The Science of Mindset with Dr. Josh Axe

Today on Midlife Conversations, I've got one of my favorite guests, Dr. Josh Axe. And I wanted to have him on today because there's so many different things and topics that he could go into. You know, just before we even hit record, he said, oh, you know, there's so much we could talk about, but there's a specific thing I wanted to talk to you about today. And this goes around the theme of your new book. He's got a new book out, and it's. What I love about this is it really ties into what I teach around mindset. And before you hit pause or skip or say, I don't want to hear it. Because. Because heard mindset before. This is important because this is the missing link from people that are not successful in an area of their life and them being successful in the area of their life. I always say, what's in the gap between what you want and where you are now? People always think it's the actions, but I really believe it's the belief set and the things that we're telling ourselves, that mindset. So your book really nails it for this. So thank you so much for being here.

Yeah. Natalie. Hey. Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor. I know we hadn't caught up and caught up in a long time, but it's. It's good to see you.

So tell me where this came from, because I know. You know, it's funny, because anyone successful that we know, if you really unwind, like, what made them successful, you'll. I call it decide, vision, action. That's, like, sort of my formula. I can pretty much rewind to. They made a decision. They got really clear on their vision. They. Which is really the mindset piece, and then they took actions on top of that. So I'm curious on your path, your discovery, why this became important to you and why you wanted to write about it.

Well, let me mention two things. One, this has always been very important to me. I think that what I. I noticed even early on in practice that the. My patients healed the best when they had the right mindset, when. When they had a purpose, when they had the right beliefs, all of those things. And. And I know when I helped my mom overcome cancer, naturally, I mean, this was a big. It was. It was the hardest thing for her. It wasn't changing her diet. It wasn't, you know, doing a juice cleanse. It was. It was none of that or even going out and exercising. The biggest thing for her was overcoming fear and worry in her life. And Changing the way she thought about herself, about God, about the world. And these were all things that were really impactful. And then right before I decided to write the book, I. You and I haven't talked about this or caught ups in this then, but I. I almost died, literally. Like, I had a. I went in, I'd injured my back lifting weights and was doing all the right things and had gotten quite a bit better, but not all the way better. And then I went and got something called stem cell. Really helped. And then I just had a little bit of a nagging issue and I thought, okay, I'm going to go back in and get it one more time and I should get back to 100%. Well, something happened when I got it done this next time. And so what stem cell is, is where they take your bone marrow and sometimes some of your blood and they concentrate the growth factors, but also your stem cells and inject that in the area and it helps it heal. And it's tremendous. It's very, very helpful. But when I got it done, something went wrong. And I kept feeling worse and worse and worse over the course of the three months afterwards. Finally, one day I woke up and the pain was so bad I couldn't walk. Had to have an ambulance come and pick me up. This is a year and a half ago. About a year and a half ago. And had to come pick me up and went in, got an mri and the report comes back that I have an infection in my. In my disc, in my bone and around my spinal cord.

This came from the bad. The stem cell. That it.

Yeah, going well.

Okay.

And then I had to be. I was Chelsea, and I had moved from Nashville, Tennessee. We were living part time in Puerto Rico, and I had to take a medical flight on a private flight to Florida to then meet with an infectious disease specialist. Again, I'm on. I'm, you know, brought it being brought in and out on a, you know, table, a gurney because I can't put any weight on my back. And he sits down with me and he says, josh, he said, I want to share with you your prognosis and your. The scenarios. He said, best case scenario, you're going to have chronic pain the rest of your life and you're going to be the first person to know when bad weather comes through because of the pain. And he said, the worst case scenario is you could die. And he said, and you might be permanently disabled from this. And, you know, I don't. I had several. Just a couple days of. Just a very hard Time of thinking, like, okay, I went from months before. Even though I had a little pain in my back, it wasn't that bad. I, like, I was squatting, definitely lifting, swimming, running, cycling, doing all of it.

You're thinking you're gonna biohack. You have a. You have a shortcut. This is gonna help me.

Yes.

Give me the edge.

Yes, exactly. And then, and then, and then to get this, this prognosis. Now, I decided after, for, you know, 24, 48 hours of just feeling absolutely hopeless. There were emotions I never experienced before. Hopelessness, despair. I just felt so bad and just was.

I was also speaking something over you, which I. I always cringe when I hear this because someone speaks something over you, especially somebody in an authority position that we're paying, that we're going to. That we start thinking that's our reality.

Yeah. And. And I'm a researcher. So then I'm like, well, you know what? I'm going to go and do the research on this. You know, osteomyelitis is the condition. And then an infection that's, you know, an abscess that was in the spinal canal. And. And I said, I'm going to go and do research on what, what, you know, what typically happens with this. And it wasn't better. Like, he wasn't like, it wasn't like, oh, well, this is, you know, you're going to get back to 100%. It was like, no, this can kill you and this can, you know, leave you permanently disabled. And I thought.

He said, yeah, yeah.

And then. And then I thought, you know what? And everybody's got a different belief about this. But I thought, I have a big God. And I also know that I'm not going to do what everyone else did. I'm going to do more to take care of myself as well. So I decided I. I'm not going to just sit here and be. Feel like I'm a victim. I'm going to go and say, I'm going to do everything I can now to heal. And I'm going to be very prayerful and believe that God is going to work things out for my good and heal me. And so I started doing all the things. Now, I did have to get on IV antibiotics, which I didn't. Which most of the time they put people on them for three months antibiotics. I was able, after reading a research study, to just do them for four weeks.

Wow.

And I did that. The way I was able to do that is I did other IVs, like silver IVs I got in a hyperbaric chamber for two hours a day, a hard chamber. I did everything right. Okay. And now here's the point. By the time I actually was able to get some of the treatment done, I, it was, I hadn't walked for a couple months. It took me 10 months before I could walk fully.

Whoa. I didn't, somehow I didn't know any of this about you, that this was happening.

Yeah, yeah. And then, so this time last year, in fact, it'll be tomorrow. I remember the date. It was April 26th. So around this time we're filming this. That was the first day I was able to get up on a walker.

Wow.

It was only for a few minutes, and it was almost a full year before I could walk without a walk, like on my own. And, and, and so, and I wrote this entire book that we're talking, like in bed.

Wow.

This was, but this was so important for mindset, you know, I, I, I, you know, I had told patients, hey, you've got to be positive, right? You've gotta, you know, you, you, you, you have to have the placebo effect working for you, not against you. Because here's an example of this, like, placebo effect. During World War I, there was a physician who ran out of morphine, and these soldiers were losing limbs, I mean, I mean, unbearable pain, but they ran out of morphine. And he thought, well, I've got to give them something. So he literally just gave them sugar pills.

Okay.

And what blew his mind was around 30 to 40% of the soldiers had the exact same level of pain reduction as the soldier's taking actual morphine. And if everyone, anyone doesn't know, morphine is an incredibly strong drug and painkiller. So the fact that somebody's own beliefs could create that level of pain relief is amazing. And that's actually what birthed a lot of our double blind placebo studies today done in, in, you know, that are produced in a lot of medical journals. And, and, but now here's the other thing. So the placebo effect is powerful. If you believe you're going to heal, your brain will start using something called neuroplasticity, but it will do that with creating new neural pathways, sending growth factors, stem cells, things in order to repair itself. So if you believe I'm going to heal this hypothyroidism, it likely will. If you believe, oh, I have this back pain, it will likely heal better if you believe it will. Now, the opposite is true as well. It's called the nocebo effect. And here's a, here's an actual clinical study that was done, a case study. There was a man who was diagnosed with liver cancer and he was told he had three months to live. And the man died about three months later. When they did the autopsy, they went in and realized he did not have liver cancer. They misdiagnosed him.

Whoa.

He had simply a little benign tumor on the side of his liver. Could have lived another 30, 40 years. Wow. So, yeah. And, and so our mindset regarding our health, regarding almost everything in life, it is so, so powerful. Now you asked me about what kicked it off for me, you know, the, the importance of mindset. It's so recent because that was such a big part of my life, not walking for a year. And so I, I've been, you know, now able to walk again for about 10 months. And by the way, I'm back about 80%. I should be 100% by the end of this year. I'm weightlifting again. I'm throwing my 2 year old daughter in the air. Like I'm doing, I am doing better than, better than the doctor said I could possibly be. My best. I don't have chronic pain every day at all. I don't have any pain. And so all that being said, I'm, I'm a lot better. But this was something definitely very recent that had a, you know, a big impact.

So a few things that just came up for me. Number one, I believe that we are given problems, setbacks, issues, so we can become teachers of them. Because like you said, you would tell patients, you would tell people, you got to think positive, you got to do this. And you almost needed an experience to remind you how powerful this is. And to. What you've just done and explained is something that I don't see others doing. You really just explained the science of mindset. You did the science of it because people put it into the woo category, like, oh, just, you know, I'll just think or I'll just become, or I'll manifest or whatever. You just gave the science example because really the placebo studies and what you just shared about the morphine example is that there is a real science behind it. Now I also believe, because you, you do things in that biohacking space like you were doing the stem cell stuff. I think a lot of things we hear about, like when you hear about structuring your water or, you know, just different, these little things that sound out there, really, it's what you're saying, it's. You're putting a belief Set and intention into something and then it becomes a reality.

Yeah. You know, and I think that when we're talking about structured water as an example, you know, most of these things, they're very minuscule and they add up over time and they could add toward the positive or the negative. Again, I, I don't know anybody who drank started drinking structured water and all of a sudden they cured something radically. Like, oh, this completely went away. I also don't know anybody that had genetically modified corn one time and their entire health fell apart.

Exactly.

But it adds up. If you have genetically modified or non organic meat every day for the course of 20 years, we know those omega 6 fats, the chemicals in there, everything else, it's likely going to cause heart disease, Right?

Sure.

Same thing. You drink structured water, you attend workout classes, you juice, vegetable, whatever it is, take a probiotic. It may not make a difference in one day, but again, these things are cumulative, as you're saying. For sure.

So. But I also think about, like you gave the example of your mom and the cancer and I think you, like there's, you'll see so much a divide on somebody diagnosed with cancer and someone goes complete conventional treatment or someone goes complete holistic treatment and both sides can have a really positive outcome or a really negative outcome. And I, I think, and I'm wondering if you. That has so much to do with what you believe is happening. Like if you're taking the chemo thinking this is poisoning me versus you're taking it thinking it's healing me, or you're doing the natural saying this is healing me versus oh, the natural doesn't work. I think there's something to that.

Absolutely. I mean, yeah. I'll say this. If somebody is going through chemotherapy, which I think we should do a lot less of today, and there are better ways, but if somebody's doing it, I would rather them believe, even if it's not true, that it's healing them, then it's destroying every cell and in tissue in their body. I mean, and the same, and the same goes on the other side. You know, if somebody's doing a natural approach, they need to believe and know this is helping me heal. This is this, this is for the good long term. So, yeah, I mean, these are. And it's not everything. You know, I think that when I think about cancer, for instance, and healing from cancer, there's really a combination of your beliefs and your mindset about it along with the actual treatment being effective. Right. I mean, I mean, even going back to that morphine study. Let's say 33% of those soldiers got pain relief. Well, there's another 67% that didn't. Now is it their beliefs weren't as strong? That might be part of it. It also might be maybe their injury was more severe in a way or for some reason the belief didn't have as much of an impact on that type of injury. I don't, we don't know. But I, when I, when I help somebody heal, I'm very much. We need to do everything we can, both physically and mentally, in order to get you the best results possible. So I'm, I'm not saying belief should replace sure you eating health or anything like that, but when they're combined, that's, that's when you get the best results.

Well, I'm gonna go as far as saying you have to combine it with that because, like, I'll tell you, specializing especially in fat loss with women, the. If you ask anyone that's had a transformation doing my fat loss plans, they will. And you say what happened? They're not going to just say it was the food Natalie gave me to eat or the workouts. They're going to say, I decided and I got very clear on what I wanted for myself. Because that's what we work on most. Because I believe, and I've seen it happen over and over again, people that have results believed that they would. They did. That's why I feel that someone that was super fit, let's say in their 20s, and they've lost their way in their 50s, they're going to have a easier time getting back because they once were. So, so they know that they can be where somebody that was never fit or never healthy, they have a bigger struggle because they can't even imagine it because they never were.

That's so true.

That's so true. You know, you think about patients, you're treating a patient, they walk in and they say, nothing works for me. Nothing's going to work for me. Like, prove what you've got. Like, that's that attitude right there. You already know you can't help them.

Well, there's a couple things this makes me think of in the book. Okay? And, and I get into. And by the way, you know, I, I am really proud of this book. It's the best book I've ever written. And these principles saved and changed my life. Like the 12 principles in here. And I think they're so impactful for people.

It's called think this, not that. By the way, everyone think this, not that.

And a couple things with what you just said. And a lot of it has to do with identity. Most of us have a hard time becoming the best version of ourself in the future because we can't imagine ourself being that person most of the time. We think about our most of it's subconscious, but like we were when we were a child or. And we tend to even tie our identity to a mistake we made in the past or what somebody said about us a long time ago versus what somebody says, you can become this in the future. And so it's a really important distinction. I want to share a personal example of this too. And this is tied into limiting beliefs. When I was in high school, freshman English class, well, first of all, I was not a very good student, and that's why this happened. But the teacher said, josh, can you stay after class? And I said, okay. I stayed after class. And her name was Mrs. Noble. And she says, josh, what do you want to do after high school? And I said, well, actually, I want to be a doctor. And I said that because the year before, my mom went through conventional chemotherapy and I just saw my mom suffering. And so as a kid, I thought, I want to be a doctor. I want to help people like my mom. And she laughed out loud at me when I told her I wanted to be a doctor. She said, josh, listen. My own daughter had a 3.8 GPA and barely got into med school. She said, you have a D minus in my class. I wanted you to stay after because you got an F on this paper and you'll be lucky to graduate high school. She said, you need to try harder. And I walked out of there. And the thing I took away, Natalie, was, oh, I can't be a doctor now. Then two weeks later, my mom brings me to see a physician who talks about me like I'm not in the room. I remember still some of the conversation, the things he said. And here's what he told my mom. He said, you, son has severe adhd. This learning disorder is going to keep him from performing well in school, and he's always going to have trouble learning. And he wrote a prescription for a drug called Ritalin. And then I walked out of there thinking, gosh, not only can I not be a doctor, I'm not smart. And not only am I not smart, I'm like, medically not smart. I have a learning disorder. There's like something wrong with that.

I was told the same thing. A learning disability versus a gift.

Yeah, yeah. And so Then I went through high school and I just barely. I just kind of stopped trying. And I ended up graduating high school, barely, with a C minus gpa. The only reason I graduated is I knew my dad would be irate if I did not graduate high school. And. And then. But then I did say, I want to go to college. I want to do something with my life. Didn't want to be a doctor anymore. Just threw that out the window. But I'm like, I want to do something. Applied to all these colleges, got denied by almost all of them. However, I got a letter from one school I really wanted to go to, and they said, they sent me a letter. Now, here's essentially what it said. It said, you're not in, but if you come and take summer school class, an average above a 3.0 will then let you in. And so I said, okay. So I went to this school. I took summer school class. The first class I had to take was English 101. And my first big assignment was a paper. But I really tried. I turned the paper in, and then I had the teacher, her name was Ms. Williams. She asked me to stay after her class. And Natalie, I was like, my stomach dropped. I thought, oh, no, not this again. And she asked me. It was like deja vu. This is kind of crazy when you hear this. And she goes, josh, what's your major? And I said, I don't have a major. And she said, well, I want you to know I think you should consider being an English major, journalism major. And she said, because I think you're a really gifted writer. You got the highest grade in the class on this paper, and I think you're really talented at writing and great job. And I walked out of there, and for me, it was like a. I'd call it like a mindset transplant. It's like I had a diseased organ, a diseased belief, and it got replaced with something completely new. And it changed my life. After that year, I decided not only was I a great writer, I decided I could be a doctor, change my major to pre med, eventually became a doctor. I went to Johns Hopkins university, had a 3.9 GPA there, started a nutrition company called Ancient Nutrition. The reason I share all those is not to boast about anything. It's just to say if I would have held on to that one single limiting belief, the false belief about myself, none of that would have happened.

I think every ADHD person that I know that's an entrepreneur said has a similar story where we were told learning disability had One trajectory and then someone else told us, gave us a hope or we saw a possibility somewhere, change the mindset. And then most so many entrepreneurs that we know are adhd. Like Almost all. Almost everyone that I know that's an entrepreneur is ADHD and has a similar story. Which really, that's why I cringe when someone says, my child has a learning disability. I'm putting them like they're, they're not seeing the opportunity in that where that should have been. You're gifted and talented with this. That would be a whole different experience if we were told that. I also, you know, I'm so. I'm a celiac. I've been a celiac for, you know, almost three decades, which is like literally no big deal to me. Of all. Any disease to have. I love that one. It's great. It just makes me eat unprocessed food. It's, it's perfect. It's easy. But I can't tell you, at least every week, at least every week someone messages my website, oh my gosh. I was diagnosed with celiac. My life is over. What can I. Like, they literally have this whole doomsday response. And I'm thinking, how are you even looking at it that way? And then I realized, okay, well, that's how we've been trained. Like, everything is a negative or a doomsday or this is that like this to me is a plus, a benefit. You get to eat healthier. You, it's easy. You don't need drugs for this. You can, you can heal yourself. It's so easy. So it's just so interesting, the perspective switch and how we are not just doing it to ourselves. We're speaking it over other people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so true. It's kind of crazy to think about. I had all of these teachers, and I don't think I had one, one teacher ever say anything positive to me in high school. Now it's very different. I want to say this, and again, I don't know how much of your community is religious or non religious, but I went to a Christian school through 8th grade and they were very positive. Now, by the way, I'm not saying every Christian school is great and every public's bad. I'm not saying that at all. So don't comment that. I'm not saying that there's some great teachers in public bad and Christian or, or, or religious or whatever, but my experience as Christian was very encouraging and very uplifting. It wasn't until I got to high school in the Public, where I just had some teachers that were just raw and mean.

Yeah.

Really hurt my self esteem.

Yeah, I had that, a similar experience with public schools, you know. But I also think that because this is, and people are going to come at me for this, I'm going to say it anyway. When they say that we have ADD and we need medicine, I'm like, you just are boring. That's what I think. I'm like, no, the teachers are just boring. We don't have to conform to that.

Yeah. Yes, that's very true. Here's my other belief now this is a totally side topic. My thoughts around ADHD is much less. It's a disorder, it's much more. It's a type of learner, it's a personality. I mean, you know, when I, when I started studying subjects I liked, I didn't pay attention. Just boom. I mean I could.

Or a teacher. That's interesting. If we love, if a teacher's interesting.

You get an A. I was more focused than anybody. For instance, when I, when I started studying medicine, like nutrition, I was locked in. I was so locked in and I today I could read a book for eight hours and not even look up. Just be boom, right in. Here's the other thing. A lot of these kids with adhd, they're absolutely into their video games or shows or if they're playing sport. A lot of people with ADHD play sports and they can get in the zone. So really what the diagnosis is, I don't want to say it's not a made up disease, but it's just, it's a different personality trait.

It shouldn't be called disorder. That's the thing. So to me it's a hyper focus and unfocused. It's a hyper focus. Like we have adhd, has an ability to hyper focus on things like other people sometimes cannot. Like we really can get in the zone, hyper focus. But then if it's not interesting to us, it's almost impossible. So what happens is if you do take the stimulants, you take Ritalin, you take Adderall, you take whatever it is, you then can focus on anything. And I'll tell you, the one year I took, the one year I took prescriptions for this, I would get, I could finish spreadsheets, I could hyperfocus, I could organize my Dropbox. But in the end of the year it's like, well what? Why is that important? Why was that important? Is that my creativity? Instead I'm focusing on things that I didn't need. To be focusing on. So my opinion on it, I know everyone's different. There's different types of add and everyone chooses their own path there. But I do encourage people that are thinking that's the only way to medicate, suppress whatever, that there is another way, and it comes down to the belief around it. Like you're saying, yeah, yeah, you know.

What I found for myself, I took, I took. And then I got prescribed Adorin Adderall right before I went to college, and I took it. I didn't take it during this English class. This was. I actually ended up taking a little later on just to see what happened. I took it for a week and I felt like it just changed my personality.

Yeah, totally changed mine.

Yeah. And that's, that's why I ultimately, for myself, decided I'm not going to continue on with this. But, but, but now today, the reality is there are so many good replacements for this. Like, you know, if I really wanted to focus and get as close to that as possible, I would do lion's mane mushroom combined with ginkgo biloba combined with probably something like a rhodiola, you know, or cordyceps. Probably do a blend of those nootropics together and I'd be able to really be locked in. Not quite. It wouldn't be. It wouldn't be like Ritalin or Adderall, but it'd be without the side effects. And still I'd be able to have a good deal of focus. And so there, there are always things in nature that if we optimize those, can get us to a really great place without all of these side effects.

I think your next book needs to be about adhd. You got a lot to say.

Yeah, you know, I have a. My show is the Dr. Josh Yak show and I cover. I did a pretty in depth1 on ADHD and it's very popular. I mean, there's a lot of people with, with ADD and adhd, so. So that's, you know. Yeah, that was a good, that was a good episode. But I would say my hormone episodes are probably even more popular because there's so many women with hypothyroid and some of those issues. But it's definitely.

Let me ask you about, let me ask you about that because you just said this because I think this is a mindset thing too. What's the fascination with us all having labels? Like, we all want to, like, quickly get to. It's the hormones, it's adhd, it's this, it's that. What does that do for you? Does that give us like a, is it a certainty thing? Is it a. What is that? That we're all fascinated. Because I do that too. Like, if you want to know their personality type or they want to know the diagnosis or the label.

Well, one thing that's interesting. So some. I'm getting introduced to your audience here. So my biggest area of study was traditional Chinese medicine. Okay. Now I spent some time studying Ayurveda, Greek medicine, biblical medicine, a lot of different forms of these ancient medicine. And what I really, my specialty was combining Eastern medicine, these ancient forms of Eastern medicine, with more of the western scientific studies and how I treated patients. But when you go and look at Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, they never diagnosed anyone with a condition.

Wow.

They only said, you have a pattern going on that we need to fix. So for instance, with somebody with hypothyroid, what they would say instead is the diagnosis. There would be, you have a chi, a kidney QI deficiency, which is adrenal. Really? So your adrenals are deficient and, and you're deficient in yang. So your body's not anabolic enough.

Wow.

It's not repairing at a high enough rate.

Doesn't homeopathic do the same thing? They kind of, they find it's. That it's not, not a diagnosis, I believe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, if somebody is doing anything eastern in forms of their medicine. Now, homeopathic can be Eastern or western, but, yeah, oftentimes they'll just diagnose you with a pattern and not with a, a condition. And, and so a lot of people take on their condition and it becomes a really big part of their identity. And one of the things, and by the way, we're all wired this way. So this isn't a knock on anybody. Some more than others. We all want to be recognized for something. Okay. And it's really important in kids. Like, like right now, our daughter, my 4 year old, we're training her up that, okay, you've got a, you know, whenever she gets hurt now, it's like, oh, like she wants to point out how hurt she is constantly. She needs a band aid. I mean, for one day we had like, you know, she wanted to have like 30 band aids on her body. And we're like, that's not something we praise. We recognize our one. We know you've got a boo boo. We know you have an owie, and we recognize that hurts. Hey, you know, let's pray for it. Let's kiss it. What you Know, whatever. Listen, this is what we did. My, like, hey, we recognize you have it, but we're not going to go on and on about it, okay? We did everything we can. Now let's focus on something else, okay? But we recognize, so. But adults are the same way. If we have, like, people want to be recognized for something, we try and train our daughter. We're going to recognize when you do something that shows great character, you work hard, you're a good helper, you were kind to your sister. Yay. Our, you know, we praise and recognize those things. We all want praise and recognition. Now, sometimes people color their hair a different color in order for praise and recognition. Sometimes people act out. There's all kinds of things people do. Sometimes people start getting a lot of attention or certain attention because their condition. Oh, I'm so sorry. You have celiac, Natalie. I'm so sorry. And. And most of this is not conscious with people, but then they start drumming in their head. I'm a celiac. Oh, I'm a silly. Oh, I'm. And. And they start creating it to where sometimes it actually grows into a bigger problem than is anything you feed with mental energy. It will continue to grow and grow and grow and typically even get worse. And so you don't focus on that. Like, if you think about the Bible in terms of something that teaches you how to grow and improve in something in life, it doesn't say, focus all your energy on your disease or do this and this. I know it says, fix your eyes on Christ. Have faith, have belief. You're going to heal, you're going to heal. It doesn't say. And so my point there is that in today's Western society, we're all about labels, labeling people as things. And the biggest label is. One of the biggest labels is my condition. I'm a victim of something. We're living in a world in a generation where there. There are a lot of a victim mentality. And it's very different than the prior generations. Gen X is on the cusp of this. It's sort of like a balance. Probably some, maybe even a healthy balance, more healthy than maybe both generations. But the baby boomers and the greatest generation, they were the generation of, hey, you have a problem, rub some dirt on it. Yeah, fibromyalgia. That's not a thing. Forget about it, you know?

Yeah, it's true. Yeah, they didn't have any of this. I mean, my gosh, we. Well, Gen X too. I mean, we. We drank water out of hoses, we played on gravel Playgrounds, yes, we did.

All the things and I'm on that borderline. I'm very much a Gen Xer the way I think what I am. And I was born in 81, but I, you know, you know, growing up in the Midwest where I was, it was all, it was all the, you know, Gen X experience. But I, so, so anyways, going back to this, it's, it's, yeah, it's definitely a problem today where if people, if people start to have an identity around their condition, it's not healthy, it's not helping you. And so I had, I had two.

Years where I kept getting injured. I had like, I mean, it was just, it was kind of, it was funny to me now, looking back, but it wasn't funny at the time. I mean, I had like ruptured a disc and then I, I tore my bicep and I had like injury. And I, and I kept joking and saying, oh, I'm injury Barbie. I'm injury Barbie. And then I finally realized what I was doing. I'm like, no, I'm not injury Barbie. I'm healed Barbie. I'm not. I need to stop saying that because I feel like I was almost creating this thing and I kept getting injured. So I have not been injured. I'm not going to be injured anymore. And I believe that there's something, something to that. What do you want people to know that are struggling right now with something in their health or their life that are, they, they, they kind of poo, poo. The idea of mindset, they, they're like, why? I'm thinking positive, but I, but this, but that. What do you want them to know?

Well, I, I, I, I, I, I would say first off, there's a lot of things to know, but I would say the first thing and the most important thing is it doesn't, I mean, if you believe you're not going to heal, if you will, if you think that's going to get you to the best result or you think this condition is destroying every part of your life, if you believe that it's not going to lead the best result, what I would say is let's remove all emotion, let's remove everything from the equation and just say, what do you want? Do you want to live your best life possible? Do you want to get the best result possible? Do you want to be as healthy as possible? Do you want to heal this condition? Okay. And I did this for myself. For instance, I had a spinal infection and I said, okay, my, I want to be a year from now to have the best possible results to where I'm back to where I was or even better, and I'm cycling and I'm swimming and I'm running and I'm throwing my 2 year old daughter in there in the pool. That's all I cared about. I want that scientifically, it is proven. If I believe that I'm going, that's going to happen, I'm going to reach my best, it will likely happen. Scientifically it's proven. If I don't believe it will happen, it likely won't happen. So do what will serve you. Do, you know, do what's going to give you your best chance. I mean, that's the thing. And by the way, there's another study that shows you can amplify the placebo effect. Here's how. In this study they said you're being able to visualize and know with certainty what it is you actually want that's important. Okay. Okay. I want my thyroid tumor to shrink. I want my autoimmune disease gone so you can see yourself clearly in the future without autoimmune disease running around. So, so your body needs a clear mental picture. That's the first thing that the study found. The other thing was if you can tie more emotion to it, that's positive, that amplifies the healing. So for instance, if I picture myself throwing my 2 year old daughter in the pool and I see myself with joy, with happiness and I kind of get myself in that state. Our body works through hormones, our body works through sending these chemical messengers. So that actually helps the healing process. Your body now has a clear picture and now you're excited and motivated in order to make that a reality. And the third thing was you have a plan. It's important that your nervous system believes it's true, that you subconsciously believe you actually can get to that point. Because we've all met people like this, it's, I think most people would call it toxic positivity. I'm perfect, I'm wonderful, I've got no problems. And I just believe I'm going to be healed and I'm going to heal now that's better than just being a negative person. But sometimes your subconscious doesn't believe you. If you can take time and map out, okay, I'm going to heal. Hypothyroidism, here's how I'm going to take these methylated B vitamins and Ashwagandha. I'm going to change my diet to include these foods. I'm going to start taking more time off and reducing the stress. I'm going to follow this plan perfectly for 12 months. If you can do those three things together, the clear picture in the future, knowing exactly what you want, the visualization, the amplification with the emotions, and the plan to where your, your brain now believes. Okay, well, now you got a plan. Now I believe you. You'll amplify those results. And so I think that's what I want people to know is, is that okay? Like, you know, and I would also correlate this with other things in life. If you want to be live your best life possible, the goal shouldn't be to adopt the most popular, popular narrative or follow what the majority does. Here's a simple one for investing. If you invest like everyone else invests and uses their money, you're gonna have a lot of credit card debt.

That's right.

You're not gonna have money for retirement. So what should you do? What do the top 1% do? What, what is study? What Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio and Cathie Wood and a few others that are really financially well off. What do all of them do with their money and how do they think about money then just do the masses.

Yeah, totally different and same thing with, with health and wellness and all of that. You have me really thinking now too though, because I believe so heavily on this whole mindset angle. But it makes me wonder some of like the. Because I'm, I'm guilty of it. I do all the crazy biohacking stuff. I love it. Like, I enjoy it. I have the oxygen chamber in my house. I do red light. I do, I do all the stuff. But is it the stuff that's working? Is it our. Or is it our belief that the stuff is working?

It's a little bit of both. Almost guaranteed. It's a little bit of both. I want to say something here too, that, and I, I want to share this because I think it's an important for, for life what most people do today. And I'll bring up something that I know everybody's sensitive to, but I'm going to bring it up anyways. You know, this brings up a bigger subject of if you want to be successful in life, listen to the top 1% or the, the, the, the top 1% of the 1% in the area you want to be successful. Okay. If you want to be a moral person. And right now there's a war going on between Ukraine and Russia and Israel and Hamas, Palestine slash Iran. What should you believe? Well, first Off. Don't listen to the social media. I'm not saying don't listen to any social media influencers, but if you really want to get to the best answer, the best answer is, what would the most virtuous people ever say about the situation? Both dead and that are alive today? If I'm trying to discern the truth, I'm not listening to, oh, well, some of. Even Joe Rogan or even Tucker Carlson or Donald Trump or Joe Biden. I don't really care what any of them say.

Yeah.

Who is somebody who's incredibly more. I don't know if you've seen reason. There's this amazing Christian. He's an Orthodox. I think he's more of the Orthodox. And I think his name is Mari. Mari. And he was just stabbed while he was at church. And then he's forgiving the person and moving on. I mean, you know, and you have Andrew Tate just spouting all of this like, hey, we should go in, like, pretty much, you know, just. Just ridiculousness. It's like, is he a moral person? Is that the person you're going to listen to in terms of morality versus what would Mother Teresa have said?

Good question. I love.

What did Jesus say? What did Mari. Mari, this person, this amazing saint that's living today, what did he say about it? And the same goes for our health. You know, the top 1% of healthy that are actually healthy who have seen results in their health, that's who should be listening to about your health.

Yeah. That drove me. That drives me crazy. When you see somebody not walking the walk, giving their opinions, and the people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's in that it happens in health all the time, unfortunately, helps.

I. On social media, it's just like, it's a. It's a cesspool of just, you know, of, of toxic opinions.

Yeah.

You know, and all of us. I think social media can be a great tool, but I think people need to be more conscious about who they listen to.

Totally.

And, and, and, and, well, this is, this is. This would be a bigger topic. But I am so conscious of who I let speak into my life. I think back to. I let one teacher tell me I was not smart and a doctor in four years of high school. I was an underachiever. It is terrible. And then I let one teacher speak into my life. And then after that, I realized, wow, letting I need to be very conscious of who speaks in my life. And also, people speak in our life subconsciously, and those become our thoughts. And we think we Came up with them. No, it's because you followed this influencer on social media and you think that's your own thought. No, they enforce that upon that, you know, their thoughts upon you. There's a Carl Jung quote, he's one of the most famous psychologists of ever time and he said if you don't know who you are, or he says this, if the world asks you who you are and you don't know, the world will tell you.

Whoa, that's powerful.

Yeah. And so we need to determine our identity. And here's the way that I think about this too when it comes to identity, because we have an identity crisis today. Like over the past 10 years, mental health conditions have far outpaced cancer, heart disease, diabetes, almost every other major illness. And so we know today this is a major trend and major issue. And all of them are identity related issues. Almost every single one. I mean there are kids that are dressing up as cats at school and you know, there's a lot of other, I mean that's just one at one of many things. But you know, I am in order.

To call it a mental illness and now we're making it a normal.

Yeah. And we say, oh, that's just normal, that's okay. That's part of who you are. And in. For an identity to be good, it needs to have. Your identity needs to have a lot of meaning. Like you should believe your life is incredibly meaningful. And you also need to know that what you're doing is creating, making earth a heavenly place and loving others. And so you know, our identity. Most people think they come up with their own identity. They don't. Most people. The world tells you who you are and you believe them. Hey, you're oppressed. Oh, okay. The world says I'm oppressed. Okay, I'm oppressed. And so now I'm going to be part of this social justice thing because everybody told me I'm oppressed and I just believe them. Okay, you know, versus here. Here's how to build a strong. What did Martin Luther King Jr. Do? I'll get into that in a second. But it's. Your identity is tied to other people, your community, your roles and your responsibilities. And if you can tie a great amount of positive meaning to those, you'll be so full of happiness and fulfillment and joy in life you'll have. Mental health disorders would just absolutely disappear. Here's an example of this. Like most of us have multiple identities. So for instance, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm a son. Of God. I'm a business leader. I'm a doctor. Right. I have these multiple identities that I have. I want to use mine as a father as an example. Here's a very low level of meaning and a very weak identity as a father. I impregnate a woman. Now I'm a father. That makes me a father. I'm done. There's a lot of people that do that. When you look at certain communities, like the black community, for instance, I think it's like 25. Only 25 have two parents. You know, in. In generally, I want to say it's like 50. I mean, there's. It's mind blowing. If you look back in the 1950s versus today, how many people don't have fathers, both parents? It's. It's really, really high. And I bring all that up to say, why is that? Because a lot of fathers believe that I'm just a father. What it takes to be a father or. Or being a father really isn't very meaningful. So. So. So that's not a very meaningful thing for my life versus what's a step up from that? Okay. I'm a father, more of a traditional father. And I'm called to provide and protect for my family and show up. It's a huge step up. Yeah, right. I think about my own dad. My dad was a protector. He was a provider. He showed up. My dad never missed a single game. I mean, I played probably a thousand, soccer, basketball, whatever, game never missed. So. So that's a huge step up. If your dad that shows up in that way, or a mom or. And. But there's a step beyond that, and that is, as a dad, if I have the most meaning possible, I believe I'm a divine being, a child made in the image of God. So are my kids. I'm called to help my kids grow to be like Christ, to take their character the highest level possible, to be more generous, more loving, more wise, more courageous. And then I'm also called to find my kids unique gifts and skills, the talents God's given them could be writing, could be painting, could be serving others, whatever it is, and take that to the maximum. So if you help. If I help my kids growing maximum in their character and in their unique gifts and skills, and I help them grow as a divine being in relation to God. I'm maximizing, like, I believe that my role as a father has eternal significance. My point there is that today a lot of people are very unfulfilled with their life, so they're searching for meaning. That's what they're doing. They're searching to be seen. So I'm gonna color my hair, I'm gonna change my gender, I'm going to, you know, you know, just follow the popular opinion. Because if I follow the popular opinion, maybe I'll be popular.

And you fit in more. You feel like you're fit.

Yeah. And you just fit. Exactly. There you go. Now, rather than standing out and doing something unique and being the Martin Luther King Jr. Or Mother Teresa on the front line, changing old. Now you're just like everybody else and you're not courageous. You don't have any of those things. So, so if somebody wants to build a rock solid identity, first it needs to be tied to a strong and powerful person or community. That's why if your identity is in God, in a relationship to God, there's no stronger identity because he's the most powerful. He's unchanging all of those things. And so it creates stability and strength when you create that. And then when you're, when your identity is tied to another group of virtuous people that are out there changing the world as well, so you're part of a positive, good, moral community. And then the next thing is, what are my roles and responsibilities in that community? Well, for a family, it's a father and my responsibilities are creating world changing kids that are going to change the world for the good. Right. And if you can do that with all the areas of your life, it has a powerful effect. And so that's really the cure for a lot of people today who have these, you know, weak, unstable identities.

I love this. I love everything you just said. It's so good. I have a couple, a couple final questions because you got me thinking on that. How do you. Because clearly people that are just scrolling social media and taking in opinions all day long, you're getting further, further, further away from what you just said because you're not being intentional with it. So how do you personally navigate that? Do you even go on social media? Do you scroll? Do you, do you stay away from that? Are you intentional with who you let in there? Like how? Because I know this is a very important topic for people listening because a lot of them are doing that.

So here's what I do. I do it like I. So I think about social media as a tool for learning and growing. I don't really use it much for entertainment now I could a little bit, but, but, but I think about it as a, a way of getting closer to the people I admire. Most and learning from them. And so what I would do is I would say, well, where do I want to grow? And I'll just share for myself. I want to grow in health and, and I want to know the clinical studies, those sort of things that are being released. So I want to know that I want to grow in my marriage. I want to be a better husband and better dad. I want to grow spiritually closer to God and my relationship with God. I want to learn more about psychology. That's personally me. I continue to learn about psychology. So, so I have these, I write down, these are the areas in leadership is another one. So, so I write those down. Who are the top people or, or channels I can follow in all of those areas. Okay. And then I delete every other account.

Smart. So smart.

And then I limit myself. I'm on there probably. Realistically, last time I checked, I was on seven hours last week.

That's so good.

So I do about an hour a day and when I'm on it, I'm there consciously. Like I have folders and I'm saving things for upcoming podcast shows. I'm going to do things that are relevant, those sort of things. But that's, that's the way that.

As a fellow add, I want to ask how do you avoid the dopamine of wanting to scroll or to having that tendency to do that now for some reason?

It might just be I'm so busy with other things that I don't. I'm. I'm very aware of it to where I feel like now. Listen, I hate to say this, I don't want to say I'm an exception, but I don't. I just for me, it has not been a problem.

That's good.

That's great for my wife though. Okay. Chelsea would tell you it can be. So she has something on her phone where she gets locked out of her app. She downloaded a lap that locks her out of her app.

What is that app? I need it.

Let me ask her. But it's like she has like, I think a 90 minute thing or something to where if she's on more than that, boom, she just automatically gets locked up.

Yeah, we need, some of us need jail for us to help. To help put the stopper on. I like just this morning, again, I do it for like the hundredth time in my life. I deleted email off my phone because I have this rule that I just want to check email intentionally when I can from my computer, but every now and then it's like urgent. I put it back on my phone and the next thing you know, it sucks me down the rabbit hole. So. So I think some of us need those, those blocks to do to be int. Then I do have one more question about which is a little bit off topic, but I want to go back to something you said at the very beginning of this interview about the stem cell because I know this is going to come up as a question.

Yeah.

Where do you stand on that now? Would you recommend that? Are you scared of it now? Do you think it was a one off thing?

It was a one off thing. In fact, it was about 1 in 250,000 chance. I actually looked at the exact, you know, analytics on it. I, I've had stem cells since then.

You have. Okay.

And it helped me. It's part of what I think has.

Helped me heal, which is a rare thing that we. That you.

Yeah, it was honestly an almost one and it was a one and a quarter of a million chance of happening.

Okay.

Very rare. I also think the stem cell people I see now, it's called rehealth. It's Dr. Rafael Gonzalez. It's. I mean, I think they're the best in the world. They take umbilical cord cells and they test them. What they feed them is better than others. They, they actually have them on more of like a keto diet. It's kind of crazy what they're doing and they're very advanced and, and so the results I've seen working with them have been just absolutely awesome. So, so, yeah, so I. And you can feed your stem cells. You know, bone broth is probably one of the best things for stem cells. Turmeric green tea extract. Astragalus is phenomenal for stem cells. And so really it's eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and wild organic meat. You know, that's, that's really going to help, you know, increase him yourself. But yeah, I've had it since then.

Well, this was awesome today. I'm so glad that we did this. So his book is called Think this, Not that. Is there a special place you want them to go for the book?

I mean, you could go anywhere. I will say this, you can go to Amazon if you buy on Amazon and you get the code right afterwards. If you then go to my website, Josh axe.com I have a lot of free bonuses that go with it. I did a free video series that goes with it. You get a workbook for free. Actually a lot of bonus interviews with some guest experts like Dave Ramsey and John Deloney and others. And so we have those on there. So if you go to Josh Axe after you buy it, get the free bonuses. Amazon's great, but it's in bookstores nationwide. It hit the New York Times bestseller list a couple of weeks ago, which was exciting. And so we've been getting really great feedback on the book.

Yes, everyone to go get the book. Keep it. Because what I find with this type of discussion, even as a huge believer in mindset and focus and all that, I have to surround myself with it continually or we tend to forget. We tend to get sucked down into different things. So if that's you, please go get the book, because it just reminds me I want to. I want to read it again because it's like, I want it to stay fresh. I want this topic to be fresh. It's something I want to remind myself of every single day. Thank you so much for doing this today.

Yeah. Well, Natalie, thanks so much for having me. It was an honor. And so good catching up again.