A Free Tool To Promote Health And Wellbeing

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. We are all on a hero's journey and it's up to us to start to pick up that pen and decide that I want to be the one who gets to write the rest of my life story.

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Hi, I'm Kaya Perowne, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy Podcast. Whether you're seeking to improve your physical, emotional, or spiritual health, the act of writing and journaling is a free and effective tool we can all use to improve our overall well-being. This is a topic Dr. Hyman has.

Explored with multiple guests on his podcast.

Here he is with Dr. Leonard Calabrese. I remember reading one study in JAMA about patients with rheumatoid arthritis and asthma, both inflammatory diseases. and they had the patients just write in a journal 20 minutes a day. Now, it couldn't be, you know, I went to the grocery store and I walked my dog. It had to be about what was happening below, underneath the hood, and what was your emotional state? How are you feeling?

What was affecting you?

And they found that it dramatically reduced asthma, even by objective measures, and even rheumatoid arthritis symptoms by objective measures. And there's a woman named Candace Pert, who studied neuroimmunology. There's a whole field of psychoneuroimmunology at the NIH, National Institute of Health, and he she found that the immune system was listening to our thoughts. She calls this molecules of emotion. Can you tell us more about that?

Yeah, it's such an incredible area. So, you know, everyone, everyone, it's well accepted that stress is bad for your immune system. I mean, classic chronic stress, you know, acute stress run from the saber-toothed tiger, that's really good. Chronic stress of, my job, my life, the environment, politics, and the world is bad. We are now starting to appreciate that the opposite of that, the immunology of joy can be immunologically potentiating. And you mentioned a very nice example. I call this the immunology of gratitude. And gratitude has wide-ranging biologic effects. There's a recent study done at UC San Diego that showed that patients with Asymptomatic echocardiographically documented congestive heart failure with six weeks of gratitude journaling could improve ventricular function.

Here's Dr. Hyman with Dr. Andrea Pennington.

One of the things I learned very early on in my positive psychology days was about the benefit of just writing and journaling. And what we've discovered is that many of our patients They did it because I told them it was their homework, but they were finding out over time that by writing their experiences, it can be the mundane stuff of just daily life, but also revisiting their past, they were able to recognize that same concept of all of the programming that led them to where they were. And then we would take them through other exercises of writing. So for example, writing about a peak experience in your life, a time where you felt or a time where you did feel loved and accepted. And by getting it out of your head and onto paper or onto a screen, you're able to start to reflect back on what elements are actually you that are not just, I was coerced into doing this by my parents or by the media or whatever. And it's these regular experiences of the self that little by little get strengthened. We are all on a hero's journey. And it's up to us to start to pick up that pen and decide that that I want to be the one who gets to write the rest of my life story.

You get to be the author of.

Your life instead of being the victim of your life.

Exactly.

Dr. Hyman also spoke about this in his conversation with Matthew McConaughey.

When I was 17, I was riding a train in Italy and I was sitting next to this professor of English from Cambridge University and he said to me, Mark, he said, an unexamined life is not worth living, which I think he quoted from Shakespeare somewhere else. but he said, you need to write your life. And so I was 17, I started writing a journal. And like you, I've been keeping a journal for decades. And the question I have for you is, did that introspection and exploration of your own mind help you become who you were? Like in other words, without that, it was at the tool because it's not just, oh, I'm just writing my story. You're literally using it as a spiritual tool to wake up and notice your mind and notice what's going on in your life and to think about it differently and ask questions. And, you know, most of us just go through and we're on our devices and we're distracted and we're not present. And when you sit and you write, you literally call in your, your higher self. You're like, hey, what do you think up there? As opposed to your lower self, which is constantly operating in a monkey, you know, reactive way.

So I write things down so I can forget them. And so jot things down knowing that you will forget them if you don't. But so you can forget them and be more present when you write them down in the situation. And then when you get home at night in bed or the next day or on the weekend, go back over your notes, have a read of them. You'll start to find a little lineage of poetry or you'll find things where you go like, well, I think that's right. I laughed at that time, at that line in that movie. that I thought was the funniest line when nobody else in the entire theater laughed.

But you know what?

The one where everybody laughed is the one I didn't think was that funny.

Yeah.

Now does that make me odd? Well, maybe, but dive into those places where you're the individual. Dive into those places where, you know, many times I've written, why do I cry so much at birth but not so much at death?

Yeah.

Why am I the one? weeping over here at the birth or someone getting let out of prison because they were wrongly convicted. That's the stuff that makes me just bawl.

But death.

I don't really cry. I'm like, I haven't found out, I can mourn, but so little things where you find your specific and it's not a wrong or right thing. Don't judge yourself on it. I guess what I'm saying is if you write things down, it's awareness. And the simple act of writing something down, which you know, Let's just become slightly objective. And we have the subjective and we have the objective. It just puts us on the jumbotron for a second. Yeah. We have little looksie at ourselves going, how are we doing there? And it's a good view for awareness. It's why I'm a proponent of people speaking in the third person. It's a form of awareness. We call it arrogance, but it's actually going, no, I'm having a little look back. You know, tell you what's in the future, Mike Tyson. Well, you know, it's just Mike Tyson time. Why is he doing that?

It's a little pop out. You know, it's a little projection.

Look back down at ourselves.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee also shares a writing exercise he prescribes.

For anxiety, one of the first recommendations in the book is what I call a morning download. So this is where we download all the junk and anxiety that we've accumulated in our brains overnight onto a piece of paper. This is like the practice of journaling, basically. And I've given people two options. I said, Journaling, when you wake up, you've often got anxieties whirring around your brain and your mind. And if you don't do anything to process them, they can stay there all day. They can impact your relationships. They can impact the way you feel about yourself and your stress levels. But simply writing them down on paper, literally and metaphorically, takes them out of your head, puts them down onto paper. It is really transformative. And I say to people, you can write anything you want. It's not going to be the manuscript for your next book. It's not a letter to your boss. It's whatever you want to write. Now, for some people, they think that's incredible. And I remember the week after the book came out, a couple of people messaged me and they said, Dr. Sherry, it's really interesting. I didn't realize I was worried about anything until I started doing this. And there was four or five really key things in my life that I was worried about. that I was writing down every day, but it was buried inside their brain. So they weren't even aware of it. So that's another one that they could do for their mind. But if that's too free-form, if people prefer a bit more structure, I've created this exercise called the five-step release. So these are five simple questions you ask yourself basically to help. And it's really good if you've got anxiety or you really struggle with a lot of thoughts and you can't quite focus. And it's called a five-step release. So if you're interested, Mark, I can talk you through it.

Go for it.

Go for it. Okay. Yeah. So I think people find this super, super useful. So the first question is, what's one thing I'm anxious about today? So you just write down, I'm anxious about this today. What's one practical thing I could do to prevent or prepare for it? That's question number two. Question number three, what's one reason it's probably not going to be as bad as I think it is? Question number four, what's one reason I know I can probably handle it? Question number five, it's what's one upside of the situation? And I could tell you, Mark, it is so simple, but it is so effective. And I really would challenge anyone listening to this who struggles with anxiety. So pause, rewind that, write those five questions down. It's not going to cost you anything. Try it for the next few mornings when you wake up and just see how it makes you feel because I've seen over and over again that it makes a massive difference.

Feeling good and cultivating health is about so much more than the quality of our diets, sleep, and exercise habits. As you've just heard, there are so many benefits we can achieve through journaling and there is no right way to journal. As Dr. Hyman says, 80% of health happens outside of the doctor's office. If you've never journaled or have moved away from the practice, consider incorporating writing into your daily life. your mental and physical health will thank you for it. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a comment below. Thanks for tuning in.

Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed.

Healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. Don't forget, there's a way to listen completely ad free. With Hyman Plus on Apple Podcasts, you can enjoy every episode without any breaks. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial.