Ep. 83-Dr. Dan Monti wants you to have a Tapestry Of Health

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, winner and certified entrepreneur coach, Jason Wasser.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life Podcast. I am Jason Wasser, your host. And as always, you know that I get so excited to have the guests that I have because most of the time I get to handpick them. And when they say yes, it's such an incredible honor for me to sit at the dust of their feet and drink in their words. Thirstily. And today's guest is Dr. Dan Monte, who is the founding director and now chief executive officer of the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia. He's a professor and founding chair of this historic first-ever department of integrative medicine and nutritional sciences. It's the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. I'm going to keep going because he has published numerous scholarly articles, been peer-reviewed by medical journals, as well as for study sections connected to the National Institute of Health and the Department of Defense. He's co-authored the popular book, "The Great Life Makeover," co-edited the book, "Integrative Psychology and Brain Health," with Dr. Andrew Newberg, who, as you already know if you've been listening, was guest on episode 17 of this podcast. His newest book with Dr. Anthony Bazzan, a colleague of his as well, is called "Tapestry of Health: Weaving Wellness into Your Life Through the New Science of Integrative Medicine," which I finished in probably 2.5 hours of reading, and If you're a mind-body documentary buff, you will recognize him from the 2004 documentary What the Bleep Do We Know? He's an expert on mind-body stress. He and his team partner with Neuromotional Techniques One Research Foundation to lead the groundbreaking clinical research on the validation of neurological muscle testing and the use of Neuromotional Technique on treating trauma and PTSD with cancer patients. And again, I'm incredibly honored to have Dr. Dan Monte today, who has been also one of my instructors as I started off my NET journey all the way up to my NET Certification Week, and to continuously see him outside of a pandemic at our seminars. So Dr. Monte, thank you so much for hanging out.

Oh, what a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you, Jason. Really appreciate having this opportunity to speak with you.

Thank you. It means, it means the world to me to, one, have this platform that I never thought I'd have. I'm actually an introvert by nature. So A, becoming a therapist, and B, doing more speaking engagements through that has changed and then having a podcast has been like, really fun. And I get to write, to do this. And, you know, and be a little bit— what's the word I'm looking for here? I'm, you know, I'm gonna be a little greedy, because I get to be in front of people I want to get in front of and learn from them. So you're a psychiatrist, and psychiatry and integrative and alternative medicine, integrative wellness, functional medicine, until very recently has never gone hand in hand. So I'm really curious, first off, as many of the listeners might be, about your journey. One, what got you into psychiatry? And then as as we say in our— how did you start going down this rabbit hole?

Yeah. And you're right. Traditionally, those are not areas that get along well together, although in some of the early movements of integrative medicine, like orthomolecular medicine, those were led by psychiatrists who were trying to think outside the box. I think when I was in medical school, what initially drew me to psychiatry was that mind-body relationship. And so I took a research track where my initial focus was studying stress physiology and understanding how something that we're perceiving in the brain has these direct effects on the nervous system, uh, the endocrine system, immune cells, immune factors, inflammation, all of those kinds of things. I'm very grateful for that training and that direction that I went, because it really helped me when integrative medicine started to unfold as a real possible direction for academic medicine, which is only a recent thing. And I'm fortunate that the stars aligned, so to speak, that I was right there at an institution willing to take that leap with me. And so the fundamental training in basic science research and clinical trials research allowed me to then go outside of the realm of mind-body and do things with nutrient-based therapies and things like that, where even currently at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, I have a clinical trial in the hospital in partnership with somebody from infectious diseases where we're looking at high-dose vitamin C infusions with people with COVID who get admitted to the hospital. And we're almost done with that trial. We should have some data in the next month or so to know, did it give them an edge? We are hoping that it jumpstarts the immune system, activates the lymphocytes so that people do not progress as rapidly into the ICU and actually can get over the illness quicker and be discharged from the hospital. It's just one possible— it's just one pathway of all of the things that have opened up. I often look at my day or even my week, and I'm jumping among these, you know, various topics of an NET research clinical trial, a new program that we're doing at the Institute, a new course that we're teaching in the college, and something, you know, like the COVID trials. So it's exciting. It's a terrific time to be in integrative medicine, and it's been really a terrific opportunity— your very nice introduction— to be the chair of the first-ever department of integrative medicine at a medical school in the country, maybe the world.

Right. So yeah, so I want to start off with, again, with congratulations on not just all the research that we're going to get into, but, but this is— it is groundbreaking. And I remember when they announced it at one of the NET conferences, like, like, there was this overwhelming emotional pull for me, because I grew up in this world of like, right, there's doctors, and I didn't even know I was going to be a therapist until I was like 23, 24 years old. And I saw all this stuff going on in this like alternative medicine, tree-huggy, you know, hippie-dippie type of world. And I used to go to see this chiropractor who would do this thing. And he would hold my arm and muscle test and like tell me things. And I'm like, okay, is this stuff real? And is it not? Until like things started lining up. And I remember sitting there, I'm like, this is so cool. But I can't do this as a therapist. And To have this mainstream, even though my training at Nova Southeastern in Fort Lauderdale, it's postmodern in its philosophy, it's very progressive, it's systemic, everything is connected to everything, we don't separate the neck up and body down, but they're still in a box. And to see a major medical university with research lead this, like how, politically, how does that happen? What does the buy-in have to be from the collective team, from the president of the university all the way down? What did that take in order for this miracle, I would say, to happen?

It was almost a miracle, as you said, and it took a lot. I would say that we spent many years sowing the seeds of this. Our clinical trials that we did at Jefferson, one of the things that was very important is, one, to be doing the science, and two, to be collaborative across departments, across campus. So When we did a clinical trial on cancer, it was with the Cancer Center. When we did a clinical trial that was neurological, it was with those neurology experts at Jefferson. And as I even mentioned, this current clinical trial with COVID it's with a COVID infectious diseases expert. And so always kind of creating those partnerships, um, and creating that collaboration so that people on campus began to understand that Regardless of what other people were doing with alternative medicine or integrative medicine, how we defined it was inclusive. It is, for me, a value-add to conventional medicine. It's not like we want to throw the rest of medicine out the door. I mean, if your appendix ruptures, you want the best surgeon to get in there and take it out. If you have some other type of acute problem, then, you know, there's great interventions that conventional medicine have that are life-saving, quite frankly. I mean, we're talking about a vaccine right now for a pandemic. These are all part of conventional medicine. The issue is that many times when we get past that fire, there, there isn't the bandwidth of the primary care physician and also even the expertise to deal with some of those wellness-oriented, resilience-oriented, and improvement in quality of life-oriented things that can really make a huge difference in people's lives, whether or not they're sick or well. You know, it's about improving overall health status and how an integrative approach adds value to the model that's there, because the model that's there is good for what it's good for, but there's gaps. And so how do we fill in the gaps of that model? And that's always the way I talked about it. And I think that that's a way that was palatable to my colleagues at Jefferson. And so the buy-in was slow. It took time. And it actually took personal stories. You know, one that is public, so I'm not saying anything that he doesn't publicly say, but our Dean and Provost who had to really allow this department to occur, you know, knew we existed, was lukewarmish towards us, but he had a family member that had hit a wall in that model and called me on the phone and said, "Can you help her?" And I said, "I think this is something we're good at. I think we can help her." And we did. We helped this person, you know, tremendously. And so we went from something that he didn't think a lot about to when he saw me in the hallway, he yelled down the hallway, "There's my hero." And so this then causes him to think about, all right, what are they doing? And I see how that adds value. I see how it did that for my own family. And when it came time to sort of— and then we have a president of the university who's just been a big proponent from the time he got here 6, 7 years ago. And so I have to say that I started out in a much more conservative environment. I always felt like I was barely kind of keeping our head above water as a center. I started off in academic medicine and then decided to sort of veer out because there was— Jefferson was willing to do this on a small scale and test the waters, but it always felt a little bit tenuous. But we kept having fortunate connections that allowed us to take the next step and the next step. And in that story, one of the very fortunate connections for us too was the Marcus Foundation. That's why we're the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health. And now we— and they also funded a lot of the educational and academic programs that we have in our new department. And so the Marcus Foundation is really started by a very affluent person, Bernie Marcus, who was one of the three co-founders of Home Depot. And his life was changed by integrative medicine. And you can't really go to them for funding, they decide what they're going to fund. And about 11 years ago, they were interested in funding a trial on vitamin C, like the one I'm doing now, but it was a cancer trial. And they went to the NIH, and the person at the NIH who I work closely with said, I can't do it here, but I know who can do that trial for you. He's in Philadelphia. And so it's also just a great story about how connectors, you know, And so, um, this mentor of mine at the National Institutes of Health sent the Marcus, the medical director of the Marcus Foundation my way. And he called me and said, can you do this trial? And I said, sure. And so we did a good job with the trial. And so then the foundation, um, started to pay attention to us more and say, okay, you're our place to really grow this thing. You know, how far can you take it? And so we're still, we're still deciding how far we can take it or further for sure.

Right. As long as there continues to be funding. And I know that's kind of where the NET thing kind of comes in, right? Because there's this nonprofit research foundation called the ONE Research Foundation, which is the nonprofit arm of NeuroEmotional Technique. How did this— how did you get introduced to the NET world? And then how did you— because I know not only are you a practitioner, but you also have— are teaching the advanced and other concepts and certification process. How did that relationship get started?

Yeah, it got started a long time ago. I was still in medical school when that relationship got started. And when I was in medical school and Dr. Walker was teaching his early classes, much smaller scope of courses than he has now, and Dr. Deb was there by his side helping the whole process, my chiropractor from my hometown, who I knew from being much younger, took the course and said, let me show you this stuff. And I'm a medical student, and I'm like, well, that's weird. How is that working? I don't know about that, right? And so I— but I'm interested, and I'm intrigued, and I'm intrigued by those kinds of things. So then I started doing my residency in Philadelphia. I was doing my internship in medicine. And so it was at the end of that rigorous first year, and the NET course was in Philadelphia. So I decided I'm going to go take it because it was a weekend I had off. And, you know, Dr. Walker can tell you, he still remembers, you know, this tall, you know, this tall guy, gangly guy in the— in that— and close to the front with a sweater. Every time he said something, my hand would go up. Yeah, but— and how can you explain this? And I, you know, because I'm a scientist, right? And I am very— and I'm in my left brain. And the thing about Dr. Walker, it's because he's pretty brilliant, and he always had an answer that was feasible. It always was like, that could be. And so even though the data, we have so much more data now for that left brain interrogation that he got from me. But I was satisfied enough that I said, all right, I'm going to try this thing and I'm going to play around with it. And so, you know, I was helping them create the ONE Foundation when I was still a resident. And I was the only one who had a research background, but I was early in my career. Wow. And I was still in my residency when we did that first study on muscle testing, uh, that was published in Perceptual and Motor Skills in '99, uh, uh, muscle test comparisons of congruent and incongruent statements. And so it was all about using this computerized dynamometer to show that the body has a physiological reaction to a statement that's congruent versus incongruent. Incongruent. Now this makes sense because it's what polygraph testing is based on and biofeedback and all of that. But it was, you know, kind of taking that technology and applying it to this intervention the way that the Wassers have done it over the years was really, you know, unique. And so, you know, you mentioned that I teach the advanced class. I, I helped develop it, but And I'm really, I think, the only person who has ever taught it. Dr. Deb taught it in Australia once for me. But it came about because I would notice that Dr. Scott would do these things during a demo that were not in the manual. And I would call him out on it afterwards. I'd be like, but what? Right there, you said X or Y. And he's like, well, I call that a test statement. I'm like, a test statement? Where's that in the manual? And he's like, oh, well, I mean, I haven't really because I can barely teach what I'm teaching. It goes, "If you want to teach all that stuff, then make your own class." And I said, "Okay." And so, that's how the semantics of NET— and when he watches me teach it, he's like, "Yeah, you know, you teach that stuff better than I do because it's nothing I ever wanted to teach." And it adds this really important dimension to being able to utilize the technique. And I think that Some of those things really came in handy when we did then our clinical trials. So we were really great. It was really great to partner with One Research Foundation on the clinical trials we did a couple of years ago. So we had cancer patients who were highly distressed over a cancer-related experience, and it was causing symptoms in their life, you know, months to years after the event ended. So it had— the event had to be at least 6 months prior. Okay, we did brain scans pre and post as well as other psychometrics, but our research team is really expert at doing brain imaging and brain scans. That's where we kind of shine between Newberg's expertise and my expertise. Together we really just love doing neuroimaging type, um, clinical trials where we show how the nervous system changes, we show how the brain changes. And so this was really great because we saw things that we predicted, which was the emotional reactivity centers of the brain change markedly after the NET procedure in these people when they have the reminder cues of the distressing event. But then the way the brain talks to itself, its connectivity, and some of the connectivity pathways we weren't even anticipating, such as the cerebellum and to the emotional centers, which has to do with our coordination and how we navigate the world. That actually, we, that was sort of first ever revelation. And that was sort of picked up in popular press media around the country, Psychology Today and other places, you know, the Associated Press picked up little blurbs on those study outcomes because they were really significant. We were really thrilled. For me, it was so great to be able to give that back to the walkers. Dr. Scott, who just based on his genius was awaiting data for decades to be able to say, "You know what? You were right all along. Here's the data," was great.

It's incredible. So all of these studies, all this research, all the publishing, right? I know the books that I'm holding here, right? I have the Integrative Psychiatry and Brain Health. And I treated myself to this about a month or so ago. And it ain't cheap for anybody out there who wants— I think if you can find it for under $80, you're lucky, which is really cool. But it goes through everything from diet and nutrients to botanical nutrition and acupuncture. I mean, this looks like it's a comprehensive mind-body interventions as it relates to going back to the brain. And, you know, I know one of the concepts that we talked about in our NET community, especially both of us since we're in the therapy world, is the idea that, that emotions are physiological, not psychological. So looking at this from the level of brain health and brain study, like, how can we, how can we share that, that concept to the listeners who really don't understand the difference between psychology and physiology and how neurology does affect our emotions?

Yeah. So I'll actually also call attention to the new book, Tapestry of Health. Because if you sort of look at that book, in the middle there's these glossy pre-post pictures that we put in there for exactly that reason, Jason, exactly that. And we have the NET study in there. We have the mindfulness study in there where we show that basically the brain changes dramatically. And so we actually put the pre-post brain scans in this. And that book is written in a popular press kind of format, whereas the one the expensive one you mentioned is really a textbook. This one is much more affordable.

For the masses.

For the masses. Amazon for like $20. But it has that basic information because what we wanted to do with Tapestry of Health is have a reader-friendly synopsis of what we do in integrative medicine and at the Marcus Institute and actually show some of the clinical outcomes. So provide the evidence of why we take the pathways we take now, whether we're talking about diet and nutrition or stress reduction using the neuro-emotional technique, mindfulness, or other things. Yeah.

Well, I think the simplicity of this, right, it goes through it, it starts off with diet, sleep hygiene, which no one really talks about. I mean, that whole chapter on that, I mean, there was stuff there, I'm like, I never heard this before. This makes so much sense. And then I started going on Amazon looking for like a wedge pillow that like, you know, right, that little was a couple degrees difference.

Yes.

Right. And it was like, it was really— and I'm not a comprehensive reader, I'm much more a podcast, YouTube video guy at this point. But to finish it as quickly as I finished it, even though I know a lot of the concepts already from our, from our studies, but it was just so— it's, it's the well-written book for the layman out there, right? Everybody who's like, what is my entry level into, or my entry into this integrative wellness? And it was so comprehensive. That I've highly recommended it to a bunch of my clients since I've started reading it. So for those of you out there who are listening, again, it's "A Tapestry of Health" by Dr. Monte and Dr. Bazan. But it's so profound and so simple that I'm so glad that this is getting out there. One of the things that I also wanted to talk about is how do we break down the idea of these words, alternative medicine, integrative medicine, functional medicine, complementary medicine, collaborative, right? To really make it simple when a lot of times people are maybe referring to the same thing, but then we get lost with, is this part of where I should be going? What happens if my practitioner doesn't buy into this and I want to be an advocate for myself, which I've had for many of my clients? I had a story with one of my clients at the beginning of pandemic to ask for his vitamin D to be checked, which we've just seen research on vitamin D below 30 has a 50% comorbidity increase of comorbidity with the COVID pandemic, right? And his vitamin D was 17. And his doctor said, I don't know why you need it to be checked, you go running and you live in Florida. And it was 17.

I see many people who are active outdoors who have these low levels. And I think that, um, even people who go running, a lot of times they put on sunblock, um, or they're pretty closed, they're not getting that much UV exposure. The issue is that for vitamin D, it is so critical. And yet there's such a pushback at even looking at something like vitamin D sometimes, because I think there's a real disconnect between nutrition, nutrients, and health and wellness. And I think that we're bridging that gap more and more, but the gap still exists. But to your question, it's an excellent question. These— there's a lot of confusing terminology out there. Um, I think that we avoid the word alternative, and most people do. And so when I see that word, I wonder what the practitioner is thinking or why they're using that word, because I think that we get further when we think about ways we can complement and add value to what's available. So we're not saying, you know, don't, don't see your family doctor anymore. We're not saying don't, you know, don't get the preventive care that you need for your illnesses or, you know, whatever it might be. What we're saying is, okay, that provides you with so much. Now, how can we add value to that? How can we give you an additional edge if you are struggling with something and you've gotten everything you can get from that conventional model? And how do we increase your overall wellness? And how do we increase your overall quality of life? How do we increase your resilience during a time like this? Because there— sure, eventually there'll be herd immunity with vaccinations over the next several months. But, you know, we focus a lot on the pathogen, but we are not focusing probably enough on the host. So yeah, the pathogen is important, and having, um, having a solution for the pathogen, which is a vaccine, that's important. But there's the host. So when that pathogen gets into different people, the expression of the illness is dramatically different. You know, we can take 10 people and have 10 very different illnesses. And one thing that people do talk about is, well, if there's comorbidities or advanced age, but what does all that mean? It means the immune system isn't working its best. Because there are comorbidities, because there's advanced age. Yet there are older people who've weathered the storm just fine when they've gotten it because they have more resilient immune systems. Why? What makes that 70-year-old different than the 70-year-old who struggles more? And are there things that we can be doing and paying attention to? And that simple thing about vitamin D that you mentioned, of course, we tell our patients that too. Make sure you have enough vitamin D because we know that if you're very vitamin D deficient, and I would say 17 is, that should you become infected, you'll have a harder time getting over it. At least, the statistical chances are you'll have a harder time getting over the illness. So these are very, like, practical things. They shouldn't actually be controversial, but yet for some people they are. But this is just common sense science and medicine.

Yeah. So what are some of the things— I know, right, we're in the middle of this pandemic, right? The time of this interview is in December of 2020, and we're you know, the vaccine is now being— beginning to be shipped out. Putting aside all that, like you just said, and let's go back into some of the things that we can do right now that we should have been doing all along, but now we should be focusing on, right? You and I know these things, right? Proper nutrition, proper exercise, getting sunlight, connecting to people. What are some of the researched and proven things that without a doubt we should be doing that you want to share with us?

Yeah, but what's interesting about when the book came out is literally every, um, every chapter is, is on resilience, you know, something that adds to your resilience. And so the publisher was a little bit depressed because, oh, you know, it's harder for, you know, to kind of promote a book during times like this. And that might be, but for the people who, um, want to know what the best things to do are, we kind of put it out there already. So, you know, you mentioned for example, sleep hygiene, right? Everything that affects— so if we take a step back, right, there's this— there's always been this kind of like nature versus nurture, you know, debate, you know, what, what's more important, you know, the, the, the basic building blocks you were born with, your genes and genetic structure, or, you know, what you're exposed to in the environment. And we know both are important, of course, but once we get into adulthood particularly as we get, you know, a little further into adulthood, what we expose our genes to, what we expose the cells of our bodies to, is probably the most important determinant of our health and resilience. And that what, that environment, is everything. Everything in terms of nutrients or lack of nutrients, exposure to toxins or not exposure to toxins, stress levels being high or stress levels being low, adequate sleep or inadequate sleep. These are all part of the quote-unquote environment that affects genetic expression or what we call epigenetics. And so those epigenetic factors are everything. They're everything. And so when we, we can take any of these things that we call our tapestry of health in the book. So diet, sure. Because if we don't have proper nutrition and we're loading ourselves up with foods that actually go against resilience by increasing inflammation and clogging the system and bogging us down, then we're not going to be in the best state of resilience. So we need enough of the right nutrients, but we also need to minimize the stuff that's actually going to be highly inflammatory. So sure, you know, the best evidence is in Mediterranean-type diets, plant-based diets. We talk about where the evidence is and where to focus. So for me, I'm always like, add more of that to your diet. Don't worry about so much of the bad part. Always think about how do I increase the good part? Because otherwise you're going to be judging yourself and you're never going to be perfect enough. But if you get enough of that good raw nutrient into your body every day, that's going to help. And so during a time like this, we don't want to be deficient in anything or it's going to affect immune resilience. Now, there's some things that we know are particularly important. And that would be vitamin D, as you mentioned, and also having sufficient vitamin C to have a sufficient immune response. And so I'm always pushing people, think about adding lemons to everything, even zesting lemons, make some tea with lemon, you know, get the vitamin C in there. And if you know you're not going to do any of that stuff, then take a little extra vitamin C. So, you know, we, we, we, we don't want to be taking shopping bags full of supplements, but sometimes it's important to take some supplements. Right. You know, kind of that middle of the road sleep. So we need to restore and recuperate. We need the parasympathetic part of the nervous system to be on. And the best time for that is when we go to bed at night. So that means we need to, one, sleep enough, and two, sleep properly. And during a time like this in a pandemic, both sort of kind of go out the window for a lot of people. The division between work and home gets lost. The division between the bedroom for sleeping and also just working on your computer and doing other task-related things, that sort of boundary gets blurred. And so the bedroom is sort of messy. It's got too much light in it. You're not really going to bed at a consistent time. You're throwing off your biorhythms. This actually affects your resilience. And all aspects of your resilience, including your immune resilience. And so kind of reminding yourself of those good sleep habits that we talk about in the book. But, you know, most people know a lot about what they are. But sometimes when you say, "Ah, that's me. I've let myself do that." Here's the opportunity to get back on track. You know, whether it's listen to a mindfulness app at night to remind yourself to go to bed at the same time every night, don't eat heavy foods late at night, which affect how well you sleep, And they're important for digestion and weight and all of those kinds of things too. Everything works with everything else, which is why, you know, we liked, you know, the metaphor of a tapestry. But I'd say the other, you know, big thing besides these obvious ones are that it's obvious that this is a stressful time, but I think most people are a bit disconnected from how stressed they feel. Yeah. Because that's part of survival. You don't just sit there and wallow in, "I'm so stressed." You know, some people do, but a lot of people, you know, they put on that armor and, "No, it's fine. It's fine. I'm not that stressed." But you actually are because your brain is perceiving a threat to well-being. If you think about the way the brain works, right, we have these two sort of branches of the autonomic nervous system, the fight or flight, which is the sympathetic nervous system, or restoration and recuperation, which is the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system. And these two are automatically working all the time, and one is in more dominant mode than the other given the situation that you're in.

It's like the gas and the brakes, right?

That's right. So, if you're sitting here doing a nice mindful meditation, we've got that parasympathetic restoration recuperation part of the nervous system in full force. When we're worried about something, when we're stressed. Worry, stress, all of that means a threat to survival or our well-being in some way. So if you think back, you know, in our evolution, you see a lion in the jungle. And without you thinking about it, you go into fight or flight mode. You don't have to think, hmm, I think I'm stressed about that lion over there because that lion could do some damage to me. You're not— your body is reacting to that lion before your brain even reacts to that lion. And so you go into that fight or flight mode. And if you're smart, you choose flight and climb up a tree or something. The lion passes. Then what's supposed to happen is your nervous system resets itself and you can go into a calmer, more parasympathetic state. But the lions of yesterday have been replaced today by a pandemic. Homeschooling your kids, worrying about your parent or loved ones who are vulnerable, uncertainty about work and finances. It's, it's an ongoing thing right now. There's just these ongoing stressors that are probably there anyway, but then just get exacerbated by a pandemic where there's such uncertainty, because the brain doesn't like uncertainty. The brain doesn't like uncertainty about future, about well-being, about money, about loved ones, and this creates a stress response, which basically means that fight-or-flight mode. What happens when we're in that fight-or-flight mode, whether or not we're that consciously aware of it? Well, just on a pure physiological level, blood gets pulled away from the gut to the periphery so you can fight or flight, which means digestion doesn't go so well. Everybody who's stressed complains, I hope, I digest my food well. I have runny stomach.

Irritable bowel syndrome, all of these things, right?

Right.

Connected to that.

And then what else happens? You're hypervigilant because there's a threat to wellbeing being perceived. So it's not easy to fall asleep. So then you get into these vicious cycles of sleep and, and then when you're not sleeping enough, this adds to the stress and you become more distressed and more in a state of non-resilience, which is why we have to take inventory of where we are, how we're doing, and what things we're doing in our day-to-day lives to take a break from the stressors that we're facing and reset the nervous system. Yeah.

So how can clients or patients advocate for themselves better, especially during this time, right? If they're listening to us, they're listening to other people out there talk about these are the additional things, and then they go to their doctor like my client did, and the doctor is like, "I don't know why you need to do this," or a lot of times I hear, "Well, your insurance may not cover it, so I'm not going to put it on the labs." So what are some of the things that people should be looking for, that they should be asking to be tested for, right, if we're doing the general testing or a comprehensive metabolic panel? And how can they advocate for themselves better? And then I guess even on top of that, like, and if they're not getting that help, where do they go? Where do they go to look? For people like us to get the help they need? Because I think, right, how many people that you've seen over the years, and I know this all the time, they come back, their doctors say your labs are fine, but they're still taking medication, they still feel like crap, they're depressed, they have anxiety, whatever it may be, they're irritable bowel, but yet they're told they're normal. So I know that's a whole bunch of different things kind of interwoven, but it kind of leads to the same.

It is, but you know, there's a common theme here, which is the medical model is a disease-focused model. And what we're talking about is a wellness-focused model. And trying to bring the two together is the big work. It's a big undertaking on my part. And I'm not always successful at it, but it is a big undertaking. And so I think that there's a disconnect in this country in general. We see that disconnect in the medical model, but how does it translate? Into real data? Well, let's take this for example. We as a nation do not make the top 10 list for healthy life expectancy, men or women. We do not make the top 10 list. What is our health status as a nation? Here we arguably can say we have the best medicine in the world in terms of medical sciences, surgical techniques, access to pharmaceuticals. People come from all over the world to learn from us. We have really great medicine, but we don't have great health. The World Health Organization puts us at about 37th. So this disconnect between health and medicine is a problem because this wellness aspect that we're talking about gets lost in the system. So I think that we have to be— I think that you hit the nail on the head when you said, what can people do? That's actually the first mindset. To be more proactive, because in this country, we, we kind of fell into this model that medicine was a rather paternalistic kind of thing where you went to the doctor, never questioned the doctor, and medicine was something that was done to you. It wasn't something you participated in. It wasn't something that you were proactive about. So if you were sick, the doctor would tell you, you do this, you take this, And then, you know, eventually, you know, you, uh, hopefully you'll feel better.

And so, and maybe feel better along the way.

Yeah, right. But, um, it, it's about addressing something acute, an acute-focused disease model that was rather paternalistic. But health— and that works for, listen, if, um, you know, if, uh, you know I see someone on the street who, you know, unfortunately gets, you know, hit by a car or something like that, and their leg is all banged up and shattered, you know, I want to get that person into the emergency room and let the orthopedic surgeons do what they do. You don't have much input in that. You don't really know how the rods and pins are supposed to be put together. That is— that's something different. That's an acute medical intervention. But in terms of our long term, the long game for our health, our wellness, our resilience, it does require proactiveness. And there's a lot we can do on our own. That's why I write books like this, like Tapestry of Health, because it's about what can you do? What can you be doing based upon all the evidence, all the science that's out there? And it's the things you talk about, Jason Wasser. It's the things you do that you kind of motivate and inspire your, your own patients to do. It's to take that proactive approach. And so if you feel like, I don't know about my vitamin D level, you can ask for it. You know, it's not like the olden days where you can't ask for it. If you have a doctor who says, no, I absolutely won't write it, I mean, that does exist a little bit, but I don't see it as much anymore. And, you know, maybe that's not your doctor.

Right. Time to switch to a new one. Right. I've told my client that if they say, well, we're not sure if your insurance is going to cover it, your response to the doctor should be, let me worry about that.

Exactly. You took the words out of my mouth. Exactly. You fight with your insurance company about that. And at the end of the day, you know, will it be such a deal breaker what the cost of that particular test is? I think that for a lot of people it won't be. And I think that we're not used to that, though. We're not used to actually taking that kind of a stance. You know, I was— you know, I've been struck by that many times because I've had patients who say, well, if it's not covered, then it's not covered. But I know what these patients might spend. The one just took their dog to the vet and it was $2,000 because nothing covered there. And I'm glad they love their dog.

Or they have the new iPhone the day after it comes out.

But love yourself that much too. Just love yourself as much as your pet or whoever, or your iPhone or that kind of a thing. I think some of these things, if we just take a proactive approach, and a lot of things don't require a lot of testing, right? You know, there actually isn't a way of knowing, are you getting enough vitamin C? You just have to make sure you're getting a good amount of it every day. You know, a lot of nutrients, the tests aren't that reliable for. And so essentially it relies on you to be proactive, to take in those nutrients and to do it through diet as much as possible and to do some extra supplementation when that makes sense. A low vitamin D level, yeah, should be taking in a lot of extra vitamin D to get that up there.

Right. So let's talk a little bit about the Marcus Institute and all the study, not only just the study, but the practical side of things, because there's the community clinics. Um, I know that there's different elements of it and there's different practitioners where we have the psychology side of things and we have the integrative medicine and the functional medicine side. So how is that all playing out? What, what are people coming, uh, what are some of the common situations that you're seeing people come in for and, and if they're coming to you in Philly, I know there's other, um, places outside that there's little clinics, but if someone wants to find practitioners, they should know like, okay, so this is what's available there, this is what they're doing, I want to go find someone where I live that does that type of stuff. So what are the, what are the common scenarios, common cases that people would want to come to a Marcus Institute or an integrative wellness practice?

Yeah, you know what's really great about that question is I asked my team of physicians that very question because I liked watching their answers because they always led with this thing we say in integrative medicine that we're really good at keeping people well. But that— and I said to all of them, you know, you lead with that, but that isn't why anybody actually comes in except for our executive health program. And that's companies are paying for these executive physicals. So we do an integrative executive health program. And so, you know, those people, they're, they're, you know, they're the the high performers of a company. And so their company is investing in them to make sure that they're actually in really good shape because they know that they won't do it on their own. And the stuff that we uncover when they go like, when's the last time you saw anybody? 10 years ago. Well, right.

And it's a major liability from them, from a financial loss if, God forbid, something happens to that person.

Right, right. Because since you last saw a doctor 10 years ago, your cholesterol and lipids are through the roof. And, you know, we're going to have a problem soon if we don't turn all of this around. And so then we use an integrative model to do that. But then the individual who comes to us is more often than not that person that has hit a wall in their care. They've hit a wall in achieving the level of health and wellness that they would like or what they would hope. They've hit a wall and even many times and even reaching a diagnosis that makes sense to them. And they want somebody who will take a careful look because that's what we do in integrative medicine and functional medicine, which is really— everyone who practices functional medicine, that's part of an integrative model with a focus on the nutritional component of what we do. But we take a step back and we spend time. I mean, our initial appointment with a patient is never less than an hour. That's with the doctor. Imagine that, like, just for people who are used to a different model, like that doctor sitting with you for making sure they understand you as best that they can. And, you know, in my practice, I mean, we review the records before the person comes in and then you're with us for an hour and that's just for a regular consultation. And I think that that model is something that maybe even happened at one time, but has gotten squeezed away into an emergency-based put-out-fires model. I mean, my colleagues in primary care literally can't do that. They have to run from room to room putting out a fire, like, oh, you have a raging strep throat, here's your antibiotic. Oh, your glucose is so out of control that let me do this now, and maybe I send you to the hospital in 10 minutes. Wait, is this chest pain? Let me get you on an EKG right now to make sure you're not having a heart attack. You know, like, that's what they are doing. And it's an important service, but it's not— again, it's a disease-focused model versus a wellness-focused model. And I think that once people are out of that, OK, I'm not dying this minute, but I don't feel well. I, you know, my gut isn't right still, or I have these autoimmune issues or whatever it might be. I want someone to help me with this. I want somebody to take a fresh look and really try to understand what I can do to have that edge to get to another level of wellness.

And I think it does go back to being an advocate for yourself and knowing that like a lot of people just don't know that this stuff exists. And if they do, they're like, oh, well, that's hokey, or right, whatever it is. But, but to just know that like, looking at labs, and I do this all the time with my clients, especially when they get stuck on something, I'm like, I don't know why, right, we've done some NET, or we've just, right, basic talk therapy, not that talk therapy is basic, but like just right as the entry-level intervention. And I'm like, "Send me your labs." And they're like, "Well, my doctor said everything was fine." And I typically find something when I go through the numbers just according to a functional medicine thing. And they're like, and they go back to their doctor, they're like, "I don't know." Well, first of all, why is your therapist, you know, doing this? And second of all, like, "You're fine." And then I'm like, "Well, here's a gut infection or here's this or," right? This number is often, for people out there who are listening as well, like vitamin B, which is right, a stress handling, 1 out of 10 people, I think the research shows, will have neuropsychiatric responses. 1 out of 10 will have if they have a vitamin B deficiency, right? So that could be all the way, you know, and I think they most commonly link it to schizophrenia and, and other things. So like to know these things as an advocate for yourself is so, so important. So as we wrap up, I just want to see what the future is bringing, right, as we're rounding into 2021. What's the future bringing for you as in your personal studies, stuff that you are now passionate about, stuff that you're moving into as an area of interest from your own personal world and what's going on also in collaboration with the ONE Foundation and with the Marcus Institute.

So one of the things that we're pretty passionate about and we've been rolling out our educational programs for doctors and other healthcare professionals across the board. And so we've created a series of certificate programs for healthcare professionals, whether they be mental health professionals or physicians. And we've launched two already: Integrative Nutrition, which is three 3-credit-hour courses, and Integrative Nutrition, where it's really about beyond the disease model, which, you know, you can cover in a couple of hours, and then what else? What is ideal nutrition? What is all of the evidence in different— on different diets? What, what do you do in different situations given challenges patients might have. And then our second certificate program, which we've rolled out, is on Mind-Body Medicine. And that's where we do have more people from the mental health community, but also physicians, chiropractors taking that certificate program. And that's when you learn some of these advanced concepts in mind and body and how to help people using those advanced concepts from mindfulness-based stress reduction to the neuro-emotional technique, which by the way, is a full course in our Mind-Body Medicine certificate. First time ever for the neuro-emotional technique. So that in terms of the future of the neuro-emotional technique, that course will hit the Jefferson roster and be an actual credit, 3 credit hour college credit course, uh, next fall.

Incredible. Is there any talks, and I don't know if anybody's doing this out there, where there's an actual doctoral or a PhD in combining this integrative wellness and mind-body? And is that in the works?

So what we just got approved, and you know, you and I didn't even talk about this. No. You asked me this question. So what I just got approved last week, the Dean's Council, was the rollout of a master's degree. So we will be launching our Master's in Integrative Health Sciences. And eventually that'll lead to being able to launch a doctorate degree as well.

Nice. So when can I put my application in for the doctorate before it's—

I will tell you about it as soon as—

Let me know. I want to be in the first graduating class on that one. It's funny because years ago, I applied for my— it was 2000, it was 10 years ago, at the end of 2010. And I applied at the master's— I mean, with the program I did my master's in for the doctorate. And I had my interview that morning. By the time I got home, I got accepted.. And then within that period of time, I was— I actually went through one of the biggest crises of my life, which was a divorce, which led me becoming an NET client. Because of my panic attacks, I was doing— I don't know, I don't think I've ever told you this story. I was doing Dr. Jenna Knauffel's program at University of Miami, the MetaEnergics, which had all these different things going on, and NET was one of the things that they taught. And then I subsequently met with one of our colleagues, Dr. I'm sorry, Leah Seggy. And within 3 sessions, my panic attacks went away. And that was my— I knew about NET, but I never experienced it. And a month or so afterwards was the first basic that I attended was in Orlando. So it went from me being, you know, doing this training at UM to finally trying to get a handle on my panic attacks that was going on while I was going through that program, to a month and a half, 2 months later, a few months later, going to this first NET basic. And I decided not to do my doctorate in marriage and family therapy to go on because my— the rabbit hole that opened up to me was like, I've always been waiting for stuff like this, which then led me to NFT certification.

Your doctorate will be in—

so now eventually I know what my doctorate will be in. So we gotta hurry, we gotta hurry that along to happily help out make that happen. But it's been such a change. I mean, just the work that I'm so thankful for on the academic clinical side that when I bring it back to my professors, and I'm very close to my old supervisor. And she's like, are you still like doing therapy? What's, you know, are you sure you can do this arm thing and this muscle? And I've explained it to her, and I've showed it to her.

And it's like, you can now show her in the Tapestry of Health, those glossy photos of the pre-post brain scans right there. We didn't even have those for the textbook. Right?

It all exists, right? And it's been on the One Research Foundation website. But it's so like, but now I'm known as that guy, especially my friendships are pre-pandemic, oh, have you met Jason? Give him your arm. And he'll make something or tell you something about yourself, right? But, but I just want to get— I want to— I just want to wrap this up with one. I'm so thankful to have seen this validation of stuff that before Jason Wasser was just the weird hippie healer, and never knew that I can do this actually as a licensed clinician, to being part of— to now being, you know, a part and active member of this community as a member of the ONE Foundation and as someone involved in the NET community, but to be able to learn from people that I never even knew that I'd get in front of, that I saw, right, like I said, in the documentary so many years ago, and then to have you as one of my teachers and mentors. And again, I wanna just recommend everybody, so the Marcus Institute at Jefferson, please, if you want more information about all the stuff they're doing there, if you're in the clinician world and you wanna talk about the certification programs and any of the, potentially even another master's, you can go there. There's the newest book, Tapestry of Health, I know you're talking— there was with Dr. Newberg, you mentioned previous to this conversation, that's gonna be coming out.

Yep, next year, him and I'll have a book as well on brain health. That would be Popular Press.

Awesome. And then obviously, if those of you who really want the, the whole handbook on psychiatry and brain health, and you don't need to be a psychiatrist, this just goes through all the really amazing research. It's the Integrative Psychiatry and Brain Health with Dr. Monte and also Dr. Newberg. So again, Thank you.

Well, thank you, Jason, for all that you do to get the word out there. This is a, this is a great vehicle for doing that. And always a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you for having me.

My absolute pleasure and honor. Looking forward. And as things evolve, we'll bring you back on and talk more about the, the next steps of the research.

Terrific. I look forward to that. Cool.

Thank you.

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