EP 10 Harmony or Disease: Demystifying Your Potential to ReIgnite Your Health w/ Dr. Payam Hakimi

What if the epicness that we sometimes spend our entire lifetime searching for exists not in spite of the boulders, but thanks to the Boulder version of you that these boulders inspire you to become? Often, when we least expect it, life thrust us into the role of the reluctant shero or hero in our own story. How we respond respond in those moments can be the difference between thriving or just surviving. We believe that our story will be determined by how we dare to answer one burning question, how to choose to live. Join us as we explore the mindset shifts, innovative strategies and captivating stories, my own life experience and those of my truly epic guests. So let's get this started. Welcome to today's episode of the how to choose to Live podcast and I am super excited today because I'm bringing you something a little bit different. We're talking about the inner game, but maybe not the same type of inner game spin that you might be expecting today. My guest is Dr. Pam Hakimi and he is a board certified family physician and the medical director of Body of Harmony in Beverly Hills, California and Miami, Florida. He's well known for his unique holistic approach to patient care, which means that he integrates general medicine with some specialized modalities focusing on natural healing or with minimum side effects. His philosophy emphasizes aligning the body's energetic hormonal, structural, physical, mental and spiritual aspects for holistic, effective healing. And Dr. Hakimi is also among the few physicians who practice osteopathic manual therapy and cranial therapy along with functional medicine who hormone replacement therapy, anti aging medicine, and IV nutrition therapy. So that's a mouthful. But he's going to tell you what this really means and how this can help you effectively choose to live a more epic life. So, Dr. Hakimi, welcome to the podcast.

Meredith, hi, thank you very much for having me on your podcast and this is great to be here. I'm very happy and thank you very much for that amazing introduction.

Well, you know, it's an interesting field and space and direction that you and I talk about, and the thing that really pops out to me is that concept of harmony. And that's why I felt it is so valuable in the whole how to choose to live. Sometimes we think about our actions relative to our career or our personal life, but we forget that we, we inhabit this beautiful space that is called our body. And I think, you know, you and I have talked about this before. So many people come to the place where they view their own body almost as an adversary, something way out of their control, something unknown that's just waiting to break down on them. So I'm curious before we really dive even more deeply into that harmony aspect, share with us. How did you get this passion for this specific direction of medicine and more specifically health?

I think it was. It was a series of fortunate events happening back to back. I started with medical school and learned some. Some stuff in medical school, but I was very much interested in the holistic aspect that is not taught in medical school. And you've probably seen these out there. It's on Instagram, doctors talking about how they did not get even a nutrition class in medical school. And my medical school was the same. Our nutrition course was, I think, 50 minutes. And the doctor who taught it with an Italian accent, he basically went through the whole, you know, vitamins and minerals. And then at the end he said, this is what vitamins do, but don't use them. And it, it made all of us sort of sit in there and just baffled, think, looking at each other and saying, what does that mean? Because we learned this in pharmacology. We learn it. We learn how these ingredients and vitamins and everything else works in the body. And then you have someone who teaches you and says, but don't use it. So it sort of got me to thinking a little bit more, and I started doing more research even when I was in medical school. So this all started in medical school. And the more I read, the more I saw there is so much information behind the natural therapies. And then I went through an osteopathic medical school. So I do osteopathy. And osteopathy is a way of getting rid of the structural abnormalities of the body, which can create physiological abnormalities. Osteopathy is the father of chiropractic. I was exposed to a little bit more of a holistic and healthy type of medicine. And I continued and fast forward, fast forward. I think I was doing my family medicine residency at USC University of Southern California, and I got elected as a chief resident with the program. And one of my jobs was to help shape the education for. I think at the time we had 30 residents. So it was helping shape the education for the lunchtime education for. For residents. And we were all tired of, of hearing the. This medication and that medication come and just give us a lecture and give us free food. So, so one of the things we said was bring your own food from the cafeteria and we'll have, we'll have fun. And that fun started with me bringing in. I mean, I first gave him a lecture or a presentation on osteopathy and they loved it. Then I brought in someone who was an acupuncturist. They love that. We had a person who was a dentist who was raw, his whole family would eat raw. And he gave us an amazing lecture and made us think that you can actually live on raw food and then lectures on yoga and everything else. And eventually we got to homeopathy and I got really interested about homeopathy as well and I started taking courses on homeopathy. So by this time I was, I had homeopathy, a little bit of, you know, understanding of healthy medicine or alternative medicine medicine itself. And once I started my own practice, which was a combination of me working in urgent cares and emergency room so I can, you know, have enough money to pay the rent for my office and, and then sort of working two days a week out of my own office with the healthy medicine. And so it sort of started there. And the more supplements came along, more ingredients, I started researching a lot more and IV nutrition was added on at a certain point. Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy was added at a certain point. Anti aging medicine was added a certain point. So these are the things that slowly came along. But I think the driving force was I decided I'm not going to stop learning. A lot of us doctors come out of the medical school, go to our practice and we become sort of comfortable with the amount of knowledge that we have with the, if we're a cardiologist, we have, let's say, you know, five or ten different types of, or classes of medication and we get comfortable with that. If we're a kidney doctor, we do the same. If we're digestive, you know, gi doctor it's sort of the same. You become comfortable with what you do and then you continually doing it and, and, and you don't expand. So I decided that that's not going to be me. I'm going to expand and, and even at this point I'm trying to think what else can I do to add to the rest of this?

Yes, and. Well, you know, I think you've touched upon so many interesting points as I shared with you. And for those of you who are listening may or may not know that I am 64 years old and I literally there was a point early in my life where I, I was getting some sort of sickness, usually respiratory, at least once every three months. And it was getting old, to put it mildly. I'm a terrible sick patient. I'm just very impatient. I don't like not feeling my best. And so that was my physical boulder, where it inspired me to say, is there something else out there? And it really corresponded with. With something that was actually just a vanity issue. I had gained weight. I'd gone to a prep school. And one of my friends came back from summer vacation and she looked radiant, completely different. And we all asked her what she had done, and she said, I became a vegetarian. And this was when Atkins diet, you know, the carnivore diet, was really big. We'd never heard of vegetarianism. So I started exploring macrobiotics, which was a gift to me because it helped me understand the harmony of the yin and yang and food and. And the role that we have the opportunity to play with our own castle, right. With our own vessel. And so from that time when I was about. I have literally not had a soda since I was 17 years old. And I have been some shape or form of a vegetarian pescatarian since my late teens. And the illness. I can count on one hand how many times I've been ill. I was fortunate enough to have people in my household, my daughter's caregivers, who came down with COVID I have avoided it, think, you know, knock on wood. And I really, I really respect what you are advocating, what you are, the path that you are helping to guide people. Because I was a sickly child and to go from being a sickly child. And it wasn't that my parents fed me a solid diet of junk food even. It was good southern cooking, good gourmet cooking. But it so dramatically changed that I ultimately raised my children that way. And. And they would go to daycare and not end up sick like the other kids. So what. Have you seen a correlation when you work with some of your patients and they start not even having to become a vegetarian or pescatarian? That's, you know, that's a ch that is near and dear to me that I credit with a lot of my health being on no medications at this point. Have you seen a shift in people's health or your own health that come as a result of becoming more diet aware or. I know that you have some wonderful. A wonderful line of vitamins that you offer for, you know, for sale that are high quality vitamins because not all vitamins are the same, even though they may have the same label. Share a little bit about that with us.

Yeah, well, number one, you don't look 64. So that. That a lot about. That tells a lot about your diet and what you're putting into your body. And. And where do I start with Your question really? Because you walk into a supermarket and you see racks of Coca Cola and Pepsi and all these sugary drinks. And although we're getting research that shows that these things affect us and affect us by creating diabetes and we know that diabetes is sort of the number one killer because it causes the end artery disease, it causes heart disease, it causes stroke and everything else that it does. And it's amazing that we are still selling that and it's amazing that FDA still is letting that sort of be okay to be sold everywhere. And then from time to time FDA has a little bit of issue with vitamin C that we give to patients. It's the funniest thing. But, but let me start by saying you touched on a really good subject. And, and I'm going to go back to my residency again and talk about this because I, when I was chief resident, I had a resident, an intern who's working with me, who one night that we were on call and, and you know, we were in hospital grabbing food and, and you know, he was sort of new and I noticed that he's raw and, and we talked about it and he was a 30 something year old guy who at age 6, if I remember correctly, because he's probably going to watch this and, and he wants me to do justice. At age 6, I think he was diagnosed with the kidney disease and the doctors told him that or his parents that he's not going to survive. And that's when he, his parents switched him to a raw diet. And later on, I think when he was 11 or something, he started doing yoga along with that. And this was a 30 year old person who was supposed to not exist, who is now becoming a doctor himself. And, and you can imagine what he has done with his practice and what he brings to his patients because of the, the background he had. And that was one of the reasons that I invited the doctor who does, who speaks about raw food to be part of our residency because this was so intriguing to me. In our practice, what we do is we start with a food sensitivity test in certain cases and a digestive analysis to see because we are what we eat. Yes. And not all of our bodies respond to the same thing exactly the same way. So, and I didn't know this, but in my food sensitivity, eggs, egg yolk and egg white was one of my sensitivities. And every day after working out I had four eggs. So that was like four times a week. And I was always bloated and congested and couldn't think straight. And I Had burning sensation in my stomach. And I thought, it's the coffee. I thought it's, you know, what is it that I'm eating that's causing that? With my medical knowledge, you know, it says gastroesophageal reflux is coffee, chocolate, sodas, tobacco, alcohol, and. But I don't have any of those. And the only thing I have is coffee. And so why is it. And chocolate. And so why is it that I have this? And after doing my food sensitivity, I figured out that, oh, this is where the problem is. And we took that out of my diet, and I feel fantastic. And from time to time, if it's a Sunday morning and my wife Sheba and my daughter are having breakfast and, you know, I pick at it, add eggs. I feel it. So. So it becomes. You sort of start becoming a little bit more in tune with your body. So food sensitivity has become one of the major tests that we do with our patients because it gives them a knowledge into their physiology. It tells you how inflammatory certain foods are in your body. And inflammation is basic inflammation ox of cellular aging and cellular death. And that's eventually our aging and having issues. We know a lot of the inflammatory processes like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroiditis, Hashimoto's, colitis, Crohn's, ibs, all of these are inflammatory processes that even if they're not caused by, let's say, that one egg, right? But the fact that you have that egg and that it creates inflammation in your body, you're adding fuel to fire. So you're not doing anything important for your body. The only change that we see is after we take our patients off of the food sensitivities that they have, figure out if they have leaky gut syndrome or not, and deal with that and put them on a specific diet for them. And then you see how they come back and they have more energy and the brain is working better and the inflammation is less. The puff on their face goes.

So let me ask you, for someone who's listening and maybe has heard the term leaky gut syndrome thrown around, what is that exactly?

How much time do we have? Leaky gut is very important, and I'm going to try to see if I can describe the physiology in a short period of time. Imagine our digestive system is a tube that's open to the outside world, and we sort of chew and sort of swallow food. The food goes down in our stomach and acid and digestive enzymes are added to it. And then it goes in the small intestine. And the small intestine is where the sort of absorption of the food happens. Right now we have cells that are called brush border cells because they look like a brush. And then sort of the, these molecules, let's say protein and fat and carbohydrates, they sort of come along and then they get stuck. And then they are swallowed inside this brush border cell. And then there's more reactions that happens there. And then the brush border cells puts it out to the area where it gets collected and that is taken to the liver from there so that it becomes detoxified and becomes methylated. And all the enzymatic reactions that liver has to do on it to make it available for our body. Now, if the, if the brush border cells that are, that are sort of connected to one another very tight so that nothing can go through them have a little bit of a leakage, that means what we call the tight junctions are open from one another. What happens is the food that goes through or the particles of protein and fat and everything else that go through, they basically go through without being completely digested. So they're presented to the body in a shape that the body does not recognize it. So, so are. And you know, the physiology of the body immune system is one of the most important things. Immune system says, well, what is this? I'm not used to this. Let me mount a reaction to it, make sure if it's a bacteria or a virus or a foreign particle, I can engulf it and get rid of it. And that inflammation is the process of leaky gut syndrome. The reason we get leaky gut syndrome is by using antibiotics, using proton pump inhibitors, using anti inflammatories, having yeast in our digestive system, having abnormal probiotics and prebiotics in our digestive system. And if at a certain point we got a gastroentero a nasty infection in our digestive system and we created inflammation in our digestive system and that was never taken care of properly. So leaky gut, everyone thinks it's, it's, it's got. That has a hole in it and things sort of spill over. That's not the way it is. It's, it's a. We should have called it something else. We called it leaky gut. But, but yeah, it's, it's, it's one of the reasons for inflammation in. I would say 10 to 20% of our patients do have, suffer from leaky gut. A lot of the times. Taking care of that leaky gut is, is what makes the biggest impact on their body.

So how do, if someone suspects they have leaky gut, do they, Is there a specific type of doctor like yourself where they should go and have something? I mean, I, I don't think that most, from what I hear, and, and this just shows that I am completely out of touch on this topic. But if, if someone, first of all, what would, what might they be experiencing that would be a clue that, aha, this person should be tested for leaky gut. And is leaky gut something that is corrected by diet and vitamin. So again, I'm tossing all these questions. I'm so curious.

The reason, the reason I laughed was because should go to gastroenterologist. And gastroenteroenterologists don't believe in leaky gut.

Yeah.

Which is the funniest thing because we deal with it and our patients sort of seek leaky gut treatment with us. And they said, well, why doesn't my gastroenterologist know about this? And the answer is, when there is not a specific medication, don't expect your doctor to know about it. Because as doctors, we get paid by creating a assessment and plan. And the assessment can be sinusitis and the plan is an antibiotic. So insurance company pays by that and not necessarily by saying, oh, you have sinusitis, take some garlic and wash with nasal saline and it's going to go away. So doctors are very much used to this assessment and plan sort of technique. So when we have no specific medication for leaky gut, your doctor is not going to know about. The other thing is a lot of gastroenterologists don't believe in yeast infection of the digestive system. A lot of doctors don't believe in mold infections of the body. And these are the things that we deal with. But to answer your question, a leaky gut is, as I mentioned, the product of this or creates this inflammatory response in the body. And then you have people who say, well, why am I not thinking properly? Why do I have rashes on my body that come and go without being exposed to anything? Why am I congested all the time? Why am I tired all the time? Why am I bloating? I don't eat a lot, but I'm also bloating at the same time. What does that mean? Right. So leaky gut does not have a specific symptom that we can say it's a vague combination of symptomatology that will make a doctor think, well, what am I dealing with? It seems like it's an inflammatory process that I'm dealing with. And it's affecting the whole body because it's hitting the brain a little bit, it's hitting the skin a little bit, it's hitting the digestive system a little bit. So it is an inflammatory condition, and we have to deal with the inflammatory condition. One of the easiest ways of figuring out leaky gut is doing the food sensitivity test. Because people who do have leaky gut basically have, if we look at the list of their food sensitivities, and let's say if I have seven or eight things in a list of 400 where I'm sensitive to, a person who has leaky gut will have 25 or 30. And that's not normal to have so many sensitivities. It basically means there is something happening in the body that is creating this many sensitivities. The other way of testing it is really doing some blood work and some digestive analysis which shows us if there is leaky gut or not. The best way of treating leaky gut is we have a supplement which is called L glutamine powder. Glutamine. This L glutamine powder has been shown to close up this gaps between the, the brush border cells that I was talking about. So to heal that, one of the best things we can do is start using L glutamine powder. And then that's just to start fixing it. But then you say, well, why did I get leaky gut to begin with? Was it, is it the amount of antibiotics I have every year? There are patients of ours that before they come to us, they have antibiotics four times a year, six times a year. There are people who are anti inflammatories for a long time. There are people who are using proton pump inhibitors or antacids for a long period of time. These are the things that cause leaky gut. So then the second step is, well, what is causing the leaky gut? Let's go fix that so that we don't have to take the antibiotics and the antacids and anti inflammatories which cause leaky gut to begin with. But the best way to start is if you go on our website, you see a product called L glutamine powder and use one scoop a day, give it three to four months, you will see a change.

It's interesting, I think you're pinpointing that people may have antibiotics multiple times during the year. Often it's because they're coming down with the flu. They're coming down with all these things that to your point, age traditional doctor is Saying, okay, clearly you need an antibiotic. And so I think that what that made me ponder is something that I, that you and I talked about before, when, when Covid first came out and we were all shut in our homes and we would brave going to the grocery store, I remember marveling because I had heard that, you know, the food's all wiped out, there's nothing there. And walking into the produce department and it was brimming with all the leafy green vegetables were there. There was no problem getting those, no shortage. All the healthy, the food that, that I have grown to know and love that. And I do find if you're listening to this and you're going, ew, leafy green vegetables. That sounds horrible. I do believe that my palate has changed. I literally do not even like the smell of chicken or meat these days. It's interesting, yes, that's possible. But during COVID it was the ice creams, the pizza, that all the heavy duty dairy products, the high sugar, the highly processed foods. And I know from being a living creature here that when I got rid of those from my diet, my health shifted dramatically and to a certain extent, and share with me, if you think that you see this as well for my body personally, and I think this gets to another point that we need to learn how to listen to our own specific bodies. But it was almost the dairy products getting rid of those that made an even more significant impact, that when I got rid of the meat and the poultry, although to your earlier point, it got to the point as I was transitioning, if I would eat some chicken or especially meat, I confess I never was a huge fan, but especially the poultry. I could feel it was almost like this greasiness on my skin. And it got to the point where I did feel more sluggish. My body was clearly struggling more to digest it. So is it possible that if we lower the consumption of dairy and even just cutting back, that it will impact go back one step? So maybe the colds, the flus, the vulnerability to those respiratory things that make us need the antibiotics, our overall health will improve.

Yeah, that's very true. We, we know that inflammation in the body is a situation where it gives a chance to pathogens to grow. We know cancer is an inflammatory condition, and we know that when inflammation goes up, immunity comes down. So these are the things that we already know. These are the basic knowledge that we have now. We also know certain things to be very inflammatory. For example, carbohydrates and dairy. And a lot of the doctors, when you walk in. Well, a lot of functional medicine doctors, when you walk into their office, the first thing they ask you to do is take out all dairy and take out all carbohydrates. And then let's see where we get. And a lot of times we see that doing that will affect our patients a lot. I mean, by losing the inflammation, losing weight, and. And then all of a sudden you have this person who walked in 20, 30 pounds overweight. And over the next six months, if they really stick with a specific diet, they will lose all of that or part of it. And a lot of that is inflammation, inflammatory processes. Now we do a detoxification plan in our office, and it's a long detoxification plan. That's it for some of my patients. And it's been there since God knows when. I started 20 years ago, and I still have patients that do it every year with me. The way it is, you take out certain groups of food groups out of your diet either for one week or for one month. So you either take out dairy for one month and then go out, you know, put dairy back, take out carbohydrates for one month, put it back, take out chicken for one month, take it out, put meat out for one month, put fish out for one month. So you basically rotate all these groups, and then you evaluate yourself and see which month you felt the best and you lost the most weight or you trimmed out the best. And then you also notice that if you put that back on, that means, let's say it was during the month that you took out chicken, you lost ten pounds. All of a sudden you felt great. And then as soon as you put it back on it slowly, you started feeling what you were feeling before that again. Right? This is a. An experimental way for you to figure or maybe experiential with yourself. You're experiencing it to see if I am or. My body does not like dairy. My body does not like carbohydrate, My body does not like gluten, My body does not like meat. This is something that you can do and it's very easy, and I recommend that to a lot of my patients. And, and sometimes it takes six weeks because it's a plan that is, you know, very fast. One week. You know, you take these things out one week. But to really see an effect, I say give yourself one month off of something, off of a food group. And that can be your. That can be like one of the best things you have done in your. In your. Trying to figure out your own health is figuring out what is it that's causing problem in my body. Let me not take that anymore. And I recommend that to a lot of my patients.

Yeah. So you make me think of another topic that I hear a lot and it's a real fear of. Yes, but what about my protein? How I, I can, I, how can I, what if I don't get enough protein? I think there's a huge emphasis on protein consumption and the way that it needs to be consumed in order for us to be healthy. Can you speak to that a little bit? If, if you're suggesting to someone that they take meat out of their diet for a month or take poultry out of their diet for a month, speak a little bit to that, that protein issue that we're, yeah, our diet is.

American diet comparing to European diet and Middle Eastern diet is probably one of the most worst diets out there. The amount of carbohydrates, dairy sugar that we have in our diet is more than anywhere else in the world. And that's why our epidemic of diabetes and obesity and heart disease and everything else, I mean, we're one of the countries that spends, I think I saw this a while back. We're one of the highest spending countries on healthcare, and our healthcare is, we're the 50th on, on the list, you know, below a lot of countries, because of the fact that we're not looking at the amount of protein that we need to have in our diet as opposed to the carbohydrate and the free sugars that we're continuously consuming. And if you look at pictures of, you know, black, black and white pictures of old America and you look at it now, you see that everyone has 20 to 30 pounds on them comparing to, you know, 40, 50 years ago. So we know our diet is a major problem. And again, I, I, I, I fault FDA and I fault American Medical association for, and Surgeon General for not doing their job properly. Because, you know, if you guys are doing your job properly, why are we still dying? Why we still have diabetes? Why do we have all these things? You know, you, you have one job, get it done properly. Yes, but to, to your point of how much protein do we really need? Again, everyone is completely different to say that we all need 1 gram per pound or, or, you know, per kilogram. So once we get into calculation, we get a rough idea of how much protein we need in one day. But you're going to have people who, whose metabolism, metabolism is different than others and then they might require more protein. You have people who work out, you know, four or five days a week and strenuously, and they need a different amount of protein and you have others who don't. So I think it's very individualized. But I also think taking out a food group and then substituting that with another protein will teach us a lot. Because if, if we say, oh, what happens if I don't eat meat? Well, you got to be careful with that because while our iron is coming from there, a lot of the vitamins and everything else are coming from there. If you take out meat from your diet to test it to see if you're sensitive to meat or your body does not like meat, then you have to do a research and figure out, well, then I need to supplement myself with iron. I need to make sure I have vitamin Bs, I need to make sure I have minerals and everything else in my D diet, because these are important. And that research will get you to look at other protein sources. And you might go into nuts, you might go into beans, you might go into other things, and you will increase those in your diet and you see how your body feels with that, and it becomes a learning process. And I think one of the conversations you and I had was taking control of your health, you know, and until you sit there and you go to your doctor and your doctor says, oh, your cholesterol is high. Here's a cholesterol medication. And then you say, okay, well, then I'm going to continue with my hamburger and fries every day. We're good because my cholesterol is balanced, right? And until we sit down and watch YouTube videos and Instagram videos and tick tock videos and where they give us a little bit of something, but not the whole thing, right? We're not going to be in our, in control of our health because we're going to know bits and pieces of something, okay? For us to really learn about our health, we have to be, we have to take responsibility. We have to know, this is the body that I have, I'll have it for the next. Well, if you're younger, 78 years, if you're my age, you know, it changes a little bit, right? But for the rest of the time that I have this body with the issues that this body has, because remember, everybody has an issue. You have brain physiology issues, you have hormone issues, you have joint issues, you have tendon issues, you have organ issues. So, and, and, but when you go to your doctor, we're all the same because if the cholesterol is high, they all gonna get we're all going to get the same thing right. That's not the way it is for your physiology, for your body. What. Where is the harmony? Where is the place that you say, oh, I feel good. It's, it's interesting. Everybody else, all my friends are feeling tired when they wake up in the morning and groggy and throughout the day they're sluggish and drinking coffee as much as they can. But my body is not doing that where that. How do we find that? The way you find that is doing your own research to, you know, seeing doctors who actually know physiology. And that's not your endocrine endocrinologist, unfortunately, because again, endocrinologists are very much sort of focused on what they do. A lot of doctors who know your physiology best are called functional medicine doctors. These are the doctors who know specific physiology and everything that happens in your body and they can help you figure things out. But a lot more of that is really going out there, doing it yourself, taking out the protein that, that protein that you're, you know, so, so much sort of you have hunger for and see if that protein goes away. How are you going to get your protein? Where are you going to get it from? Are you going to get it from dairy? Are you going to get it from somewhere else? You're going to get it from avocados? Where is the protein going to come from?

And, and for most people who knew that there's any kind of protein in like avocados or broccoli or something like that, I remember one of the biggest ahas for me and I want to amplify your point of harmony with this vessel that we have. I think that's. So it's a partnership. It is intended to be, you know, our body is intended to be our best friend. I mean, it goes everywhere with us and to treat it like our soulmate, basically. But one of the biggest AHAs for me was to your point. When I was exploring the possibility of inching toward becoming a vegetarian and I started studying macrobiotics. I remembered the shape shocker for me was when I read that an all vegetable diet is called an all vegetable diet because I'm supposed to consume all vegetables. This isn't supposed to go well. I know I like iceberg lettuce and I like tomatoes and I like corn. So I'll just eat tortilla chips, corn, iceberg lettuce and tomatoes and expect to get my nutrients that way. That part of the opportunity for us is to, you know, to me, comfort food. I Think of comfort food as, as food that comforts my cells. My body makes me feel, you know, my, my body feels pampered. And there's some wonderful, I mean it's infinitely easier now to have an all vegetable diet than it was when I was a vegan years and years ago when the produce section of a normal grocery store was teeny tiny and did not have the array. There was definitely nothing like international foods or tofu, nothing in the freezer section that vaguely resembled that. And so I love your concept of finding that harmony and developing kind of a love affair and realizing that this is your body is not your evil twin out there trying to usurp you. And even if you do have a propensity because you're mother had it and your father had it and your grandparents had, doesn't mean that, you know, there's this evil Darth Vader lurking in your body waiting to come and, and zap you at a certain point in your life. Correct.

Well, we, we are, we, we all have this concept that we're all going to get old anyways. We're all going to have joint pains anyways. We're all going to have heart attacks anyways. We're all, we're all going to have strokes anyways. Right? This is, this is the wrong mentality. And, and I'll give you an example. I was, during the time that I was working at urgent cares and emergency rooms and I had a patient who came in and he wanted to get cleared to climb a mountain. I don't remember which one, but I remember standing behind the door before I walked in. I, I picked up the chart, it said an 82 year old man. And here it was a form for me to sign to clear him to walk up a mountain. And so in my mind I'm like, oh, this is easy. I'm just gonna walk in and say you can't and come out. And I remember I walked in and, and there was this gentleman who was sitting there with white beard and he looked so good. And I said, okay, you have heart issues? No. Lung issues? No. Digestive issues? No. Sleep problems? No. You have any issues? No. You take any medication? No. And so I'm shocked because I'm in an area that all the patients who come in are on at least four or five medications.

Yes.

Some much more, but at least four to five medications. Yes. And here's a gentleman who's 82 years old who is not on any medication. He is in better shape than I am and he wants to climb a Mountain. And I have to okay that. And, and I remember that whole day or when I came home, I was like, this is amazing that someone at age 82 feels or has the mental, the subconscious energetics that tell him you can do it. Your heart is, is perfect, your lungs are perfect, your joints are good, your muscles are fantastic, you digest food well, you have energy. Go up a mountain. And that he became my, my role model, really. It was, it's about. As we age, do we want to become that old person that's always sitting in the corner and needs a walker and, and needs people to, and has pain and aches and can't walk and can't do this and can't do that, or do you want to be this 82 year old person who's going to go up a mountain? Which one do you want to be? Choose it and choose it now because you can't wait until you're 70 years old and then choose it. You choose it early. Choose it when your 20s, your 30s, your 40s. That's the time that you choose it and then you continue. I'm not saying if you're older than that, don't continue on that, don't go on that path, but I'm saying choose early. Know that it's possible.

Yes.

A lot of it comes from the subconscious mind that tells your body you're able to do this. And, and again, going back to the same subject, a lot of us have medical issues. We have conditions, we have hormonal abnormalities. We all do have something in our body that should not stop us. Unless, I mean, I'm not saying someone has really a handicap, see, or, or they're missing a limb or anything else. But you also see people who are missing limbs, who run. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's. And, and they do amazingly. And so, so I want to say that don't. I understand there might be limitations. I understand that we all have reasons why we don't want to listen to healthy podcasts and instead we're scrolling our Instagram page or one of these social media pages and just looking at random pictures, which is really nice. But instead of that, why don't we put our energy in our time? Because once you focus your energy on something, you're going to make something happen. Yes. Okay. If the energy is scattered on, I'm gonna, you know, 10 minutes I'm gonna watch YouTube and then 10 minutes I'm gonna do social media. In 10 minutes I'm gonna do something else. Why don't you combine that and that they say, I want to see what is it that I can do for myself to gain muscle. And that's all I want to do. Or I want to get my hips stronger so I can play something, tennis or something else. Focus on that, accomplish that, and then start doing it and then give yourself another task. And then by 20 years from now, you're gonna have an amazing body. You're going to be very healthy, you're going to feel good. You're going to look at the rest of people who are around you and say, I mean, look at yourself. You say, I'm 64. But when you look at you, look around you, to all the rest of the 64 years old, you see a big difference. Difference. You see you have vibrance, you have energy, your. Your mind is working properly. That is important. That's what we want, right? So start now. Start harmonizing your body today. Don't wait.

That is. That is so important that that message that you just shared and, and I think it leads to where. One final topic before I ask you the final questions that I ask all of my wonderful guests on the how to choose to Live podcast. And what you touched upon was the harmony that our bodies have with our subconscious, with our inner game. And that was something that, you know, if you listen to episode one of my podcast, you know that the reason why the word boulder has such a significance in my world is that in 2016, my youngest child was literally crushed by a boulder. And by medical precedent, it was quote, unquote, impossible for her to survive her injuries. And what transpired was a medical team that fortunately was able to work miracles on her, their magic, but what they also marveled at, and the reason that they explained to me later that they called us the miracle family was not simply because what they saw. And again, I can't tell you how many times I got dragged into a nurse's station to be shown a CAT scan where they're saying, you see that they're.

That.

That is incongruous with that. What we see in. With that young. With your daughter, right. Seeing this on the CAT scan should mean that she can't do that, and yet she can. And so the reason they explained to me was that they had never seen the inner game played the way that, that, you know, I, as her mom, was completely invested because from my perspective, that was the only thing that I could control. And having spent years and years learning to your point, continuing to learn, and not simply one aspect. It wasn't just, you know, the neuroscience Advancements. It was also energy, the energetic field, it was language, the role of language on our subconscious and how it becomes the programming code. And so they really attributed and they would share to me, you know, the, the patients that they see who have that authentic. And this is not quote unquote, just looking on the bright side. There's a big difference there. And I talk about it in some of the other podcasts episodes. But for us it was this authentic expectation that almost became this knowing that our bodies had the potential to achieve miracles. And so would you close this by sharing what your experience has been about that harmony between body and mind and, and soul? And of course, I know this could be an entire another hour of conversation.

Yes. But I'll tell you when, when you, when you study physiology, or at least I am in awe with the physiology because the little things that happen in the body, the little enzymes, the coenzymes, the, the way our hormone cascades and, and how if we're stressed out, our testosterone is, is going to go down so that we don't have offsprings in a stressful time. And, and, and how that has become an issue nowadays. But to see that this system has been put together so precisely, you wonder, how did this happen? Yes, you, you can't not wonder. You can't sit there and say, oh well, testosterone does this. It was really good that we say it does this. But you know how fast and how easily and how perfectly all these reactions happen in the body. So number one, we have to accept that this walking thing is a miracle. Every second of it, it's a miracle. The fact that you don't have to think about your heart rate for it to pop, the fact that you don't have to think about your food to get digested. It is happening on a regular basis. You are a miracle all the time, every second. Okay, now do we know that? Or have studies shown us that if we focus our attention on something, if we put our intention on something, we can accomplish it with our body? Yes. There are a lot of stories, there are a lot of research. I have heard it from a lot of people who say I cured myself off of this by literally thinking about it. So, so to say that this thing does not exist because your doctor thinks it does not exist is wrong. Okay? We are a miracle. The miracle starts from within. The miracle starts from the subconscious and the energy that we have. And some people call it religious, some people call it spirit, self, however you want to call it. It doesn't matter. We know that there is A physique physiology that are both miracle and then there is a I, a self, a subconscious a, is something else that is running this miracle here and there. Right. And we know that thing that's inside has a lot to do with the physique and our physiology. As a matter of fact, in Body of Body of Harmony, my wife Shiva does what is called cellular reprogram. And she probably should be one of your next future guests because you're going to love the conversation you're going to have with her because I know where your. How your brain works. And a lot of our patients, once we start fixing the physique and the physiology and the psyche and the hormones and everything else, they will have sessions with Shiva and her sort of help with the physiology or with bringing someone into harmony is really connecting this, the self that exist, to the physique and physiology and combining it and having this self, the I, run the show. So this is what we call cellular reprogramming. And she has been very successful with a lot of our patients. A lot of our patients really are in awe and wonder of how do meditations change you? How do affirmations change you? How do just thinking positive, being positive and being excited about something is going to drive your body to get those things done. But we see it on a daily basis in our practice. So it has become an internal. It has become a normal thing for me because once I see my patients, I say, oh, you also have to see Shiva. And this part of it is going to be taken care of as well. And. And not only that, we get the most success out of our interactions with patients because we don't need to spend as much time with patients because there's physique and physiology. And then Shiva takes care of the rest, which pushes the physique and physiology to get the job done. So it becomes an easier. It's a marriage of everything that we talk about, mind and body. Yes. It's the marriage of everything that, that, you know, all these esoteric medicines have talked about everything else that we know about. Think positive and become positive and you'll be it. It is a marriage of all of that in health. And that's our message. And we want to bring that message out where you really can combine all these together in a medical office and you can have amazing effects on your patients.

That's phenomenal and kind of reaffirming that. When I first really, I think, saw physical evidence other than, you know, my own experiment with my own body and mind and self was the work of Dr. Emoto in Japan. And this was mind blowing to me. And if you're listening this, watching this, and you haven't looked up Dr. Emoto, and that's with an I. And seen the experiments that he did, he's known for, with water. And, and what they simply did was take water molecules or crystals and little droplets of water and put them in little beakers. And then they would extract from the various drops of water from beakers that simply had different words labeled on them as well as spoken to them. And they would be phrases like, you're beautiful, you're. You're spectacular, you're a miracle, you're wonderful. Or ugh, you're hideous, I hate you, you're awful, you're wretched. And it was flabbergasting. The. The crystals that had had beautiful words spoken to them looked like snowflakes, like the perfect snowflake. They were gorgeous. They reflected that the mo. The, you know, the droplets that had had horrible things were black and moldy and just nasty looking. And I realize making the connection of like, oh my gosh, so many people walk around saying these horrible. Forget about what other people say to you saying they're these horrible things to themselves. And we're something like 70% water, I think, in our body, right? So imagine those poor crystals if we walk around all day saying, oh, that was a stupid thing. You're so foolish. Why did you do all these horrible things? No wonder. And to your point, it's a miracle that our body functions even with that level of dis. Ease, which to me is the antithesis of the harmony that you talk about. So I. Dr. Hakimi, what you do is so exciting and so wonderful. Before I share, have you share with a listener how to follow you, how to, you know, tap into either if you're traveling close to LA or Miami, or, or, you know, definitely how they can get an appointment, set things up with you, or just order some of the vitamins. Before we do that, I have three questions that I typically ask all of my guests. And so the first question is, I want you to imagine that we are a century or so in the future. And for whatever reason, the access to resources that would help those generations understand how to choose to live. For some reason, they're all gone. You have the opportunity to share three things that will start them on a path of how to choose to live. What would those three things be?

Well, the first one would be attention, intention and concentration. We. Or. Or meditation. I mean, all of that can become what we call meditation. So basically focusing, deciding, and knowing what they want to or what we want to create at that point in our life, what do we want to see happening in our. In our life, and what do we want our bodies to do? What do we want our future at that point to be? So concentrating, intending and attending to that to become a reality is number one. The other one, and probably one of the most important ones, is to stretch. We often forget about stretching as our bodies are aging. We become tighter, tendons become tighter, muscles become tighter, and our cardiovascular system and lymphatics start changing and, and working a little bit differently. So to have a good physique that will keep us going at anywhere, either now or in the future, we need to be stretching. Stretch as much as you can. Start with 5, 10 minutes a day. Increase it to 20, 30 minutes a day, or 4 or 5 times a week if you can, because that's. Those are the important things. The other thing is to be really connected to the harmony of the body. It's what are the things that make me. What are the things I think that make me upset, what are the things I do that affect me negatively? What are the things that I eat that I feel they're not working with me? So really accepting this body as a temple that it is, as a miracle that it is, and then knowing that whatever we do to the body to help it will just make the miracle grow a little bit faster and better. And whatever we do to halt this growth, to halt this miracle, to stop this miracle, it's going to have an effect in our body as well. So it's important to stay in harmony and it's important to stay in, in. In our body. A. A being, an eye, a self, a subconscious that is writing this body and this subconscious person. The subconscious thing can get really a lot done if it's focused and it has intention, good intentions, and obviously puts attention on things.

Wonderful, wonderful. And I love that you put the stretching in there. I think, to your point, it's something that most many people think, you know, it's kind of frivolous. I don't have time to do that, just to sit and stretch. And that's excellent. So, moving to the next question. I believe that we have one goal and one goal only. Everything else along the way is an objective, a possibility, an opportunity, a target. And that one goal is to be taking our last breath whenever that might be able to look back and say, oh, my gosh, this was freaking epic. I hope I have the chance to do this. Again sometime. And so my question to you is, what are the aspects of your life that may be a few that you've already done that allow you to say, my life has been epic. And maybe, is there anything else that you think contributes to being able to say my life was truly epic?

Well, really, staying in here and now and staying in positivity as much as possible and trying not to get involved in negative situations, negative thoughts, has been the biggest meditation that I have had for a long time. Because I really believe that when you're positive and you think positive, you become that. And. And I've seen that in my life, and I've seen that my accomplishments have come from them, from there. And one of the accomplishments probably has been teaching doctors what I do, teaching doctors, homeopathy, teaching doctors some of the aspects of functional medicine and, and everything else that I know, and bringing this message out to the public, because I see that we are really at a. We're not at a very good place where we have our allopathic medicine, sort of conventional medicine, trying to put the rest of the medical knowledge and arts that we have. We have acupuncture and we have. Have Ayurveda and. And we have homeopathy, and we have so many different things that have been experienced and. And we have Persian medicine, we have Tibetan medicine. I mean, there's so many of them. And I wish there was enough time to know all of those. But to appreciate that although I am a medical doctor, I really opened myself to learning more, to understanding the other side and to understanding things like homeopathy and osteopathy and Ayurveda and everything else, and use all of that, combine it and create a situation for my patients to get the best that they can get, to bring this message out to the rest of the doctors, to the rest of the medical world and say, you know, we don't have to necessarily all sort of fight with one another and say, you know, Ayurveda is not good, or something else. Doesn't work just because we don't understand it. We have to appreciate respect and to try to find what really works. Because we're doing all this for our patients. And the whole point is our patients to be able to live healthy and live happy, that's what we want. And it doesn't matter what we do, it doesn't matter what the combination is. As long as when someone walks into our office, we can actually change their life, touch their life, and make sure that when they leave our office and next month and the Year after that, they notice a major change in their life. That's why we have become doctors. Doctors. And that is my message. And I think that's how I want to feel at a certain point, sort of towards the end of my life after I've written my books and YouTube videos and everything else. I hope the message gets out to everyone.

And so that leads gracefully into. The final question was if you knew that sometime within the next two years that big boulder was dropping, is there anything that you would absolutely want to ensure that you accomplish or any. Anything more or different in the way that you would choose to live?

I think. I think I'm on the right track. I think I'm. I'm doing everything that I want. And, and every morning I meditate and focus on and intend on the things that I want to do that day. And, and thank God I have been successful in, in what I have done and, and for my message. And I think if the boulder came at any point, I would say I made it. I made a dent in some people's lives, and that has been amazing for me. It's been a fantastic ride, actually, so far.

That's spectacular. And I think you really are a beautiful embodiment of the harmony that you share as your legacy. The potential that we really do have, the power, the empowerment to have a huge amount of impact on the gift, the miracle gift that we have been given that you've really highlighted. So I know if you're listening to this, watching this, that you're going to want more of Dr. Hakimi, so share with us. First of all, I think I. I think you mentioned that you might have a little gift for those who have been listening to this. You want to give them a sneak peek of what that might be.

Well, since we want to live an epic life. And, and these are your words, obviously, and, and. And we search your website, found epicu.

Yes.

And so we created the discount code for your listeners who can use the discount code on our website and our. On our app, Body of Harmony website. Body of harmony app. It's EpicU, all lowercase with number 15. So it's Epic U15. And they will get 15 off of every purchase that they have. And, and I don't think we're limiting that to anything. So they can sort of search our website, see what they like, and if they have any questions, they can always contact us. There's. There's a lot of ways on our website to contact us if they have any questions. And, and we have staff that actually help answer those questions or they can contact us and we'll answer any questions that they have. And yeah, and. And the other thing is looking at our YouTube channel, we have a lot of information. We're putting out more videos that we're making with the help of amazing people who work with me. And, and we are, we're sort of getting them out one after the other. They're all going to be about functional medicine. They're going to be about homeopathy. I teach courses in homeopathy. If anyone is interested in homeopathy, in learning how it helps, they can sign up. We have discount codes. The homeopathic courses are directed at physicians. So if you're a physician and like to learn homeopathy, we have discount codes for you as well and we can share that with you once you contact us.

So if someone wants to take a healthcation to either LA or Miami, is it possible to contact you and explore becoming one of your patients?

Of course, yes. That is one of my passions is to figure out chronic and complex cases and see how we can maneuver and take care of those patients.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, Dr. Hakimi, thank you for being so, so generous with your wisdom, your time, your role modeling, what is possible, and for of course, all the work that you do, which is phenomenal. And you, the wonderful listener, viewer, thank you so much for being here. And I'm fairly certain that you know someone, at least one person, who would benefit from Dr. Hakimi's wisdom. And so I would encourage you to share this and of course we'd love to see your comments. Your likes are so appreciated. And of course, if you would subscribe, I suspect that we definitely are going to have Shiva on an episode and maybe clearly Dr. Hakimi and I have a lot to talk about, so we may see Dr. Hakimi again. But thank you so much for being here, Dr. Hakimi.

And I want to thank you as well for, for being out there and having a medium and an outlet for this knowledge to be sort of shared. And I'm glad that you've chosen this and I've seen your work and your website and everything else that you do, and it's amazing. And I've seen Skyler's videos and pictures and everything else, and she's a blessing. And if there is anything we can do at any point, obviously we're there to help you. And again, thank you very much for having me on your show. This was fantastic.

Thank you so much. I've loved having you here. So, dear, wonderful Global Tramily Tribe family. We will see you for the next next episode of how to choose to Live Podcast. And in the meantime, go out and explore that epic.

You.

Wow, that was an amazing conversation. Wasn't. And boy, he is such. He has such a wealth of information. It was really hard to squeeze it all in. So now it's time for your mission. So your bonus tip, maybe even a little bit of a challenge today, is to start implementing the swap. Right? So remember, if you recall where he starts, when you're really trying to make a significant shift in your energy level, your overall health, it starts by seeing how does your body respond to the food that you're consuming. So get started today. Start by maybe making a chart, creating a plan. What is the one food that you are going to eliminate from your diet for the next seven to 10 days or maybe even an entire month like he suggests? And then remember, you put that one back and you take another one out. So maybe it's. Maybe you get bold and you take meat out and then you put that back in and you journal, you chart how you start to feel, how's your energy level, how's your mental sharpness, and go through some of the obvious, the fish, carbs, sugar, alcohol, coffee, caffeine in general, course sodas, and really see how you start to feel. How's your weight? I think, I suspect that if you will go ahead and challenge yourself to do that, you will start waking up feeling like you are energized and ready to go out there and seize the day. So I'm Meredith Alexander. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of the how to choose to Live podcast. And yeah, do go out there and share it with someone because a challenge like this, it's better with someone else doing the challenge with you. Right? So I will see you next week for another episode. So keep coming back to our YouTube channel, keep checking your favorite podcast, and until then, go out and unleash something epic. See you next time.