You’re Responsible for Your Health (Here’s How to Own It)

If you have chronic illness, metabolic syndrome, or your health just isn't where you would like it to be, then you're going to love this episode. Welcome to Beyond Diagnosis, a podcast to raise your awareness, decisions, and voice for alternative practices so you can take back control of your health. I'm Rita De Michele, your host, a mindset and empowerment coach. And the founder of the Onus platform. Join me each week so you can create the health of your dreams with Jen Ashhold, because she'll be sharing how lifestyle changes can make a big impact on improved wellness. She's a physical therapist, program director of lifestyle medicine, fellow of pain science, and a mental health fitness coach, so you're in good hands today. Hello, Jen.

Hello, thank you for inviting me back.

It is so good to be speaking with you again and having you on the show. Last time we actually tapped into your other skills around chronic pain and movement, and that was such an interesting episode. I encourage everyone to go back and have a listen to that one. Today is all about lifestyle medicine, which is I think such a crucial area for people to get on top of their health and get to know their health. I was doing some research around you know chronic disease and how now it seems to predominate over infectious disease in the Western world anyway, and how lifestyle medicine can have a huge impact. And it's an adjunct discipline for these diseases.

We actually prefer that people start with lifestyle medicine. And lifestyle medicine is not anti-Western medicine. It's not anti-medications or surgery. It is, let's use lifestyle medicine as our primary because so much can be done with lifestyle medicine. We know that we can prevent treat and even reverse up to 80% of lifestyle-related diseases, and this includes 40% of cancers.

That is incredible. And I think this is what people just don't realize, is that when they have developed a disease in the body or a condition, that the first step is to actually go and get medication as opposed to, you know, looking at the lifestyle. Can we just briefly talk about For, you know, people who don't quite understand, what is, what is it? What is lifestyle medicine?

Yes. So lifestyle medicine, it's been around for decades, and we actually can trace its history even back to the times of Hippocrates and other philosophers. But we, we won't take that deep dive into history today. Um, but lifestyle medicine was started by physicians that wanted a different approach. They wanted to get to the root cause of whatever was going on with their patient, as opposed to just slapping a Band-Aid on it. Oh, here's a symptom. Let's give you medication. Oh, here's a complaint of pain. Let's do surgery. So it was started out of that. And now there's so much research around lifestyle medicine. And it's made up of 6 primary areas. And our lifestyle medicine program, we refer to them as gears. And so those gears are sleep, nutrition, exercise, avoiding risky substances, alcohol, tobacco, and things like that, social connections, and managing stress. And so within all of those things, there's so much opportunity for patients to choose their path to health. And I love this idea of gears. Our image is a bunch of gears all interconnected because Somebody might be motivated to work on nutrition, and somebody else might be motivated to work on sleep. And you know what? That's okay, because it's a very patient-centered approach. The client is the driver, and the clinician is a guide. And so it's really important to remember, if you're the clinician, that it's really up to the client. And there's something called shared decision-making. Where we are working with the client so that we are informing them, right? They can't make a good decision unless they have the information, and then they're deciding what's best for them, their life, and their goals.

Fantastic. So for someone who does have, um, a chronic condition or metabolic syndrome or something else, which, which of those conditions Does lifestyle medicine most effectively help, or is it across the board?

Yeah, it's 80% of all lifestyle-related diseases, and that's a pretty big bucket. That can include metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity, and as I mentioned earlier, even cancers can respond to lifestyle medicine.

Incredible. Within those 6 gears, as you were saying, can you expand a little bit so the listener understands? Well, you describe sleep and movement and dietary, but within those gears, because they're, they're broad, and someone could say, okay, I sleep, you know, so, or I think I eat healthy. You know, can you take a little bit of a deeper dive into those so they can understand, well, it's actually this type of sleep or this many hours, or, you know, this type of nutrition would help chronic disease or metabolic syndrome or diabetes better?

Yeah, that's such a good question. So let's see, I'm gonna try and do like 2 or 3 sentences on each so I don't get too deep. Let's start with nutrition. Myself, I find nutrition fascinating as much as I do frustrating because it's so very complex, and there are a lot of, you know, strong opinions out there. But in general, here's where we agree. Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Limit processed foods as much as you can. Avoid, limit added sugars as much as you can. Eat before you're full. This actually shows up in different cultures, and the German cultures have a specific phrase to it. The Japanese culture has a specific phrase to it. So eating until you're not quite full is actually a great strategy for health. And so that might be just a very general overview of nutrition. The reason that we promote these things is because when we don't, then we are It causing lots of inflammation in our body, and inflammation is a major driver for both disease and pain, my other area of passion. So that's a little overview of nutrition. Sleep. I am a total sleep geek. Sleep is so incredibly essential for our health all the way through our ages and stages. It is when our children grow. If they are not in the proper stage of sleep, they will not emit the growth hormone, and that could impact their growth. And then, as adults, this is where we take new memories and we commit them to long-term memories. So sleep is an essential part of health. And there's really interesting research. There's one study that shows that one night of sleep deprivation is the same as driving drunk. So sleep is not a luxury. Even though the society here in America, we seem to think it is. I don't know what it's like where you are. All right, that's sleep and exercise. Oh, exercise. Let's do exercise. So exercise is good for literally every system of your body. And it's also another beautiful crossover with pain because sleep and exercise are 2 key strategies for pain in addition to being key strategies for lifestyle medicine. The exercise creates movement and blood flow, and our nervous system thrives on movement and blood flow, and it's just an essential component. Now, you don't have to go to the gym. You don't have to lift heavy weights. I like— what's it called? Non-exercise-induced thermogenesis.

Wow, that's a mouthful.

The acronym is NEAT, N-E-A-T. And so gardening, if you like cooking, go walk up and down a hill with a friend. So we don't have to make it crazy and formal. We just want to get our bodies moving.

Mm-hmm.

So that's exercise. Maladaptive coping strategies or avoiding risky substances. A lot of these things are also inflammatory, and they alter our ability to focus and concentrate. And, you know, it used to be that they said, sure, red wine is okay, or sure, you know, 1 or 2 drinks is okay. They're really leaning more and more towards None. And it's fascinating, my world. I'm running more and more into people who are just giving it up. And the way they feel just by giving up alcohol, it's really been quite interesting to watch. I've never been a drinker, so I just get to watch other people give it up. Social connections. Social connections is fascinating. We always think, oh, that's no big deal. However, there's a meta-analysis from 2010 where they looked at the 5-year mortality rate. So what's the risk of death death when you are exposed to these different environmental things. So for air pollution, it was a 5% greater risk. And then I think obesity was 30% or 35% greater risk. But those who lacked social connections, it was a 45% greater mortality rate in 5 years.

Mm-hmm.

So social connections is no joke, and it breaks my heart I know we're out of COVID but we're not, as what we did to so many people suffering alone when they had COVID. And then our last gear is managing stress. Stress is such an important part of health. Stress is normal. Living in stress is not. Our system is designed for just a few minutes of running away from a rabid dog. We are not intended to live there 24/7. However, Most of us are. Many of us are. And what that does is all of our systems divert to take care of that emergency, and therefore they're not really doing their regular job. Imagine if you have a company and you have to have an emergency meeting. Well, everybody in the emergency meeting is not doing their regular jobs. That's great for an hour, maybe 2. However, we can't do that for— For months and years and decades. And so that is why stress is such an important piece of health. Again, stress releases inflammatory chemicals, and that inflammation can drive illness and drive pain.

It's fascinating. It's fascinating how we can actually help ourselves so much by tweaking our lifestyle and becoming more aware and educated about it. And also like seeing someone like yourself. How can this actually help? Because you did mention COVID, so I just wanted to touch on that. Can lifestyle medicine help people who are struggling with long COVID?

Well, fascinating, because about a year ago I was at a conference and I did about a 20-30 minute talk on lifestyle medicine, and it was in particular long-haul COVID. Yes, we can use lifestyle medicine. There are a lot of other complicating factors when it comes to long-haul COVID. However, anywhere that we can enhance our health and we can decrease our systemic inflammation and we can decrease the sensitivity of our nervous system and we can introduce healthy, clean food and we can introduce movement and sleep. It's going to benefit us.

Fantastic. When it's such a patient-centered medicine, and when, say for example, if someone came to see you, so for a bit of clarity for the listeners and people watching this, if they came to see you, would you then direct them to other practitioners like Or would you handle most of it? How does it work? Like, would you direct them to a nutritionist and then to, say, um, an exercise physiologist, or, you know, a stress expert? Or, or is this something that you do so they can get an understanding? Okay, so I have to clean up my nutrition, but I really don't know how.

Yeah.

I'm not sure what sort of exercise is good for me. I have You know, chronic fatigue or I have diabetes, you know, how do you direct someone or do you deal with the patient yourself? Hmm.

I like the word direct and I'm going to swap it with the word guide because our clients are actually the ones who are making the decision, right? So I am, we are having a discussion. What are their needs? What are their goals? And then we are problem solving together, but it's driven by them on where they want to focus. When I'm teaching the lifestyle medicine courses, I'm telling my students, we don't need you to be an expert in all 6 gears and everything about all 6 gears. However, we need you to have enough of a knowledge base that you know this is in my wheelhouse to help this particular client, or you know what, I do need to get a nutritionist on board. I do need to recommend a sleep study or whatever it might be. And I just had, um, I just had a phone call with a nutritionist this morning, and I was talking to a different client on Monday, and I thought, oh, these 2 might be a good fit because his nutrition situation is beyond my knowledge base and my scope. So a lot of nutrition I can do, and then there's a point where I have to know when to refer out.

Well, it sounds like the same as what a GP, a general practitioner, would do. They have a certain knowledge base and then they refer you out to a specialist. So it's that sort of thing?

I would say yes. Um, I, I feel very fortunate myself because I have the lifestyle medicine training. I also have the mental fitness training, which we talked about last time. And I'm also a physical therapist with a specialty in pain science. So my toolbox is pretty broad. And so, um, there are a lot of things that I can deal with with a client before having to send them out. And there are definitely things that they need to be sent out for as well.

So it sounds very much like it's a whole system approach, a whole body approach.

So the word we use when it comes to pain science, which is just a great fit for lifestyle medicine as well, is it's a biopsychosocial approach. We have to consider the biology, we have to consider the psychology, and we have to consider the social environment because all of these things are interrelated and connected, and they impact health and pain.

Absolutely. So that, that was going to be one of my questions, was how important is it that the client has a mindset that is prepared to make these changes? Otherwise, you can—

It's essential.

Yeah, yeah.

The client doesn't want to change. Then it's game over. We, we, as a physical therapist, there's still things I can do. And there's something called the stages of change. Have you heard of this?

No.

Transtheoretical model of change. It's great. It's the work of James Prochaska, and it outlines 6 stages of change. And they've done super cool research. So there's one that's called they're not, they're not ready. They're just They have no intention of changing, and I could talk to them all day long. They're not ready, and it doesn't actually help our relationship if I keep pushing that envelope. Now, for somebody who's in the contemplation stage, they're getting a little bit more curious. This opens a door for me to help them get more curious. I can offer them information. I can offer them a few websites or whatever it might be.

Mhmm.

And then they might be in preparation stage. So now they're like, okay, you know what? I am ready to take this on. What do I need to do to set up success? And then the next stage is the action stage. Okay, they're doing it right. They are getting the exercise. They are getting their sleep. And then beyond that is more like a— not a recovery stage, transition, like staying maintenance stage. And so People can be in different stages. Maybe they're in not ready stage for sleep, but they're in preparation stage for nutrition, and they're in action stage for stress. And so that's why the conversation has to evolve to what's important for the client and where they're ready to make the change.

It's an incredible area because that's almost like coaching. You know, you have to meet the person where they're at. And so you're meeting people, and I suppose their values, their, their values and their goals are really intertwined with their ability to take on what you're, what you're suggesting.

Yes. So I am a coach, right? I'm a lifestyle medicine coach and other coaches, and these same strategies are used if they were to see a lifestyle medicine physician. a lifestyle medicine nurse, because there's many different professionals that can now practice the lifestyle medicine. And a big proponent of what we use also is motivational interviewing. Are you familiar with that?

No.

Motivational interviewing was developed by 2— William Miller and Rollnick are the guys who authored the book. And this is a conversation style. It is a style of conversation where me, the clinician, is just really getting curious and listening for the language of change from my client. So if my client says, I'm not gonna give up beer, that is not the language of change. If my client says, I might give up beer, now we've made a little bit more headway. And if my client says in 2 weeks, I can give up beer. And then in the following week, I will give up beer. So we're listening for the different words, and they indicate different stages of change. And so, um, I kind of forgot what my point was now. Motivational interviewing as being an important strategy, whether you're a PT or a nurse or a doctor, it is all about the relationship and the therapeutic alliance and letting that client be the driver of their path.

Exactly, exactly. That's the important— that's the important thing around, um, patient ownership and responsibility, isn't it?

It is.

Yeah, that would be a big factor in your work, is for the patient to actually take ownership of what you're suggesting, or even just take ownership of their health first, to understand you know, that they have some form of illness, chronic illness, or they have a lifestyle, um, disease, you know, like, uh, a type 2 diabetes.

You're right. And I find that— I don't know about, again, in Australia, but we're pretty judgy over here in America. And it's really not fair for us to judge somebody who goes to McDonald's every day Because maybe they just don't know that that's not good food to be putting in their system.

Mm-hmm.

And so how can we get angry or blame somebody when they don't have the knowledge base to know? And so, yes, you're right. Empowering them with knowledge is step one, and then helping them decide and create their path for change is— it's a challenge, but that's where motivational interviewing comes in. It's such a great tool for helping create change. The research is ridiculous on motivational interviewing. It's everywhere.

I'm going to actually look that up because you've got me fascinated about that.

Yeah.

And that is, that is the thing. That is one of the reasons also why I started this podcast, because it's okay to say to someone, oh, you know, you need to change, or someone might be interested in alternative health, or lifestyle medicine, etc. But unless you know what's out there, unless you become aware of how you can change or, or what's out there to assist you in your change, it's, it's very difficult. And that's where that judgment you were saying, you know, everyone— it is here as well.

Yeah.

It's very judgy, you know, on, oh, you're going there, but if you actually drill down into their conversation, it's— some people don't even understand what makes up proteins or what makes up carbohydrates. You know, what's so obvious to one person isn't obvious to another, you know. So yeah, I totally agree with you there. So we can take responsibility, but we do have to have the awareness as well. So yeah, I love what you're saying there. And that brings me to an area that I love, and that's prevention.

Okay.

So prevention, you know, I always say that prevention is the mother of cure. But how can lifestyle medicine help in the prevention of, you know, metabolic— you know, metabolic syndrome is huge. is huge. It's a huge area. So many people say, well, I've got metabolic syndrome, you know. So yeah, not just in that, in pain, in, in chronic illness. How can what you do help with prevention, or people understanding prevention?

Yeah, so, um, I think most of us might agree That if we've never run before, and then we go out and we run 10 or 15 miles, we're probably gonna pay for it with soreness, with dehydration, with pain, whatever it is. Now, if we have knowledge and we understand that if we want to run a marathon, we need to start with quarter or half a mile. We need to figure out what nutrition is going to support us. We need to make sure our hydration is going well, and sleep so that our body is healing and recovering so that we're ready for the next run. So that is just an example of how preparing and understanding and then implementing those strategies prevents the crash from running 15 miles when you had never run before. The same is true with health. And so if we broadly say that a lot of these lifestyle-related diseases are driven by inflammation, And inflammation is also a big physiological output when we have tons and tons of stress. If we are able to limit that inflammation, if we are able to limit how we are responding to the stress, and we don't even get there, or we get there less often and we recover more quickly, then we are not setting our bodies up for these lifestyle-related diseases. So metabolic syndrome, often related to weight and high blood pressure, and now I'm forgetting the other things in the moment. However, imagine if we're at a healthy weight, then we have less systemic inflammation. And if we are eating foods that are good for our heart, and then we don't have high blood pressure, we are just setting ourselves up for success.

Absolutely. So that is that prevention. It's about looking forward, like, what am I doing today? Is that helping me move forward in a healthy way, or is it hindering me? So I suppose that goes back to—

Yeah, yeah.

The, the, um, what were we talking about before? The, uh And that's so important around taking ownership for our health, what you're saying, you know, taking that responsibility, thinking, have a little bit of forward thinking around our health so we don't end up at the end going, oh no, now I've got this disease and now I'm on all these, you know, pharmaceuticals. And like, try to think, what is my end goal? And what am I doing now that— is that going to help me get to my end goal of health, how I want to live my life, you know, my older years? So that's what you're saying around that, around prevention?

Yeah, so prevention— we can take ownership of our health at any point, right? If I start exercising today, I'm going to help my health in the moment, and I'm going to help it continuously throughout the future. And In terms of prevention, I think we could maybe think of it as a health savings account, because the more you do to benefit your health now, you're just building up a stockpile so that if something happens in the future, you can recover more quickly. It is no secret people that go into surgery healthier, stronger, better weight, they come out of surgery better and they recover more quickly. So that's the same with prevention. You take care of yourself now, you're setting yourself up to be feeling good later.

And that's the thing about— so lifestyle medicine isn't just about the end result of you have something. It is very active in the prevention stage. Is that right?

It is. And what you're saying is reminding me of John Travis. He has something called the illness-wellness continuum. And so if your audience can just imagine that we have illness going off to the left and we have progressive health going off to the right, we can be anywhere on that continuum. We could be so, so close to the far left. We always have the turn— the opportunity to turn and face right. We could be at that neutral point, and we could decide to turn left and choose poor health behaviors. So it's very empowering to me, the illness-wellness continuum, because we always have the choice. And no matter where we are, you can be moving to the right, even if you're recovering from COVID even if you have high blood pressure. When you make that choice to turn to the right and start to implement some of these— implement some of these strategies, This is when you're going to start to shift towards a different place of wellness.

I absolutely love that example. I love it because at the end of the day, it is our choice. You cannot put the responsibility of your wellness into someone else's hands.

It is maddening as a parent. I'm just gonna put that out there.

It is. You have— you really have to, like we said. And I'm— I feel like I'm rabbiting on about the ownership and responsibility, but it is our responsibility. We do own it, and it is no one else's choice, and no one else can make us well. Only we can.

Right. I love that. Yeah.

So that kind of brings me around to, um, lifestyle medicine. Actually, before I ask this question, if I could go back for our listeners who may not understand, when you were talking about inflammation, I just wanted to touch on what, what does that mean? What does inflammation mean? For, so for someone who says, well, how do I know if I've got inflammation? Or what does that feel like?

Okay, that's a cool question. So many of us have probably bumped our hand, sprained our ankle, and then we see it gets big and puffy. That is inflammation. That is localized inflammation. Inflammation is an absolutely normal part of the healing process. Same thing if you cut your finger, it gets hot, it gets red, normal part of the inflammation healing process. And then It goes away because our nervous system— sorry, our nervous system and our tissues have done the work, and now we're good to go again. The challenge we have is when we have a lot of unhealthy inputs, whether that is food, lack of sleep, tons of stress. Our nervous system is responding to that. So inflammation is a result to a point of the fight-or-flight system. Hopefully, most of your listeners know what fight-or-flight is. And so, when you're in fight-or-flight, your body is— your nervous system is releasing these inflammatory chemicals so that you can battle the fight, which is great for short-term purposes. It is the challenge when we have systemic inflammation because we have systemic stress or we're eating processed food every day, all day, or we consistently get 3 hours of sleep, that it now becomes a detriment instead of a normal, healthy part of healing.

And am I correct in saying that a lot, a lot of medical professionals believe that disease is now really The base of it is inflammation, like this exacerbation.

We have research to support that. I think we're beyond belief.

Oh, okay. We're beyond belief. It is. So it's so important to keep our inflammation down then from, you know, our choices and the lifestyle choices that we make. Yes. So when we talk about in, in lifestyle medicine around self-care and self-management, We're not— you're not thinking, you know, a scented candle here, as in self-care. What, what is the self-care, self-management perspective within lifestyle medicine?

I wish that was an easy answer. It is not, because what self-care looks like is different for each individual. You know, if somebody comes to me and they're a very consistent exerciser, We don't really need to introduce exercise as part of their self-care. And if somebody else comes to me and they haven't slept more than 4 hours for 8 years, well, this might be really a focus of our self-care. So self-care is going to look like the areas that you will benefit from working on and then choosing how to work on it.

So it's very different than— What you, you know, see and hear in social media around, like I said, you know, light a scented candle, sit, you know, and read a book for 5 minutes, or, you know, take time out to meditate for half an hour. So your self-care is a little different to— it goes deeper is what I'm trying to say. It goes deeper than that.

I think I like that, it goes deeper. So those things could be helpful. Read a book, listen to a scented candle. And in, in the coaching world, we talk about different types of strategies. We can have an active strategy, or we could have a passive strategy. So if I am stressed out about something, I can go for a walk. That would be an active strategy. Or I could take a pill, or I could just zone out in front of a TV. That would be a passive strategy. Then we also have direct and indirect strategies. So if my challenge is that I'm very stressed out about a math test, I could do a direct strategy would be to study a little bit more. An indirect strategy would be to go for a walk and distract myself. They all have value. And it just depends on the situation and the goals.

What about— I just wanted to recap before we finish today. It was something that's on my mind. I just want to recap before— when you mentioned this is even good for people who have cancer, so someone who's on chemo or they're going through cancer, would they turn to someone? Would they turn to lifestyle medicine? And how can lifestyle medicine help someone who's so advanced in cancer?

There was a lot in that question. So the very end, someone who's so advanced in cancer, I don't know the answer to that. Cancer is not my area of specialty. I still want to believe that there will be some benefit. I just don't know. I would also guess that if we went and looked at the list of Lifestyle medicine provider in the world, because it's both in the US and worldwide, that we would find people that specialize in cancer, and they would probably have a whole lot more to say about this than me.

Mm-hmm.

However, it's not that hard to scan the internet and find stories of people who beat cancer without chemo, without radiation, without meds. So those people are out there. And we do have the research that supports that 40% of cancers we can deal with through lifestyle medicine. And I myself, I had thyroid cancer, and I am 100% convinced, 100% convinced that it was stress-related cancer. And I've been fine ever since. So stress is a big deal.

And did you deal with that through reducing your stress and different choices?

Well, that was before I knew much. It's a very long time, and I'll be very honest, I freaked out with the diagnosis. And, you know, my mental fitness was in a really bad place as well. So I was like, nope, take it out. So I actually— I had it removed, um, but I didn't have to have chemo or radiation or anything. I just had my thyroid removed. So I, I would have done it differently. Why? Because now I have more knowledge. I didn't have the knowledge then.

See, that is exactly the point, and that's why I wanted you to come back on the show. Because like you, I've only got— well, I have only half a thyroid. I had half removed. And if I knew what I know now, would that happen? No, it wouldn't have happened. And that's what I'm hoping through your knowledge and etc., that people got light bulb. Hang on a sec. Do I really need to have this organ removed? What about if I made these lifestyle changes? What about if I understood more about what I have? What about if I consult somebody like Jen or I contact Jen, you know, and find out what else I can do before I do anything radical? Because once it's out, it's not going to come back in. You know, you're not going to be putting it back in.

The same is true with people that have surgery for pain. Pain is not in the tissues. And that's my first question with people having surgery. Are you having surgery for pain? If the answer is yes, we have to get more curious because pain doesn't actually come from the tissues. If you're having surgery because you can't lift your leg to walk up a stair, That's a very structural, functional thing, then surgery is very much more likely to help you. And so this is again where knowledge becomes very powerful. A lot of surgeries are not needed.

I love it. And that is so true. Knowledge is power, and also taking action is power. So what's one action you'd recommend my listeners start doing today Let's say for prevention or within, you know, to help if they are struggling with something?

I would, um, I can send you an image of our gears because it's such a cool thing. I don't know if you can pop it in anywhere, and I would encourage them to look at these gears and see, hmm, that might be something that I could work on. Am I willing? Yes or no? If it's yes, cool. There you go. And if they're no, head to another gear and get curious. This would benefit me. And then maybe you choose that gear because getting movement in any of the gears, that's how gears work. It starts to make movement in the ones around it.

That's fantastic.

It's not a super specific tip. However, it's still going to be catered to each of your individual listeners.

Absolutely. I think that's fantastic advice. And just a reminder for our listeners that all of your suggestions, they don't have to be difficult and don't have to be huge. You don't have to start by, you know, exercising every single day and removing everything from your diet and, you know, trying to force yourself to get those 8 hours of sleep. It's— wouldn't you agree it's incremental? Like, just start by removing packaged food from your diet, you know, all the packaged biscuits or whatever.

I had a client many years ago, but I will never forget her. And we were talking about integrating exercise, and she's like, Jen, I am not doing 30 minutes. I said, okay, 20? Nope. 15? Nope. 5? No. One. Will you do 1 minute of exercise? She's like, oh yeah, of course. And that is where she started. And so then from there, I came up with One Minute Me. What is one thing that you are willing to do for yourself today?

I love that. I love that. What a great ending. Yeah, what is that one thing, that one shift? Because unless you shift, nothing changes. So It's that one shift. I love it. Thank you, Jen, for coming on and sharing your knowledge about lifestyle medicine. And for all our listeners and watchers, if you do have a condition or metabolic syndrome, or you're in pain, or you'd just like to prevent having something, all of Jen's details will be in the show notes. Please reach out to her. She's a wealth of knowledge, and she's got so many programs that can help. Thank you for coming on.

Thank you so much. It was fun again.

I would love to know what was the biggest insight or aha moment you got from this interview, so you can now speak up, take action, and make informed decisions for your health. And if you like this episode. Get instant access to your free ebook, Alternative Wisdom: Taking Back Control of Your Health, at life-onus.com.