them to. So it's like we've put these patients in this textbook of disease and said, all right, here's your diagnosis, here's your protocol. Your body's supposed to respond like this. And that's not what happens. Right. Because there's so many other factors that come into it. So.

After I spent some time doing that, obviously I was disillusioned by that solution, and I went into pathology. So I have three medical board certifications in pathology, anatomic, clinical, and cytopathology, where I'm literally looking at human cells and body flu under the microscope in the clinical laboratory. So anything that gets taken out of the human body, I have held it in my hand, I have looked at it under the microscope, and I have diagnosed disease from it. So you can pick any organ, I'm sure. I've looked at it. And that's where you really get to see and watch the evolution of disease. And it's quite fascinating because I know that you also work with your community in HPV and cervical cancer. So if we think about the evolution of what happens to cervical cells, and I'm a cytopathologist, so I have looked at gazillions, I don't even know how many at this point, Pap smears, and watched this evolution of normal squamous cells from the cervical transition zone in the body transform into dysplasia, into cancer, and the subtleties on that cellular level, and by doing that for decades now, for quite a bit of time, I'm like, okay, so great, I've got these answers, I know these diagnosis, but then I'm giving those answers to my clinicians, but my clinicians are still following the same, all right, here's the diagnosis and here's the treatment, and still nobody's getting better. And that's where I went back. And I really did a deep dive in integrative medicine at the Andrew center for Integrative Medicine, as well as in culinary medicine, and.

Found that a majority of our diseases, including up to, you know, a significant amount of our cancers, are all lifestyle related. So whether that's environmental, whether that's what we're doing every day, from the food we're putting in our mouth to the Way we're living our sedentary life to the way we're handling stress contributes to every single disease. And if we can tap into that, we can actually stop the process, reverse the process, and not have to deal with these diseases. So that's what brings me to where I am today. Because we can.

Yeah, absolutely. I love it and I love to hear, like, how you like to know that you went through this whole process of examining the human body down to under a microscope, every cell, and saying, here's what this disease processes look like. And coming to the conclusion that he, this relates back to our stress exposures and how they're affecting us. And if we could only put our attention on that, we can be, like you said, reversing and preventing most all health issues. Right. And this is what I, I love to research and, and to write about as well. Because sometimes it seems kind of flippant, right, to be like, it's too simple. Oh, if only we could, you know, handle our stress better or reduce our stress. And people kind of be like, but, yeah, but I can't be stress free. And this is what they say to me. And I, and I, I would love to hear your response to that. Like, how can it. It sound almost too simple for us to believe.

So, so twofold on that, I will, I'll address the, the stress aspect of it first and then actually, no, I'll draw. I'll address the simplicity aspect of it first. Health is not rocket science, okay? Being healthy is not rocket science. We have made it more complicated than it ever needs to be. And frankly, that's an excuse for us to actually get healthier. Right? When you're saying the stress aspect of it, stress is our perception of it, right? And we actually have two factors for stress. We have our emotional well being, mental stress aspect, right. And that's how most people look at stress. I take stress from another approach, which really is looking at your cellular stress levels or your oxidative stress levels, and both go hand in hand. And what I want people to kind of translate is that mental, physical stress that they put impacts that oxidative aging stress, right? So it's all intertwined and interconnected. But the big message here is.

We need to take care of our human cells, right? So your podcast is called How Humans Heal, right? So my answer to that is cell care. Hashtag Cell care is the way humans heal, right? And we've gotten so far away from how can we heal ourselves and take care of ourselves? But that is the priority. And coming from a Place where I've been in a cancer community diagnosing for so many years, you know, sitting in plenty of tumor boards and just seeing this day after day. And it's like, okay, the next trial on this chemotherapeutic age and the next trial on this or this foundation against. For this cancer thing. And so much research being done that you almost got to go. The last 50 years has all been about finding the cure for cancer. But what if the cure for cancer and diseases is prevention?

Yeah, that's powerful. It's really so powerful. And I love that you're coming at it from this, this other perspective. And I love what you're calling this cell care. You know, like asking ourselves what we are made up of cells, what do our cells need? Because like a lot of times we, you know, we, of course, we are so busy with our lives, we're. And we're taking care of others and we're not taking care of ourself. S E L F But now you're saying, how do we take care of ourselves? C E L L so when we think about it that way, like, and you're also talking about the mind body connection, so I want to come back to that as well. But just since you mentioned this, what is it that our cells need? Well, how do we know what our cells need?

Yeah. So. Well, first of all, cell care is self care, Right? Cell care is Self Care 2.0.

I love that.

Just keep that in mind. Everybody knows what self. Some people are like, oh, well, that's a luxury to be able to go do these things. No, this is actually a priority, some of these things to be able to do. It's not a luxury. This is, this is part of being healthy. So what do our cells need to be healthy? What do our cells need to be happy? They need a handful of ingredients which are actually at the hand of most people, yet they choose not to utilize that. Right. So if we take it from a holistic point of view, which is the way I like to do it. Right. So if, you know, we look at, look at it from a mind, body, soul kind of perspective, our mind and our brain and all that needs certain nutrition. Yes. For, you know, the brain to work, it needs sleep to be optimized in order for it to work. Right. Our body needs movement. What don't we do anymore? We are the most sedentary, like species ever. Right. And we've forgotten how to move our bodies. And then we complain that we have aches and pains and, and it, it's mind boggling to me that when somebody has, you know, hip pain, what do they do? They. They sit around even more because they're like, I can't move it, it hurts so much. But the only way to get nutrients to that joint is through the synovial fluid there, which requires some movement because otherwise your cartilaginous cap that covers your. Your femoral head there doesn't have a way of getting nutrients to it. So we kind of stop the blood flow and all the nutrients going to our body. And then from a soul perspective, I mean, there's so much. We. We need our community, we need people. We need the right people. We need. We need to be surrounding ourselves with the right, uplifting people and really be kind of protective of our emotions and how we create them based off of those people. So that's just kind of an overview. And the way I see it is that so many people are overwhelmed with health advice and they're really unsure about how to take this approach to the cellular level and how to live a long, healthy life. Right. So it's not about living longer, it's about living healthier as we age and with simplicity and with grace and with energy and vitality and with ease. All right. Because we spend all these years working, working, working, and then we get to a point where we're hit retirement instead of working. We are now in the hospital. Hospital. Hospital. Right. So somewhere along there, the message got very distorted in what does a lifestyle look like? What does your.

Short time on this planet look like?

Yeah, sometimes we have to stop and think about that and realize we do have. Sometimes it's only when something catastrophic happens that we take, say, hey, it's true, We. We don't know how many more days we have left. Ultimately, we're hoping for more days, and yet we want those. Like you're saying, we. If we have more days in our life, we want to be feeling good so we can enjoy them. And so it starts to shift the priority to what can I do for my cell care? I love that. And what you're saying is our cells are picking up on things like what we're eating, how much we're sleeping, whether we're moving or have community or not ourselves actually pay attention to that.

Well, there is an older book called Our Body Keeps Score. Before my book, way before my book was written. Right. And, you know, the body does know what's going on. And any symptom you might be experiencing, whether that's a headache or bloating or.

Not energized all of that is your cells communicating a message to you that they are not able to function. So you gotta wake up and go, all right, what do I need to make them function? And often what I do is I like to give a, a analogy. And the analogy I use is, and, and I'm glad this is on video because sometimes when I try and do this analogy without the video, it makes, makes it, it makes it really hard. But the analogy is, okay, here's your cell, right? 37 trillion at least, of these cells, human cells, right? And every day these cells are exposed to environmental stressors. They're, they're exposed to just basically our lifestyle. And they can only handle so much before they go, all right, now I'm going to become dysfunctional and I'm going to become dysplastic or cancerous or I'm just going to shrivel up and not do what I'm supposed to do. And that's how you kind of have symptoms, right? If you can compare your human cell to, say, a cell phone, right? So everybody has a cell phone, right? And, and this is why I really like to make this, this comparison because everyone takes such good care of their cell phone that they, they trade their cell phone in every year or two, they get a new case. If they drop it or if the screen, you know, shatters, they get that fixed, right? I want you to take that kind of care with your human cells, okay? So if we compare our cells, C, E, L, L. All right, in our human body to a cell phone, you have something called a cell membrane, okay? So, and, and I'm saying this to you because I'm the one who's looked at this under the microscope. So these are where I've seen these changes as they develop into diseases, right? So your cell membrane is a protective cover around each of your cells, just like your cell phone has this protective cover, right? And it allows messages to come in and out in the human body, just like it allows in your phone for you to get messages, right? So now you can imagine if it's not working, that, that the messages aren't responding, right? So since the cell membrane controls what enters and exits the cell, that is going to be impacted by certain things. And some of those things are your diet, right? So cell membranes are very high in fatty acids, right? And you get fatty acids from things like nuts and seeds and, and the good fatty acids, and these will strengthen those cell membranes.

I actually had a patient last week, and I'm like, they, they don't eat nuts Totally. No nuts in their diet, no seeds in their diet. And I'm like, huh? Why? And they're like, oh, I just never thought about incorporating it. It didn't even cross their mind because we live in a place where it's like, all right, I gotta get my big piece of steak or chicken, grilled chicken, whatever it is on my plate, and then some carrots or broccoli. I mean, it's a very limited profile of nutrition that I'm seeing in patients, right? And our nutritional profiles are so narrowed, it actually affects our gut microbiome later on, so we can definitely talk about that. But that's kind of the cell membrane. And then the biggest one that I want people to know about is really the nucleus of the cell, right? So the nucleus, which is right here, happens to be just like your processor in your cell phone, right? The nucleus is the thing that suffers the most damage as we age and as we are exposed to different toxins, viruses, whatever it is, right? And this is really the control center of the cell because it contains our DNA, right? So it tells our body what to do and what cellular activities to do. So what's going to help that? Certain vitamins and minerals.

Most people are overfed and nutrient depleted. They're eating, but they are nutrient depleted. And so you can imagine you're eating, eating, eating, and then your cells going, but I'm starving, starving, starving. Because it doesn't have the nutrients for it to work, right? Then most people already know about the mitochondria. Mitochondria has been really like kind of popular, popular word, you know, because that's really the process of making energy for not just ourselves selves, but also for ourselves, right? They're really the powerhouse, right? And you can help support your mitochondria by one moving your body, right? Making more mitochondria, but then also eating dark leafy greens, eating foods like berries and stuff like that. And, you know, I think, like I said, we've eliminated some of these out of the confusion of what should we do? And really, I want you to think about bringing it back to. Bringing it back to the basics. And there's so many other parts of the cell that are really, really important. Like one that nobody talks about is like, the little lysosomes in here. Like, everyone's like, what? What's a lysosome? Right? And I'm like, looking, literally looking at your cells going, oh.

Your nucleus is all wrinkly. The cytoplasm doesn't have what it needs. And so your Lysosomes are like your recycling bin, right? So these are going to be, you know, where you go to kind of empty out on your cell phone. So your cell can actually work. Your cell phone can work. Right. And it's kind of. It's like almost natural detoxifying thing. Right? And you can support your lysosomes, obviously, by what you're eating to help clear out that waste. And this will reduce inflam and improve cellular health. But I go into quite a bit of detail in just one of the chapters in my book, the Anatomy of well Being. But really, I want to make it relatable for you. So you start thinking, oh, well, if I could do this, I can definitely do this. And it's much easier than you think.

Oh, I love this. I love this analogy. First of all, it's beautiful because I haven't looked as many cells as you, but I've looked at quite a few cells. And so I completely get it out through all of my, you know, biology and, and classes and so on. And it's like, really fun to say, hey, yeah, let's pay attention to the health of ourselves and to help people realize what a big impact. Because I think sometimes it feels so distant that what we're eating and what we're doing can actually impact the way our bodies are functioning. As a hero from you, you know, and with your experience to say, yes, absolutely, it's worth it to be eating, you know, say, certain foods that are gonna make a difference and doing certain activities that are gonna make a difference, including, not just a temporary difference, but you're relating this to longevity. Like, prevent reversing and preventing health issues, which is profound. Let's connect, go back to connecting more to the gut health, because I know that's one of your favorite things to talk about is like, specifically, specifically the cells of the gut and the microbiome tell us more like, what is that now between what's happening in our digestive tract and our longevity?

Yeah, absolutely. So.

I don't really believe so much in diets, more so in nutrition. Right. Like, we need certain nutrients in order to make ourselves function. Right. So not coming from a restrictive place where we're like, okay, we can only have this many calories. Like, I don't even count calories, because it's kind of like when you start tuning into what your body needs, you kind of know, all right, this was enough. This gave me energy. This slowed me down. Right?

But what I have found is from years of doing this is that. And also ancient Wisdom tells us, because I do have a background in Ayurveda as well. And we know over 5,000 years ago that the gut, you know, is the major contributor to most diseases, Right? And.

The challenge is most people only think that they're, if they have digestive problems, that their gut is involved in their health. Right? Like they can't relate their thyroid problems to, say, their gut health. They can't relate their migraines to their gut health. They can't relate their energy to their gut health. Right. It's a very foreign concept. Whereas at the end of the day, if you think about it, what you fuel your body with is what your cells are going to receive, right? So if you're fueling your body with the standard American diet, your cells will receive that. And because there is very little nutrients in the standard American diet. So instead of those nice cell membranes, remember those cell membranes, your cell phone, your cell phone case, instead of your cell phone case being nice and strong and allowing the good things to enter in, the bad things to stay out, that cell membrane will be damaged by the highly processed food that we are experiencing. So instead of getting those good fatty acids, it's not going to. And this is part of what creates inflammation in our body and creates back to the type of stress, oxidative stress in our body. Right. So that's specific stress on each and every one of your cells.

Oh, my gosh. It's. Yes, I, I love this topic of oxidative stress and, and I talk about it in the Master Stress book as well because I feel like it's so important for people to understand that it's, that stress can come down to the cellular level and, and yes, the food choices make such a difference there. And I love how you're saying that. It's, it's not about restricting something. Let's, we put the focus on choosing the foods that are going to be fueling. Just like you plug in your phone to give it some fuel, some energy. We've got to, we've got to get our, give our body the fuel it needs for ourselves. So what do you find in this, in the research related to the gut? I mean, I know we're talking about nutrition, which that happens because we're swallowing the food. It's coming through our digestion. We're digesting the food, absorbing the nutrients. So that's essential. It has to come through our gut to get to ourselves. But tell us more like what, what is it that you're noticing in, in terms of gut health and what's important there.

Yeah. So thinking about, like, the patients that I see coming to me, most of them, like 99.5% of them have digestive issues that are underlying to their contributing causes to whether it's their hormonal issues, whether it's their weight gain, their energy, all of that. Right. So when I'm looking at their gut and seeing that one once again, they are overfed and malnourished, Right. They are actually lacking the nutrients in order to make their cells work. What that might look like is things like antioxidants, right? So if we're gonna measure certain antioxidants, you can't imagine in this day and time that people don't have enough, you know, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, that they just don't even have it. Like they're depleted. And mind you, some of us might need more than others of these ingredients. Right? But without knowing and just saying, oh, I have this disease, I'm going to stick this medication on it. I want you to realize that sticking that medication on it is going to still allow your disease to progress if you don't build your foundation up. Right? So when I'm working with my patients, I'm always talking about building that foundation. Your body is that foundation. And you can't take all these.

Longevity hacks and all this, like, oh, I'm going to take that supplement and I'm going to do this without building that foundation because it won't work as effectively. Right? So it's kind of like asking a. I think right now the Olympics is going on, right? So if we think about the Olympics and our athletes training for that, if we ask somebody to do, you know, the balance beam, and they're like, okay, I'll do the balance beam, but I only want to do the double spin off with the back flip, whatever. If they have not built that strength in their body to actually accomplish that, can you imagine if just having the knowledge of doing that and then maybe like the training just to do that end part, it might not be as successful as what they needed to get there. Right. So I think that's where people kind of get a little confused, is because they want to climb the mountain, but they don't want to build home base. And you have to build home base, otherwise you're going to come rolling back down.

I've done a lot of detoxes over the years, and many of them made me feel a lot worse. Not only that, but I've had a lot of patients come in and tell me how after doing a detox, they have a stomachache and headache and they can't sleep and they're feeling anxious. And I'm like, I can't just recommend that my patients do a program that's going to make them feel worse. So I finally decided to design my own detox program. It's a 14 day detox program that's not like other detox programs out there in several ways. One is that I'm focused on helping you to get the toxins out in a safe and effective way using nutrients, antioxidants and supporting our natural detoxification pathways in the body. Also, I'm helping you to decrease your exposure to toxins by learning the ways that you've been exposed to toxins and how to change your day to day lifestyle to decrease your toxins over time. And I'm helping you to look not just at chemical environmental toxins, but also emotional and energetic toxicity. And yes, it's possible to accomplish all of this in 14 days. I have so many patients who have done the 14 day detox and report back to me how much better they feel. And I think it's also because I help you to know what to eat. You are getting adequate food that tastes good, plus protein shakes that I developed that are good for your body, that your body knows how to use these nutrients and take them in and use them to help you safely detoxify without feeling worse. Also I help you to balance your blood sugar levels, get better sleep and introduce things like meditation, biofeedback and other types of stress recovery into your day to day routine. So I just am so excited about it.

I want to make sure you know.

About this 14 day detox. I'm going to put the link, you can find it at drdani.com forward/detox-program but I'll also put the link below so you can find the 14 day detox program at Dr. Donnie.com I look forward to guiding you through this detox so that you can actually feel better on your way to better health.

That's such a good point because sometimes as practitioners, you know, I find that too. Sometimes it seems like we're starting with just the basics. But like you're saying, we have to build the foundation in order to build on that. We can't just skip ahead, we have to. It's essential to have that foundation and especially the foundation of the nutrients and for helping people to identify that, that they even have nutrient deficiencies that they may not have realized. Because it's not like most Blood work. Right. I find myself oftentimes saying, like, you can do. You can go get blood work done, covered by insurance, but it's not likely to show. Maybe if you're lucky, they would have tested vitamin D and maybe see that that's low, but very unlikely they were going to identify any of these other nutrient deficiencies. And sometimes people are hearing, you know, like, oh, it's not worth it to take a multivitamin. And, and certainly there's certain multivitamins out there that I think are not worth it if they're not good quality. But it's like, you know, and certainly if we can get our nutrition from our food, that's even better. But most people are. Don't have the information to know how to choose those healthy foods. So, you know, do you, you see what I mean? Like, do you think, do you find that this is why we're getting stuck in this situation is because we're getting these myths or mis messages, and so then we end up not fueling ourselves. We end up not realizing that we need to eat differently and find help to get the right nutrients to get ourselves out of that situation.

Yeah, so, so this, this is a very good point that you made. And, and being that I'm trained in clinical pathology, which is the, the part of the health care system that establishes the clinical laboratory blood test parameters and guidelines and goes, all right, this is what our level for, you know, sodium is going to be. This is what our level for chloride. What our level for vitamin D. You know, since. Since I'm one of those people who's done that before, I want people to understand that those levels are really taken from a place of looking at average people, not necessarily people of the. And average people in the sense of, yes, disease free, but maybe not optimized to how we need to. And I think we have to refrain how we look at our health now is we actually want it to be optimized as opposed to just going with a status quo. And sometimes those labs do not show up as abnormal until more than 50% of that organ is damaged. Right. So keep that in mind that these things are, are creeping up and slowly showing up, because nobody's going and getting a biopsy on every single organ. Right. But I can tell you from that, like, cellular perspective, just looking at these individual cells on the microscope, there's changes going on every single day. And I'll give, I'll give you an example here. One, one that I feel like is very common and I wish people knew about is reflux all right, so reflux. So common.

And by the way, reflux is lifestyle. So reflux is so common, you eat something, or you might have a.

Lower esophageal sphincter tone, maybe based off your weight or whatnot, and you're experiencing this acid coming from your stomach up into your esophagus. Well, if you kind of think about it from the anatomical perspective, the esophagus is a tubular structure lined by squamous epithelium. The stomach is its own structure lined by columnar epithelium. Okay? There is a junction right there. It's called the GE junction, gastroesophageal junction. Now, every time that sphincter opens, the acid goes up, and then it causes erosions. It causes irritation. And those cells in this, in the esophagus, which are normally squamous cells, aren't used to that irritation. They're like, oh, no. Holy crap, what am I gonna do? Right? So instead of staying squamous cells, they go, I need to survive here. What should I do? And they become metaplastic. Which metaplastic means is their form of survival is they change from squamous cells to something we now call goblet cells or intestinal metaplasia, right? So now when they change to this, they're like, okay, now I'm gonna survive. But the process keeps continuing. And you go, well, I'm taking my. My antacid. I'm doing the right thing. I don't need to change anything else. This pill solving this problem? No, the pill is not solving the problem. The pill is solving your. Your feelings and symptoms around the problem. But that. That if you don't change your lifestyle, that acid is going to keep coming up and eroding and causing damage there. So then those metaplastic goblet cells get tired, and they're like, all right, we don't want to hang around here anymore. Let's. Let's turn into something else. They turn into dysplastic cells, which are precancerous cells. And there's different kinds. Whether it's low grade or high grade dysplasia, the process keeps continuing. And for some, this could be years going, right? For age 40, 50. Right. But if you keep down that process, what ends up happening is those dysplastic cells, besides the fact that you're going in for an upper endoscopy every six months to monitor this, which, by the way, is, frankly, a lot of energetic time preparing for these tests and going in for an invasive procedure, but eventually Those dysplastic cells will become gastroesophageal cancer. So now you've got a cancer here. So there's only so much space in this little, like, tube that is your esophagus. So what do they do? They go, cut it out, and you will never eat the same again. So now imagine if you could have prevented that by understanding that you can make some lifestyle changes. So, one, you don't even need to be on the medication, and two, you can kind of hold on to your body parts.

Yeah. And I think more and more people are realizing that, you know, I. Because I hear from them, too, and they're like, wait a minute. I can see where this path is leading. You know, lead. Like you're saying you're giving us specifics, like, here's the possible path this could go down. Instead of finding out later how we'll do something now in order to make that change. And I. What's really coming to me is coming back to what you said earlier, which is this. This mind body connection. And I think also what you cover in your book is finally listening to our body, listening to ourselves. What is our body been trying to tell us? Like, as though this reflux is. Is a message from ourselves saying, hey, I need some help in here.

Yeah.

We have to quiet our brain so we can actually listen. Right. We have so much outer messaging going on that we don't have space or time to listen to what's going on with our body because we're. We literally have so much going on.

Because we're on the cell phone all the time.

We're on that cell phone taking care of that cell phone instead of taking care of ourselves. But no, seriously.

I think this is where that. That point of going, how does mindfulness and really being present in the moment impact my body? And it will impact your body on that cellular level. In fact, there is research that shows that, you know, mindfulness can change the struct. Right. So if meditation can. Can help increase the size of your prefrontal cortex, which is your rational, thinking brain, and decrease your amidala, that's been totally hijacked. Right. I mean, hijacked amid dollars are pretty much all I see around here is if we can tamper that and quiet that so it gives you a chance to listen.

I just. I think people have given up on feeling good. Right. And it's. It's possible.

You just got to tap into all these tools, and there's so many practitioners that can help with that. I mean, I certainly do that, and, and ways that you can tap into it, but you have to make that decision. Right. And I find people spend way too much time in that pre contemplation stage of change rather than in the actionable part of change. And very few, less than 5%, get to the maintenance part because they spend so much of their time so much earlier on in the journey.

Yeah, that. Where they're like, I know I should do this, or maybe I'll do, I'm gonna do that tomorrow, next week, next month. And then we end up procrastinating our own health and longevity because of that. Like, what do you recommend? Like, how do you. Is there something people can do to help themselves get from preconceiving this notion of health? Just get, dive in and get going.

Yeah, absolutely. So I do talk about quite about this quite a bit in my book is I really want you to go from living your life on autopilot with these bad habits, right. I don't know. I don't know anybody who's got a good habit. Really, like habits to me is that negative connotation, right. And we, we need to move from these habits which are a place of very little self awareness. Right. We kind of just do them. It's, it's the whole like, I'm driving home and I drive by a fast food place. Let me pick something up and move on. Right. Very little intention behind it. It's automatic. And you know, then we have these people who move into this routine place and those are the people who are like, yeah, I know I need to go to the gym. So I go to the gym and, and I know I need to do this. But then they quickly burn out because they're like, this is boring, I don't want to do this anymore. And, or, you know, oh, I need, I know I need to go on a diet, right? So, so they've got a little bit more self awareness and a little bit more intention behind it because they know they need to do something. But I really want people to start thinking about their lifestyles in the most intentional way with the highest degree of self awareness. And that is really what I call creating rituals around your life. Right. So practicing, you know, rituals makes it flexible. So you might have something you do in the spring, you might have something you do in the summer, you might have something you do every day, right. But really taking that moment to go, what is it that my body, what is it that my cells need today? And making those decisions based off of that, I think that is the key.

Beautiful I love that it's like you're bringing it back to that connection with self because I think a lot of it is we, we really are just kind of doing what we heard or what we, we thought was right. But we lose that connection with what is really right for me. And even down to the moment, what is right for me in this moment to eat. So that it's really coming from that aligned, authentic place in connection with the individual self and ends up that ourselves are paying attention to that too. Ourselves know when we're making aligned decisions.

Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And you know, it can be as simple as looking at what aspect of your lifestyle do you want to change first, right? So if you're like, I can't handle the nutrition right now, I, I, I, I don't, I'm too overwhelmed with that. Pick something else. Like if you are an athlete back in as a teenager, let's start there. Let, let's start with a fitness. If sleep is being disrupted, you know that's going to affect all of your system. So let's start there, right? And baby steps become cumulative. And in 365 days from now, even if you do one thing every day and that 1% better every day, 365 days from now, you're going to be a new person and that's your choice.

Because our cells are literally being replaced, right?

We grow, new cells are continuously changing. That's the beauty of it. That is the absolute beauty of it, right? So everything you do is either taking your cells and going, yeah, I'm the best, healthiest, happiest cells ever, or I'm just gonna shrivel up and just be in my little space and die off, right? Because, and that's really what longevity is about. If you actually look at the people who are living the longest and the healthiest and the happiest, they're covering all the bases, but they're not making it complicated. They're not, you know, oh, I need a new outfit from this store and I need to, you know, go to this yoga class. No, it's just every day, simple things. And you know.

I invite people to really reconnect with themselves so they can reconnect with their self, but really reconnect with themselves so they can be more in touch with their body, they can be more in touch with humanity, more in touch with nature and just our planet as a whole.

Love that.

What do you see in your patients? Because I know you work with patients as well. Maybe you have a story for us. About how someone who's been implementing all of this and what kind of changes do they notice?

Yeah, absolutely. So, wow, I have so many patients. All right, so let me give you the example of one guy. So I have this. I think he's like, either like, 49 or 50. He's an IT guy, so professional, right? And busy, busy, busy job. Long hours on the job, Long hours, literally sitting in front of his computer, you know, forget about all the blue light coming to him, but just really, really stressed. Both mentally fatigued, physically fatigued, and then just sedentary, right? So he knows that he's not living his best life. And, you know, when you kind of hit that 50 mark, you're like, oh, I've got, like, 15 years left for retirement. Like, that, I feel, is like, really a pivotal, pivotal point where you're like. Like, you can either go, I'm going to stay healthy for the rest of my life, or I'm just going to succumb to what I think is what's inevitable for everybody. And I'm going to tell you right now, it's not. Disease is not for everybody. It's. It's what you really do every day that's going to impact whether or not you develop disease, right? And so for this guy, he thought, all right, I need to go to the gym after work every day. Meanwhile, he's like, you know, he sedentary. So his thought was, I need to go to the gym. I need to be there for an hour every day. I need to do this, I need to do that. And he did it for a while. He did it. He didn't feel better. And it wasn't because.

He wasn't going to the gym. He was obviously going to the gym. It was a disconnection for him of like, I'm going to the gym to do this, and I. I'm forcing myself to do it, right? So, like, why are you doing it? What's your purpose behind it?

It?

And he basically went from a computer cubicle, working on a computer, to now in this gym, where he's now in this other box of, like, you know, working out, right? And I made this simple suggestion to him. I'm like.

How do you feel about going out in nature and just taking walks? It's like, huh?

Why would I do that? Why would I do that? Right? Because we're so programmed to do things a certain way. And so we found a park for him to go to. So every morning before work, he would go to a park. 30 minutes, simple walk. You Know, like, didn't have to change his clothes, nothing like that. Now he's setting his day up for more success because, one, he's in a better mood because he's already been outside. He set up his circadian rhythm because he's gotten sunlight in the day instead of sitting in this, like, you know, little cubicle with artificial light weight. He's also gotten some of his vitamin D, right? And this also gave him some time to tune into his body and be mindful without creating a complicated exercise routine, right? Because we can't, like, you know, most of us can kind of walk without thinking about how to walk, right? As opposed to when you go to the gym, you're like, oh, I need to worry about falling off this treadmill or I need to worry about these weights, right? When you're walking, you can kind of just be present in that walk because you don't need to learn really how to re walk, right? So it allowed him to do that. And then he started enjoying it so much he'd have, like, longer walks on the weekend, right? So where he'd find new trails and stuff and then bring his friends along. So that added that community aspect to it. So something as simple as that. Now, what ended up happening to him on that cellular level? Well, Mr. I've got high blood pressure, doesn't have high blood pressure anymore. So without having to go on a, you know, calcium inhibitor or beta blocker or any of those, right. His blood pressure naturally decreased. And that was twofold because one, he was getting some activity. Two, he was also more relaxed, right? So if he's more relaxed, his blood vessels, his cells, his endothelial cells are more relaxed, right? So there's, there's specific cells there that get happy. And I love making cells happy, right? We want to make all our cells happy. And he also found that just this simple process made him more focused at work, right? So because he was more focused, he was more productive and he was able to do more in less amount of time and felt less stressed, right? So there's science behind this. There's absolute science behind this, right? We know that research has shown us that spending time in nature can lower our stress levels, specifically our cortisol levels, right? There studies that's been done on that, it can improve our resilience, right? So our heart rate variability and how we respond to things. Plenty of research on that. So it was a simple thing for him to do. Not making it more complicated, just looking at what. What is the next best thing I could do to Start moving the needle and then we approach to nutrition. Right. Like the big guns definitely are going to be nutrition, but we got to start where the person is. And that, and that's usually what I do. And the, the best part of it is really that we were able to enhance his immune function. Right. So he is.

An IT person in a hospital, right. So now you can imagine he's going in and out of all these places, trying to fix stuff, obviously being exposed to a lot of hospital based infections and all this stuff because he's like literally, literally the I T. Guy. And so we were able to increase his body's ability to create and function natural killer cells. Right. So now his immune system is even more improved. Right. So there are effects that because you don't see them, you don't realize they're happening. And that's where really going, I'm not going to wait till I get the disease to go. I need to do something is the message here, right? You stop it before it even starts. So you don't even have to deal with it. Because dealing with it, I guarantee every single patient that's dealing with a disease right now says to me, I wish I would have known this before.

It's a really good point. It's really good point. I absolutely. They think that and, and now that it's much easier to prevent it before. And also if a person listening is already experiencing disease to know that it's possible to reverse that, we can start making these small changes and as you said, it can add up to big changes and that our cells start noticing right away. As soon as we even think of making a change, our cells notice. It's so cool and amazing to observe that, isn't it?

Yeah. I mean even just as little as three days in nature can change your immune cells and that effect can last, last like 30 days onwards. Right. So can you imagine that, like if you actually took the time off on the weekend to go out in nature and go on a trail that your immune system would be stronger?

Amazing. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for coming to share all of this wisdom with us today, Onisha. I love it and I'm sure everyone's feeling very inspired. Inspired by this. I definitely recommend everyone check out the Anatomy of well Being which is her book. Oh, you have it there. That's great.

Yay.

I love it.

It's the handbook for your life. So it's not like a storybook which you read and you put away. It's literally, this is your manual for how your body works and how you're going to optimize every single single cell in your body.

I love it.

Oh my gosh. Thank you for writing that and sharing that with us today. Is there anything else I'll be definitely sharing where people can click to go find out more about your work, but is there anything else you'd like everyone to know?

Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. So, yeah, I'm super easy to find. Drbonote.com Social Media I'm Dr. Ben and I invite any one of you who's still struggling to kind of redesign their life to come redesign it with me. Whether that's, you know, through my medical clinic or in one of my in person retreats where we really do a lot of this stuff and start healing our body at that cellular level.

I love it. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much and I look forward to staying in touch with you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks everyone for joining us today at How Humans Heal. Make sure you subscribe and join me for the next episode. I'll see you soon.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.