EP 152 WTH?!? Supercharging Brain Health with Dr. Erika Siegel

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Hey, welcome back everybody. Dr. Greg Eckel of Energy for Life Centers and what the health and today I have a dear, dear friend and colleague, Dr. Erica Siegel, founder of Nourish Me. She's a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist, mom and health educator and who offers a wide whole bodied health care and inspiration to thrive. Today I really brought Dr. Siegel on to talk about foundations of health. You know, in our ever abundant information age, there are some tried and true basically experiences of really time tested practitioners and she is one. We spent I think over a decade together at Nature Cures Clinic in Portland, Oregon. We're going to talk foundations of health. In our quest for longevity and optimal health, it's imperative that we honestly assess and support the foundations of our health. So we are going to talk about that. I'm going to weave in this lovely, lovely, Lovely book of Dr. Siegel's. Erica, welcome aboard.

Thanks so much for having me, Greg. This is really fun.

I am so excited and I have had the pleasure. I'm going to step aside and just show like these tomes that I want to just show off because this resource really should be in everybody's home. It's volume one and volume two and I so excited to share this information with people. It's near and dear to my heart and just having known you for a while, you know, I brought me to tears when you hand me, handed me these books and I actually will probably get emotional in our interview today just because it's so alive. It's the vibration of the words and the intention behind your book. Maybe let me just ask you, like what inspired you to do this labor of love here?

Yeah, well, the inspiration came nearly 15 years ago and it started as a really humble project of a guide to help support people really meet the basic needs of their health. Because I realized I was writing the same things over and over again in treatment plans. As you're familiar and as I dove into it more I realized, wow, there is not a resource that I could point my patients to that really will give them the guidance that I would like to have the time to provide for them in the office. And it just sort of built on that foundation. And then before I knew it, it had a pretty wide scope because I felt like for a truly holistic guide we needed to hit all areas of health, not just nutrition and movement and sleep, but our environment, the, the physical spaces we find ourselves in, how we're sleeping, who we're surrounding ourselves with, how we're working with sustainability and beyond so it took, it just took that much time for it to grow into what it wanted to be. And the inspiration built over time until it sort of found its, you know, final outcome. I love it.

And that, you know, it really does show through in it's time tested. Like you, you've utilized this with your family, with your children as they've grown, with your patients and your practice. And it's not just one of these Johnny come lately books like that. And that is the potency. It just comes through when, even when I just hold them, it's like, whoa, there is so much heart in this. And so I wanted to bring you on and talk about today, about the pillars and you break it down in such an interesting, really easily to easy to follow as well on, you know, you've got the nourish and you have be and you move and you got sleep and you've got de stress and connect and heart speak and these pillars, you don't really see people put them out that way. And I wonder, you know, if we just kind of popcorn it and I just want to see what percolates and what, what, where's the intuitive hits here in the conversation? Because those foundations are really near and dear and they're so necessary. You know, one quote that I love, near is, you know, you're not going to supplement your way out of a bag of potato chips.

Right, right.

And these foundational components, you make them so accessible. So when you're talking foundations and you know, how do you want to, where do you want to go with that?

Well, something that has really become evident to me is that when people are evaluating their health and their life, they often have blind spots of areas that are not getting enough attention or love and they just put up that little barrier. Well, for now I, I'm not going to this one part because I'm focusing over here. And what I'm trying to support people in is an honest assessment of how they're caring for themselves. Like you. It's true you can't supplement yourself out of a bag of potato chips. Not to say that potato chips are evil, but if that's the mainstay of your diet, you're not going to be able to take superfood pills to get yourself out of that. So something I was inspired by in working in your clinic is there was a part of the intake form where you evaluated different areas of your Life on a 1 to 10 scale. So there was, you know, how would you evaluate your nutri? I don't remember exactly all of them, but basically that opportunity to look back at yourself and say, how would I evaluate my nutrition? How do I evaluate my relationships, my time in nature, my relationship with screens, my. My sleep, my movement habits? And when we actually take the time to look at all of those aspects of our life, we may find that some of them are really lacking. And so I try to look at what I believe are the foundations or pillars of our health and try to have everything fit neatly into a category so we can compartmentalize them in a. In a neat fashion, because I. I think our brains work that way and then, you know, see where. See where we're maybe really excelling in other areas where we're not quite keeping up and what our body is trying to tell us regarding that.

I love it. So let's start at your, you know, basically the Nourish Me brand and in the Nourish Me kitchen. Let's start with the Nourish. And, you know, you. You included a. The Chinese adage, it's better to eat. It's better to eat the wrong food with the right attitude than the right food with the wrong attitude. And I think what. It's a loaded territory talking about nourishment and diet in particular. So much conflicting information and confusion, and it's emotionally laden. So let's unpack that a bit.

Yeah, I mean, it's such an interesting time, right. With conflicting nutrition information coming out every week. Is kale good for you or is kale bad for you? Should I, you know, is broccoli going to kill my thyroid, or is that something healthy for me to eat, or is it too high in sulfur and therefore I should avoid it? And so I think it leaves consumers really confused and scared. Like, scared of food.

Yeah.

And something I love about that quote, that, that Chinese philosophy around having the right attitude around your food, it's something about, like, integrity within yourself. So if you make a choice like, okay, I'm going to eat this chocolate cake right now because it's my friend's party and I want to feel celebratory, and it looks delicious, and I'm going to eat it without, like, feeling guilt and shame while I do so, but savoring the experience and recognizing, oh, have I had enough? Did I get that experience? And I think if you. If you meet it with that integrity with yourself, you might find that you're satisfied with a smaller amount or. Or at least you walk away without feeling shameful because you made that choice. Intention. And when we bring that into all areas of our nutritional Choices, we end up having a lot of insight into what's good for us personally. Now I know the foods that kind of resonate with me and foods that don't resonate with me because I check in a lot. How does that feel? How does that feel in my body? How's my energy now? And so regarding nourishment, I think that we have a lot more intuition than we think, and we tend to sort of outsource that too much to our doctors and the latest research instead of just truly asking ourselves, well, how do grains feel in my body? Are grains necessarily bad? I can tell you that grains feel good in my body. I think they should be soaked. And if you can cook them in a, in a really nice fashion where you can get more nutrition out of them, you may be able to tolerate them better. But when we start to demonize foods and then put other foods on a pillow, a pillar, we. We end up losing a lot of that intuitive connection to how we nourish ourselves. Hmm.

You know, that component of, you know, it has never made sense to me to like, demonize a macronutrient.

Right.

And we've been at it long enough now that you see the trends of where they're going. And so I almost call it like a frat. Yeah, fractal medicine of like, really diving into what resonates with you and listening deeply there. That. I love that mindfulness component. And I guess that leads into perhaps the, the hydrate aspect of the nourish because you develop a good section right out of the gate with that.

I do, yeah. I, I find that most of us are walking around poorly hydrated. We're not drinking enough fluids, we're not drinking enough water. Perhaps we're not drinking enough electrolyte rich drinks. And stress is depleting our hydration even more because when we start pumping out cortisol, we're utilizing more of our, our, you know, our waters, our yin fluids. So one of the things I always ask people about, not only how much you're drinking, but how do you feel when you drink water? Are you thirsty all day and you still just feel like you can't keep up? Because that's an indicator for me that we're not. The water's not penetrating the cells appropriately. So I might say, okay, throw a few pinches of salt into your water or an electrolyte packet, or drink some coconut water or have really electrolyte rich foods in your diet. So that's going to be your fruits and veggies, cucumbers, Celery will hydrate you better than anything, really. And when we're hydrated, our cells can perform appropriately. When we're dehydrated, dehydrated, we can't. Things don't operate very well. Our cells can't communicate appropriately. And sadly, as we age, we have a harder time hydrating. And perhaps a lot of the aging process is due to that lack of hydration. So I just think, you know, before I'm going to try some miracle cure with someone. Let's make sure you're hydrated, that that body is 70% water. Let's make sure that yours tr that your cells have enough to do their function.

Oh, that's awesome. You know, that was my. It has been traditionally my number one recommendation. You know, a lot of times folks come to us and on their first visit, they want, like, the laundry list of things to do, and I'll typically just stop at the hydration one to get. Get them going. So really aligned. You talk about B as. As another area to check in and. And I want to resonate, I want to really emphasize this component. Like, what a novel question. How are you feeling with that? And so having, you know, having that. Just to ask, like, you know, I see so many people, they're on the bucket list of I'm taking all these 50 supplements, and I'm like, well, how do you feel? You know, like, oh, my stomach is upset because I take them on an empty stomach or whatever. So, like, checking in on your hydration, how do you feel with. When you drink that water or that beverage when you're eating that food? You know, so many. It's like we're not even in the body. And so this. This aspect of breathe. Breathing was a big component of that and moving and rest. And you're wanting, you know, to really get in on an assessment of. In an inventory for folks to check in. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's foundational. Right. But the way I'm. I'm. I expanded that section of B is what you mentioned. So it's about breathing and movement and stillness and. And sleep. So it's really not part of our. Our Western mindset necessarily to be, first of all, to be okay with stillness. We might think that not doing is, you know, we're wasting time, we're wasting our productivity. We're supposed to be just charging forward. And I know that I'm really, really guilty of this one. That's the hardest thing for me to rein myself in is like, sit down and close my eyes and breathe for 15 minutes that. That brain rest, that recharge is actually essential. And yet I'm going to put it at the bottom of the pile because it's not getting another chart done or checking a box. But the first part of B is breathe. Breathing that is foundational. If we are not getting enough oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, our cells cannot perform optimally. And there's amazing resources now on proper technique. So that's what I really break into is the nasal breathing as the pr. Great technique for oxygenating your cells and slowing the breath down so you're living more in that parasympathetic, that healing state, as opposed to the run from a tiger state. That it's just so amazing that we have that voluntary control over our breath, which is also involuntary. It's one of the only things in the body that we can. We can decide how fast or slow it should go. We can't really do that with our heart rate. We can't sit here and say, okay, heart rate go up to 100. We have to. We have to activate our body to do that. But the breath we can control. And that part of the brainstem where that control center happens is also directing the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. So that is our. That is our gateway in to calming the body is through the breath. So not just about good oxygen, but really not manipulating, but supporting our nervous system in being in the right state of being so we can heal.

I. I often share with my patients. I really encourage them to not stop.

Not stop breathing. Yes. If you could just not just keep going. That's all. That's the first action and the last action we will do in this life.

The will you share just kind of. I think, you know, what I wrote out was just your ideal breathing technique is just as a little thing to share here.

Yeah, sure. Well, this is not mine. This is what I highlight from. I'm just gonna look at my book right here.

Sure.

Wonderful book called the New Science of Lost Art Breathe by James Nestor. And oh, my gosh, I mean, that book absolutely blew me away. I recommend it on Audible because he reads it and it's just a fascinating story. And he talks about the research that he put himself through to really to understand that nasal breathing has far better benefits than mouth breathing and all the reasons why. So when people breathe through their nose, they have appropriate. They can intake more oxygen. They can. They. It expands their palate and their sinuses in such a way that allows for more oxygenation. If you're breathing through Your mouth, you start to lose a lot of the structure of your face and you slack jaw, you're definitely more prone to sleep apnea, which are, you know, moments in the evening where you're going to stop breathing. And his, that book is absolutely so mind blowing to me in the simplicity of what he calls the ideal breath and how to use that in your physical training too. So he teaches athletes to continue to breathe through their nose even when they are beginning to get their respiratory rate up pretty high. And it is difficult to do, but you can yourself to do that and then you actually have greater exercise tolerance and can achieve more. So. But the ideal breath is six seconds in and six seconds out with a full complete exhale because the release of the carbon dioxide is just as important because you have to, you have to let all that CO2 go so oxygen can come and attach again to those cells for proper exchange.

Yeah, and that's a biggie for folks with anxiety, is that right?

Huge, huge. And what he talks about in the book with anxiety is that what a lot of us are experiencing when we think we're anxious is that we're experiencing more CO2 built up. And that's why we might find ourselves doing what's called the physiologic psi. So when we just, we're actually listening, Wow, I need to blow off some CO2. Because when we start to breathe in that more shallow range, we are not blowing off enough CO2, not getting enough O2 in. And our body says, maybe you should take a sigh right now to release some of that. The most therapeutic breathing techniques really allow for that full exhale. And if you start to practice it, it's really neat. You have to really engage your diaphragm to come up and push all that air. Then that strengthens your lungs, increasing your lung capacity because we only use a little bit of it. Anyone who's practiced beak room yoga gets an education. Have you done Bikram?

Yes.

It's so neat, right? Because all the breathing techniques, you get the education that your lungs come up pretty, pretty darn high. And we're breathing like up to here. But when we start to do those, those, you know, those berm breathing techniques, we breathe high up into the tops of our lungs and down into the bottom of our lungs and out in the sides in the back and we realize, wow, there's so much more lung capacity here. And then you have to really get all that CO2 out so you can fill up again. So highly recommend that book and I, I just recommend that people connect with their breath. And instead of saying, oh, I'm just a mouth breather, you can actually decide, well, wait, maybe I can change that pattern. How about I just try close my mouth and see what happens. And you, I'm sure you know about the, the newer fad of people taping their, their lips at night.

Right.

And works for a lot of people. I mean, it might feel scary to some, but they sell tape to put across your lips and make sure the mouth breathing.

I love it.

Yeah.

The other components of breathe are we've got move and stillness and sleep.

Yeah, well, movement, Movement is our birthright. We, We. It is our, it is our. I don't know. I just think of movement as a primary medicine for me and really all of us, humans, animals, I mean, you see, children, they need to move and then they need to rest. Right. That rhythm throughout the day. And we, you know, adults, we don't really necessarily live in accordance to our, our movement needs because, well, we might have a desk job or we might want to be inside and comfortable. And before we know it, our movement, our ranges of movement have gotten really narrow. Maybe we have a shoulder injury and we say, oh, my shoulder doesn't move that way anymore. Instead of saying, huh, how could I regain that range of motion? And I, I, the older I'm getting, I'm 49 now. I realize that movement is absolute, absolutely the key, one of the main keys to longevity, moving. To increase muscle mass at this age and beyond, we have to keep those muscles going or they are going to absolutely shrink. They will at this. We have to fight for it at this age, they're, you know, going to go away. Walking is one of the most beneficial things that we can do, and it doesn't require anything but some sneakers and appropriate clothing, like get outside, take a walk. It does not have to be called exercise. It does not have to be a routine. But having movement in our life is. It is essential for our circulation, for our oxygenation, for our brain capacity to, to do our work. And if I could get everyone, everyone moving, I know that we would make such a big difference if we could get people to move and see past their obstacles to it.

Oh, it's a, it's a massive, you know, a great book out there. Younger next year, just.

Yeah.

Through all of the proposed beneficial things with movement. And, and that is, you know, the way I think on the longevity is that, you know, the centenarian decathlon. So, you know, we used to train for sports when we were younger. So why don't we train as if we're going to live to 100 and what is it? You're right. If we're not using it, we're going to lose it. And it's big. And those, Those losses come quickly. I think, you know, I want to emphasize that piece of, like, if you have an injury or some restriction, you got to get on that immediately because it's not going to go away by itself. And you want to get full range of motion back as quickly as possible.

Right. And you don't want that injury to define you. Yeah, you don't. I always like to think of athletes, pro athletes, they have an injury, and it is. It is everyone on deck to get them through that injury and back on the court or the field. Now, we might not consider ourselves as pro athletes, but we can recognize that injuries can heal with appropriate intervention. And what if we did think of ourselves like, I think of myself as the pro athlete of my life. I show up for my kids, for my patients, for my family, for the things that I love. And so, you know, I had my ACL ruptured in a year and a half ago. I did not. I was like, okay, let's bring this on. Surgery and PT and all the things. And I had to fight to get my range of motion back and my strength back. And because I was not going to allow that to define me moving forward, I was not going to have a bad knee. And. And I just encourage people all the time to look at what their injuries are and their. Their sticking points and see if, you know, there's probably some more that we. That you can do. There are people waiting to help you. Physical therapists, chiropractors, naturopaths, massage therapists, orthopedic surgeons, interventional radiologists. They are waiting to help you through that injury.

Yeah.

And I think we should be utilizing their help.

That's awesome. Practice stillness. So this is a big one in the. In the being section.

Yes. Well, I commented on it before about the importance of the opposite of going. Right. The being, the opposite of doing, but being. And when we rest, when we stop, when we practice stillness, it's not just a pause. It's actually an opportunity for our brain and our nervous system to say, oh, okay, let's do some, like, glial cell cleanup of the brain, and let's restore that softer, smoother, longer breath. There's so much that happens when we come to stillness, and stillness isn't necessarily, okay, I'm going to sit down and, like, doom scroll on my phone. But to allow the whole body and brain to come to a place of rest. Now, that could be sitting on a meditation cushion, listening to music. And it also could be something that just feels really therapeutic to you. Like, my mom loves to play Sudoku, and I know that for her, that's her stillness. She might not meditate, but, you know, finding what that stillness is for you is, it's very important, and it's very different than sleep. So there's different brain activity in meditation and stillness than what we achieve during sleep, which is also, of course, crucial.

Well, let's talk about sleep.

Yeah, let's talk about sleep. Yeah, sleep. You know, sleep isn't just when we press pause. Sleep is a highly metabolic time, as you know. I mean, the, the things that are happening during sleep. The growth hormone, the production of hormones, the cleanup, the integration of your day, all, all the stuff that's happened. And now your brain and body need to try to make sense of it. Any parent knows that if your kid is under slept, everyone's going to pay for it. Now, as adults, we've just become better at hiding it. We just mask it more. We drink caffeine, we eat sugar. We, you know, we, we. We replace our fatigue with things that we think are doing a good job of hiding it, but the body knows. And I think that, you know, coupled with our desire to be productive all the time, we, we are sort of like Rob, you know, borrowing from Peter to pay back Paul or whatever that expression is.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah. And I, I just encourage people to have an honest talk with themselves about not only the amount of sleep they're getting, but what is their, their routine, their sleep hygiene. Are they turning off all the lights or are they going to sleep with a TV blaring in their face? You know, that's going to affect their melatonin production. And not only that, but, you know, what's the, what's that content? What are you listening to? What is your brain picking up? You have CNN on or whatever news station, and you're just getting, getting in that news cycle. And now your brain is just. That's how you're nourishing yourself. I don't think that that's healthy. So just, you know, recognizing what are the obstacles to sleep? Is it pain? Is it you're too hot, you're too cold? There's so many resources to help support whatever those obstacles are. And, you know, I know that you do this in your work all the time. We, we have to help people see what those obstacles Are and help them find a way through them.

That one, you know, lack of sleep has been attributed to like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Nobody thinks about doing that. That's listening to what the health right now. And so it is such a massive, massive lever that you have full control of that sleep hygiene component is really important. And I think this kind of goes into your next topic of de stress. And I love these as inventories for people to check in on. Right. And get real, because these are all, you know, what I like to say is what we do as physicians is just have deep presence with people. Right. We're listening to them sometimes more than they're listening to themselves. Right. Because they have all of these symptoms saying, pay attention to me, pay attention to me. But that we didn't never learn to like, oh, that's actually. I need to listen to that. It's like, take this pill and get rid of the signal. So these aspects are really. They are the foundational pieces to. To get yourself out of quicksand. Get a strong foundation that then you can do, you know, the other therapies on top of that to really move the needle. But this, without these things, it's really kind of just a waste of time out there.

True. Yeah. We're just kind of moving around sand otherwise. And I often feel that that is what I'm doing, unfortunately, because people are in such stressful jobs or situations at home and, you know, saying de stress can sound a little tone deaf too, because it's like, of course people have situations that they can't change or get out of. But what I think that you're trying to communicate to your patients and I'm trying to communicate to my patients is what are the things that you can change and what are the things that you can change your perspective on?

So.

I know that. So Dick Tom, a teacher that we both had in school who I absolutely adore, he, you know, one of his tools for his patients was if there's something that you can't change, sometimes you'd have to say, oh, well. And he had a really funny way of communicating that. Oh, well. And even though it might seem a little trite, if you cannot change something, is it worth your time and energy to just be beating yourself down about this particular thing? Our colleague Samantha Brody wrote a great book, Overcoming Overwhelm. And she talks about the stress buckets and, you know, she says, you know, you have all these stressors, and then why don't you look. If you can look at your stressors and Ask yourself, what can you change? What can you not change? And what are the things that you can change that you're deciding not to and recognizing you're making a choice right now and allowing, without guilt or shame, allowing that to be in that category is. I'm, I'm choosing not to change that right now and having that compassion for yourself. This is a stressor. I'm choosing not to change it right now. But look at these things that I can change and working there. Because anytime we can reduce that stress response, we're giving our body more opportunity to heal. We see it in our patients all the time, right? They go to Hawaii and then they come back, they're like, you know what? My belly didn't hurt the whole time I was there. My back didn't hurt. I guess I just need to move to Hawaii. Yes, that would be great. I would love to write prescriptions every day first, get the heck out of here and go to Hawaii. But maybe it starts with just more honest assessment of what we can change. I do have a little, a good stress relieving technique to share.

Oh, perfect.

Ok, I didn't make this up. I don't remember where I picked it up. Okay, so let's say you're really frustrated about something. Okay. You got in a spat with your boss at work and you're just like mulling over and, oh, I should have said this, and why did this happen? If you can ask yourself, okay, am I going to be upset about this in one year from now? And the answer is, of course not. Am I going to be upset about this in one month from now? Probably not. How about one week? Probably not. And if you can back up that way and realize that you're really gonna let like the future, you've already let go of it. Maybe you can just let go of it now. Because between now and that time when you've let go of it, you haven't really benefited in any capacity. So maybe you can decide, oh, maybe I can just let it go now. And the more you practice that it, you actually become really good at it. You're like, okay, this thing sucks. How about a year from now? Oh, it'll be resolved. How about a month from now? Yeah, it'll probably be okay. How about tomorrow? Yeah, I think I won't be thinking about it tomorrow. Well, then how about right now? Let's just. Can we do an oh, well, yeah, right now. And we can get pretty good at that.

I love it. You know that component of reframing your stress and I've had kind of sayings for my kids and staff on attitude is everything. And it really is our response Dash, ability, responsibility in that. There's a concept in your, in your book that I was not familiar with, which was there's actually a, A term for the universe is working for you.

It's like, oh, right.

Pronoia or. Right, yes. Which I wanted to make sure was shared with people because, you know, I think we get so caught up in the, the critical nature of like, the things that aren't working or, you know, it's like really in this component of, like, well, in a year, I'm not ever going to worry about that. So, you know, let's just let go of it now. But then to flip that on this framework of the universe is actually. I mean, it's a miracle we're even talking. We're born. We get like. But I'd love to hear your take on that.

Yeah. So what I included in my book was this beautiful article from sun magazine that I tore out 20 years ago and tucked away somewhere just because I loved it. And it was this. It's this awareness that all that's sort of conspiring in your favor at this moment. So you wake up and you're like, ah, my big toe hurts. My big toe. Darn my big toe. I'm not going to go on that walk. I'm not going to do. My big toe hurts. But if you think about the rest of you, that is working. The fact that you opened your eyes this morning and you can see color and you can, you know, make your breakfast and have all this food and when you start to recognize the proportion of that thing that's not going well to the massive amount of things that are going well.

Yeah.

Again, you can start to change your lens and, you know, and pronoia is this, this, this really interesting idea that the universe is working in your favor. Not to be too esoteric about it, but, but that just the fact that we're all here doing this thing together and that things. There's a lot. All this synchronicity and things just work out. Not always, but things do work out in our favor most of the time. A lot of near misses. Wow, if I hadn't looked that way, I would have been hit by that car. You know, these, these moments all the time that allow us to keep living and thriving. And if we can start to orient in that way, basically having gratitude, right. Our. Our brain will start to see the world that way. There's that book Flourish By Mark Seligman. Do you know that. That book.

I don't know that one.

He studied the science of gratitude. And his theory was that you can change the brain if you practice gratitude. Not just like, oh, I'm better at seeing things through rose colored glasses, but know that your brain will start to see things more positively. And he was right. And so the research that he did was he had college students. He broke up different groups of college students, and he had some of them do nothing and some of them write down everyday things that went poor. And the other group wrote down basically a gratitude journal every night. Something that went well that day. I think it was. It was interesting, like why it happened. And the result of it, he found through MRI that parts of their brain changed when they practiced gratitude.

Wow.

So just perspective and, and our responsibility are, you know, have, like, how do we respond to things and how are we able to change our response to things? And not just by like, you know, putting up blinders, but recognizing the. The, the magnitude of the thing and all of the things. And I think that we will recognize that we have a lot that is going right in our life and a lot to be grateful for.

Love it. The. The two other pieces that I want to make sure we touch on is that connection with nature is us being both the naturopathic field and then taking from technology.

Oh, my gosh. Right. Well, I know that for me, when Covid started and I was so flustered and didn't know how to show up right. For my. My patients and what. What are we doing here? I just kept feeling called to be in the woods. And it made me realize how often I have turned to nature to calm me. You know, something about we are the same as nature, made up of the same elements and minerals.

The.

The oxygen coming from the trees, the. The steadiness of it. How things just make sense in nature. Those cycles and seasons, they. They just make sense. A tree falls in the woods, and then the. It's used for the soil to grow new trees. And if we start to recognize ourselves in that energy and recognize that that energy is the energy that truly sort of recalibrates our. Our bioenergetic field, I think that we have the opportunity to feel a lot more present and a lot more healthy in our life. And we just happen to be really disconnected from it unless we're making an effort to get in nature. So, you know, whether it's going outside and putting our feet on the earth and getting the. The grounding benefit or putting even a screensaver of something of nature will actually calm the nervous system. They've, they've done studies on this. So just our connection to nature as nature paths. We are, we are trying to recognize the, that living in accordance with nature is how the body is going to be most primed for healing. And that nature also provides so much medicine for us and shelter and food that, that you know, this is, we live because of what's right outside of our door. We, we might not feel that relationship every day, but that is truly the essence that creates the foundation for us. And so anytime we have the opportunity to just walk outside and breathe Mother Nature in, I think that we have so much medicine there waiting for us and then that requires that we put our phones down and we get off our computers. So segueing right into the, the disconnecting with screen time. I mean, gosh, it's just kind of terrifying now. The, the amount of opportunity that we have to distract ourselves away from whatever we want at any time. The amount of information the, that we can always stay connected and we might need to become actually more boundaried around, around that saying I turn my phone off at this time of night, I turn off all my alerts. I, you know, anything that you would be suggesting that your children do if the, if your kids have access to that, maybe we should be doing that for ourselves because it's not serving anyone. I mean, you know, the EMF alone is, is very problematic, let alone what it's doing to our brains and our ability to communicate and what it's taking us away from. So yeah, just being intentional about that.

Intentional, conscious, appropriate use. Right. Yeah. We're not talking about becoming a Luddite, but I, I think it is really important. You know, I, I tend to observe a lot in my day to day and you know, you go out to eat and you, you see, you know, we were, I was just visiting lucy in Washington D.C. my daughter went to college and we were on a boat ride and There were some 20 somethings on the boat ride, but it was like six of them. All of them just looking at the phone, I was like, well we have like, there's a sunset happening and like this amazing nature is out here.

Right?

And I was just an observation, you know, I was not judging. I was just like, wow, look at that. Like there is, there's such a. The appeal in the info on this thing. And so it's like being intentional with it and being present, which I think then brings us into our next conversation around connect and community and intimacy and Touch. And, you know, it's. I really love. You have such a great flow of these topics, Erica, so thank you.

Thanks, Greg. Yeah, you know, I, I kind of battled with myself about does connection and community and touch, does that get at. Does that get included into the pillars? And I marinated on these topics. I'm not kidding. For a decade. The concepts would come in, in the middle of the night on a dance floor, on a plane trip, and I'd write it down somewhere and see if it wants to be woven in. And the reason why I feel strongly that connection is a pillar of our health is because we are born to be part of the tribe. We are not. Humans are not supposed to live on an island by themselves. We need community for survival. And, you know, not only because we share our goods and our means and our skills, but we also share our heart space and we share our experiences and we recognize that we're not alone in this. And helping each other through hard times and celebrating good times and, and everything in between is what makes us human. So really valuing connection and recognizing if your life is lacking in it and if there are ways to, you know, create more and, you know, the screens can create a lot of lack of connection, right, because now you can just text someone instead of seeing them in person. And perhaps we don't leave as often as we could and should because we can get our food delivered to our door and we're starting to lose some essential needs. They've done interesting studies on loneliness and how being alone, especially for elderly people, can be as detrimental as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. The immune system really responds poorly to being alone and responds really positively to feeling seen and held and, and to, to have that connection. And that, you know, is. Is connection through seeing a friend or in conversation. Touch. Our skin is an organ system. It's our largest organ system filled with sensory nerves everywhere. And the skin craves touch. The skin wants to feel. Wants to feel the connection with another person. It doesn't have to be a lover. It doesn't have to be your child giving you a hug. It could be a massage therapist. It could be your. Your weekly pedicure. But having touch has been shown to be essential for our health. Know that my skin will start to crave sensation if it hasn't had sensation. And that might mean a hot bath or a cold shower or a plunge in a river, but it starts to actually feel very stagnant if it hasn't had some sensation.

And that's the largest organ of our body.

Right, right, right. And it's connecting to our nervous system all the time.

Yeah. With the proprioception and that information in. And that stimulation into the central processing. So important. And it gets left out of many discussions around nourishment and in connectivity with. In a longevity play. We do know community is one of those seven pillars that they find in the blue Zone, so. And maybe the most important one, the camaraderie and input and being seen and having purpose, which, you know, we. I don't. I want to do justice for the heart speak, which is one of the main pillars in there, but I think that we're running out of time.

Okay.

I'm wondering if there's one piece that you want to share there.

Sure. Yeah. I would say the one piece that's most important to me is really being truly authentic with what's true for you, like, when you do your assessment of your health, like, what is your truth? And communicating that and. And being in integrity with yourself to. To say, you know what, this. This is the path I want to do, or I want to take that piano lesson or I want to get out of this relationship. Because if we're living out of authenticity, our illnesses will continue because it's. It's. I mean, it's really a vibrational thing. If you're not living in the fullness of your being or. Or trying to. Then you're going to feel the opposite of that. So the heart speak is really about, like, honoring your truth.

I love that for that alignment and coherence and. Yeah, there's a lot more energy when you're in your authenticity.

Yeah. Mm.

Well, Dr. Erica Seagull, this time has come so quickly, and we just got.

Thanks.

Back on here.

Great. We could talk about all sorts of stuff.

I know all kinds. And we're going to get you back out. I want to show this beautiful vibe, Volume one. It's got multiple pictures, it's very easy to follow, and it is a reference manual. I mean, you're. You're right. You. You had said, you know, that there isn't a. It's a first of its kind functional medicine reference book, which, you know, revamping habits, really investigating life. And it's really about presence. I think the. The way it. It's an enhancement. It's a. It's a way of relating and being with each other in such a beautiful way. So thank you for your life's work.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Everybody out there, if you learned something on today's show, please go out there. Give us a five star rating. Tell us what you learned. Because you can change a life. This is how we get the information to you. We wouldn't be doing this without you. So thank you for showing up and. And until next time on what the health.

Thank you.