Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey Human Podcast.
This.
Is episode 373, and I had a conversation with Dr.
David Wiss.
David founded Mind Wise Nutrition and Nutrition and Recovery,
which is a group practice of rdns specializing in the treatment of eating
and substance use disorders.
His work explores the link between childhood trauma and disordered eating,
among other things.
He developed a specialized nutrition curriculum that has been incorporated in
more than 50 addiction treatment centers in SoCal and Worldwide.
And his own story is one of achieving triumph over addiction and
those resulting consequences. Really fascinating guy. I myself,
have been to him for help with my belly problems as a celiac,
and he's really great, super smart, super interesting life story.
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And thank you for listening. Be well,
be kind and you know, let's, uh, be there for each other.
Lift each other up. Thank you for listening. And here we go.
Dr. David with welcome to Hey Human.
Hey human. I'm so happy to be here.
, happy to have you.
Here. Thank you.
Before we, uh, full disclosure for the audience,
I met you because I was seeking out a nutritionist and someone to help me with
my belly stuff as a celiac and as a person who, you know,
feels like they have less and less things that they can eat.
And I read about you online and I thought, okay, well, I'll try him.
I've tried everybody else. So that's how we met.
I love that.
I'm so fortunate to come across various walks of life and I've been so blessed
to have you in my journey and I'm grateful to be part of yours. Yeah.
I'm excited. So thank you for saying yes. When I asked you to be on the show.
I know that this probably causes a little bit of a,
I didn't know if it would be a conflict or what,
but I figured whatever I'm gonna ask anyway. So.
Let's roll with it. .
So explain all the things that you are.
Well, first of all, I am a human. I am, uh,
a father and a husband and a son and a brother. I get to,
uh, bask in the glory of my family that lives here in Los Angeles.
Everyone's nearby. So that's a big part of my life.
We're in West LA now in my office. Yeah, I am a practitioner.
I do functional medicine. I'm a registered dietician nutritionist.
I specialize in mental health,
so I get to work with people that have gut issues, uh,
disordered eating challenges.
I have a long history of working with people in recovery.
My group practice is called Nutrition and Recovery,
and I love nutrition, but I have a particular passion for recovery,
especially people on the substance use disorder, recovery path.
There's a lot of needs for attention to the gut and to the immune system.
And so I use nutrition and lifestyle medicine to help improve people's,
uh, connection with their body, connection to food and overall experience,
quality of life on this earth.
Yeah, I wanna get into all of that. I do find it interesting to think about,
which I think a lot of people maybe don't,
that people who do happen to have addictive personalities or
who are finding band-aids for bullet holes, let's just say Mm.
That there is a desire to disconnect from one's body mm-hmm. .
And then once you do that, how do you, how do you tether yourself back?
Or maybe the tether is not even there.
How do you find yourself to the tether to get back?
It's a journey. Yeah. And, and we know now a lot more about trauma and how,
you know,
dissociative states can create a separation feeling between the body
and the mind and how that can be adaptive in some ways can be supportive to some
people.
And then the recovery journey from some of that is about bringing the body and
the mind back together, feeling like you're in sync,
able to move through life with more grace. And that process can take a while,
nutrition's a part of it.
But we also think about contemplative practices like breathing and yoga,
sleep, um, we call it lifestyle medicine.
All the different things that we can use to bring someone back into homeostasis.
And everyone's different. So everyone needs different things.
Sometimes I found that the thing people are the most resistant to is
the thing. Sometimes people need the most.
The person who does not like yoga probably would benefit the most from yoga.
The person who has such an aversion to certain types of foods could probably
benefit from some of the nutrients that are in some of those foods, right?
Mm-hmm. .
So I always like to say the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you
seek.
Are you from California originally? Yes.
I grew up in Los Angeles. I went to public school.
Dun, dun dumb.
Yeah, I dunno.
the way you said that. I.
Mean, it was a, it was a tricky time in the ear. I'm, I'm born in 1981.
I think about 19 92, 93.
A lot of civil unrest in Los Angeles, in, in public school. You could feel it.
I could feel it. And so, like I grew up with some exposure to unsafety.
And, and that was definitely something that shaped my, my lived experience.
Learning how to like, appear tougher than I am. Learning how to wear masks,
learning how to survive. Taking the bus in Los Angeles,
there was also a period of time where there was some, uh,
little rollerblading movement. I was just a little kid. And like,
it was like rollerbladers fought with skateboarders, you know, just tension.
Growing up in Los Angeles and learning, where do I fit in in this world?
Who am I? How can I survive? How can I, you know,
show up for life and feel confident when I'm really scared? Did you.
Have a close family?
Yeah, my dad worked a lot. And so, you know,
he wasn't around a ton. Um, my brother's a year and a half older than me,
so there was a natural competitive piece in growing up,
which I think can be harmful in some cases and helpful in others. You know,
like we're so close in age. We shared friends,
but there was also the competitive dynamic that wasn't always great. You know,
like you learn how to push your, uh, people close to use buttons.
And so, um, yeah. And my, my mother, she's just such a blessing.
My mother was a hippie and so she always had like a rebel
spirit and a counterculture sort of attitude that I always appreciated.
She's also from Southern California.
I followed in her footsteps a little bit. You know,
there was the rave scene that really took off in the late nineties here in
Southern California. And I always wanted to be a part of something special,
a movement of some sort. I identify with counterculture.
I tend to have a natural spirit that rejects things that are mainstream.
And I really aren't, I'm not like a rebel because I wanna be a rebel. Like,
I wanna be different. Like, I genuinely wanna join.
I genuinely wanna join like the rest of society and go along with the common
narratives and watch all the things that everyone else watches and do all the
small talk. But I've never really been able to. Uh, but I, I'll tell you,
when I found rave culture in 19 98, 99,
it really like helped me, uh, uh,
feel like I was finally a part of something.
Probably the same way that other movements in history have brought people
together. And it gives you this feeling of like, ah, my people,
this is my tribe. Ah, finally I can breathe. What.
Was it about them particularly that you liked?
Uh, that culture? Yeah. Uh, probably the drugs. Yeah. Okay.
I say that with a smile. Uh, I definitely, uh, connected with the music.
I, I grew up listening to hip hop music, you know, in, in the early nineties.
It was like, it was gangster rap, you know what I mean?
That was the early influence. And it probably connects back to some,
some of the things I was saying about the masks and the showing up for the
world. Rap music was a big part of growing up for me in the nineties, right?
And there was music from LA and there was music from New York,
and I wanted to be from New York so bad 'cause I had never really been there.
So I listened to people that made New York rap, and I wear the, uh,
the clothing to match the underground hip hop scene took off in,
in Los Angeles in the late nineties,
and then underground hip hop merged with rave culture.
So it wasn't just trance music, the way you think about it,
like from the early nineties, eighties, just like underground warehouse.
It was like counterculture electronic music merging with hip
hop. And then we had this drum and bass movement and like,
I really liked to stomp the ground and stay awake all night and meet other
like-minded people. Mm. Mm-hmm.
. Yeah. Did your parents red flag you on any of that?
Great question. I think because they both grew up, you know,
being part of similar movements, they like accepted that.
Like,
they're not gonna prevent a 17 year old from being in love with a certain type
of music. Right. Like, that's probably not good. Uh, parenting.
But I lived by, by myself by the time I was 17. Hmm. Yeah.
I went to U SS C in the downtown LA area,
very fortunate to get into that school. And like my, my life dream came true,
I moved to South Central Los Angeles . And, and so by the time I was 17,
I had my own apartment. I had my own car,
and I had my own illusion of adulthood.
And, and during this time,
did your brother and you stay close or was he thinking totally differently
from you?
Because I think that there is a thing where we grow up and whatever our parents
are there, there may be a natural inclination to be the opposite of that.
And then whatever our siblings are,
especially depending on their relationship with your parents, right? Every,
always trying to say, no, look at me, I'm different. Yeah.
We had a lot of overlap, but I think I was a little more bold. Hmm.
I think that I was real more willing to, uh, uh,
adopt cultures and I was into fashion and music and
probably working pretty hard to prove to the world that I'm important.
My brother was a little bit more like, okay, this is kind of what we're doing.
Let's go, let's be safe. He went to school in Colorado at Boulder,
so I had a chance to go visit him a few times and check out the rave scene out
there. We were close,
but I think there was probably a time pretty quickly where he was like,
this guy's going too far. Hmm. Yeah.
Did you go too far? I went.
Too far.
What happened?
Yeah. I think all was well for several years.
Being able to sort of lead a double life with, you know, I'm a student.
I'm from la, I'm a nice kid from a nice family. And then,
you know, you know,
you start staying awake for two days at a time and yeah,
three days turning, you start on the brain. You know what I mean?
I did okay managing the double life for many years, you know,
and then it was like, you know,
21 that opens a whole nother world of possibilities.
But I was, I was bouncing around as a undergrad from major to major,
not knowing what I wanted to do and really trying to like, stall off,
having to make decisions. I wasn't ready to enter adulthood,
but I wanted to be an adult, you know what I mean?
So it was a perfect sort of smokescreen to be in school.
And so my academic journey as an undergrad went from like, you know,
the classic four year thing to the five year thing. And then it's like,
uh, I dropped these classes, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to max it out.
My dad got fed up at some point and I had to like, pay for my own life.
And I was hustling and doing the things that were necessary in that world to
get that illusion of adulthood. I don't regret any of it.
I get to tell my story sometimes, and I hold it near and dear.
It doesn't come from a place of shame. It comes from a place of like, yeah, I,
I'm a survivor. Um, I was part of something. Um,
but that rave culture definitely chewed up and spit out a lot of people,
you know, because.
Of the drugs.
Because of the drugs. Yeah.
And this was also at the time of the opioid crises,
the first wave of the opioid epidemic. So it was like, you know,
really well-intentioned young people that just want to connect and party.
And then all of a sudden there's like Oxycontin eighties on the street
everywhere. And this is now right around 2000, 2001,
2002, um, still in school, managing the double life,
doing pretty well.
Were you at that point an, an addict, do you think?
Great question. I'm gonna go ahead and say yes. I, it's safe to say that I, I,
I have a genetic legacy on my mom's side, and so I,
I would venture to say that I crossed that line probably pretty early.
It was like pretty obvious to me that like, you know,
most people on Wednesday when they woke up,
weren't thinking about the rave on Saturday, weren't preparing,
you know, and, and doing all those things. And, and, and I just,
I do have a classic story in, in many ways of like, you know,
you're able to do it successfully in the beginning,
and then it comes a little more often than you do it when you didn't want to.
And then you're doing things every day and then you're trying to quit and then
you're not, and Right. And that definitely was a part of my story. Did.
You have an awareness of, oh, I shouldn't be doing this? Or was it more like,
I now have a habitual pattern that I have to feed and
so that other voice gets quieter and quieter?
It's a really good question.
I think that I always made an assumption that I knew,
I knew I had gone deep. I knew that I was going deep into the world,
but I made an assumption that it would be easy to change directions at some
point. Mm-hmm. , I kind of assumed that like, you know,
this is what we do when we're in our early twenties.
This is what life looks like. And then you sort of grow out of it, you know,
and you sort of decide enough is enough, maybe fall in love, get married,
start a family, get a, like a salary job sort of thing, which I've never had,
by the way, , and just assume that it would be outgrown.
And I think that that's what my, my parents assume to,
and it's a safe assumption that people that have willpower will be able to
exercise their willpower at some point and make some critical life choices. It.
Is interesting too, though,
when I talked with people who have a family unit around them that is,
let's put quotes around this, a healthy family unit where, you know,
things look normal. Mm-hmm. , uh,
that nobody wants to say anything.
The elephant in the room starts tiny and then it keeps growing until it's taking
up the whole house.
But nobody wants to say anything either because they don't know how,
they don't have the skills. Right. They don't know how,
they are worried that they'll be the bad, the bad guy.
They don't want people who love them to suddenly not love them because of what,
because addiction is a monster. Yeah. And it,
it will do what it needs to do. Yes. To feed the habit. Yes.
To such extremes in some cases. Yes.
As I'm listening to you and, and looking at you,
I just had like a moment of additional vulnerability crack open and I wanna add
a, a layer to my story. I think it's safe to say that I also,
you know, born in 1981,
grew up with a lot of ultra processed foods.
And I had that early addiction pattern before the drugs and alcohol
with highly palatable foods. Right.
That are definitely made to be addictive. Yes.
In case anybody just heard that statement and went, huh.
But those foods were genetically modified to make you crave them.
They're engineered for palatability Yeah. For optimal reward. Mm-hmm.
in the brain to register, make 'em memorable,
and get someone to repeat the behavior again. Right. Boot crack. Yeah. So that,
that was a big part of my story. And I lived in a body that was uncomfortable.
And when I found stimulants and raving and dancing,
it did something for me that was significant that I usually don't talk about.
And it feels important today. Like that was a big part of it as well.
Like being able to not be hungry all the time and have other
interests. Oftentimes men don't talk about body image. Right.
It feels like something they wanna avoid.
And I probably have wanted to avoid it at parts in my life,
but as a practitioner and as someone that works in recovery,
it's important to share. Yeah. I had that too.
So needless to say, even though I knew things were like getting tricky,
like there weren't a lot of really easy options. Alternatives.
And zero conversation around it.
Zero conversation at that time. Yes. Still.
Barely there now, but yes. And that was an era I would say.
I think the seventies were starting to do it,
but into the eighties and nineties, this be an excessive person,
be concerned about what you look like or how you smell or who you're talking to.
It suddenly that rhetoric,
which had been primarily focused on women and girls,
suddenly they saw a huge financial gain from making men feel like shit.
Mm-hmm. and boys feel like shit about themselves. Mm-hmm.
. And that was the boom of that.
If you can make people feel insecure, they're more likely to spend money.
Absolutely.
Right.
The worse you feel, the more you spend.
The more susceptible. Mm-hmm. Hmm. So yeah, that was a, a part of it.
And then when it like, started to feel serious, like,
oh my God, like actually I'm, I might not finish college.
It was like really clear, like, oh no, I'm on academic probation right now.
I don't have units. My dad's cutting me off. Where's this headed?
You know what I mean? Gret row. Yeah. And it was pretty obvious like, oh,
I need to, you know, get it together. And I tried, I tried, you know,
like the new semester, you buy the new books and get a new backpack and get the,
get the pens and I'm all ready to show up and I could like clean it up for a few
days. Right. But it would always go back.
Was there anything that was sparking your interest academically or were you just
not interested?
Such a good question. I was bouncing around. I have like a,
a a business side to me. I couldn't,
I couldn't make it in the U S C Marshall School of Business. Right.
It was pretty obvious that I wasn't gonna compete there.
I bounced around to the music industry 'cause I was in rave culture and in
nightlife and I had friends and we'd put on a few events and I thought that
would be a career trajectory for me. If I'm honest, looking back on it now,
it wasn't that that was my truest, truest purpose. It was like,
that would be the path that would allow me to keep getting loaded to be in that
industry. Yeah. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah. And I didn't,
I couldn't hang there either. Yeah.
I was about to flunk out and then it was kind of like, you know,
where is this headed? And then I started getting in trouble. Yeah.
2005. I caught two cases. Uh, explain.
What that means. 'cause people don't know the language. Yeah.
I had my first, I had a d u I, it was, uh, the,
uh, day before my best friend was gonna go to rehab. So we were celebrating,
we call it prehab know. Yeah. My,
my grandfather had passed away.
My grandfather was a sober member of a 12 step program for many years.
So what's his first name? Gil.
Gil. Yeah. Hi Gil. I like to say hi.
Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and yeah, he, he, it's funny,
he, he,
he was really into recovery and I got a chance to see like some of his little
journals and some of the things he underlined some of the things that resonated
with him for his journey. I did a overnight stay in jail. Well,
I missed his funeral. And that was like the beginning of like, okay,
this is like ridiculous. Right. And I had my first D u I case,
which was a little messy 'cause there was a car accident and I was at fault.
People involved.
There was charges and it was like a really clear sign,
wake up, consequences are here, get it together.
And I think most people would assume that that's what's needed for someone to
get it together. And, you know, I assumed that too.
I was like kind of relieved that night. I was like, ah, let's get it together.
You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go start my life over.
And you.
Didn't have to come to the table. It was the table was brought to you.
It's brought to me. But needless to say, I couldn't, I couldn't pull it off.
And that's what makes me someone that identifies as a person in long term
recovery that has Right. Like what people would call a substance use disorder.
Like, I, I, I wanted to stop and I kept going.
So it took another year or so,
and like an maybe there was a rehab in there or two. And then I,
I ended up getting in trouble again, you know, on driving again,
all my, all my trauma was on the road One time a couple years ago.
I actually went to a yoga retreat somewhere. And, uh,
I went to go get away for a few days and I had just leased a new car and
someone bashed it, like, while I was there. And it really affected me deeply.
And, and I realized that I had a lot of like, accidents.
'cause I'm from la I was into car culture.
I like playing loud rap music when I drive.
I like making the car with the tinted windows.
I spent all my time on the road and it was just like, car trauma, accidents,
accidents.
And I remember one night I did a little inventory of all my Los Angeles based
car drama. Like all the little incidents I had on the road. And it was ex,
I mean, I had like, um, fights with tow truck drivers. You know what I'm saying?
I had like a long list of just car drama and car trauma. Uh,
and it all made sense.
You know why I live a block from where I work and I
put the least amount of miles on my car as possible. Now you mean now? Yeah. I,
I, I actually lived a block from here for many years. Um,
I'm a little further now, but, uh, needless to say,
it was like another episode on the road, another incident. And that,
that was when it, that's what it really took for me. Um, and I, I, I,
did you have to go to prison? I caught some charges, yeah. And I spent 2006,
the greater part of 2006 at Supermax,
which is North County Corrections. And yeah, I mean, it was like,
just like anything else when you, when you get there, it's a shock.
And then you adapt quickly. And then pretty soon I learned how to, you know,
meander, make it work, thrive even mm-hmm. , right? Mm-hmm.
to the point where like, when it was time to go,
I was really excited to go, but I definitely was like, I could stay.
Like I understand how people get used to that life. Uh,
but one of the trickiest parts of,
or I should say interesting parts about that journey was like, yeah,
the food came back. It's like now, like, what do you got when you're, you know,
locked up? It's like you got the honey bun and you've got the, oh, it's a.
Carbohydrate dream in prison.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And there's like, you know, you,
you go to store and you learn how to make food and these big
soup concoctions, and it's the currency. And so, like, you know,
with the alcohol and the drugs gone, it's like now, although that's.
Readily available in prison.
Uh, there was definitely some, some access. I,
I was at a place where there wasn't a lot. That's good. Yeah. Yeah.
I was at a place where it wasn't a lot,
it was definitely more prevalent in some of the long-term state facilities for
sure.
Did they put you in a program while you were in prison? I.
Was in, like I said, in, in a supermax mm-hmm. ,
which is part of the county system. It's by Magic Mountain,
if you know where it is. So it feels far and it feels remote,
but it's not a place where people do long stretches. Right.
But I meant did they say, oh, you have a history of drug and alcohol addiction,
we're gonna put you in a program, because some, sometimes in prison,
it's an understanding that you immediately get put into a sobriety program.
Yeah, I, I think that I had worked out in court that I would go to one after Ah,
got it. Yeah. Got it, got it. So I transitioned from there,
straight released into a program, uh, in West la uh,
a Jewish rehab. Yeah. A nonprofit place,
like literally few blocks from where I went to high school.
So I was like back on my home turf mm-hmm. .
But if I could tell one story about incarceration,
it was just like the hustle and bustle for, for the,
for like the food as the currency. You know what I mean? Like,
I would wa I washed trays,
food trays all day long for chocolate muffins. There was a time when I, like, I,
you know, I had to do what I had to do to get like, some coffee,
you know what I mean? And like, we'd drink it as thick as mud.
I've always been interested in like addiction,
like eating behaviors and how food interacts with
substance use disorder, mental health body image.
And it really like gave me some fundamental lived experience that would allow me
to see things a little bit differently.
Was that the beginning of a light bulb going off for you,
of what you wanted to do? Or were.
You still It was Okay. It was,
I was able to view food as like a major unspoken tool of oppression
in our society. It, it's really easy to, you know,
control people with psychological warfare. We know that. Right.
You give people things to think about and things to fight about.
But there are also ways to keep groups marginalized through limited
access to quality food. Right? Absolutely. And, and it, 'cause.
It relates to body function, brain function.
You keep people obese and tired and sickly.
They're much easier to control.
There's a reason why there are fast food restaurants on every corner. That's.
Right. That's right. Some of the.
Feeding that pace.
And, and it's, it's a, it's a uncomfortable conversation to have. You know,
I've done research now on trauma and addictions and looking at
how stress, trauma and adversity drive addiction, like eating and how stress,
trauma and adversity are also related to socioeconomic status and the
neighborhood people live in. And then there's the food environment.
So if you get people growing up in an environment that's unsafe,
there's limited resources and those things are on every corner,
that's probably what's gonna happen.
You know,
I used to live in Los Filas and in Los Filas every block had fruit trees. Hmm.
And, you know, I would walk the neighborhood and I,
I remember I'd always pick fruit and bring it home or eat it on the fly.
And I remember thinking then how odd it was that not everyone
was doing that. Right. And I thought,
why is nobody eating of this gorgeous food? Yes. And it,
but they would stop at nothing to get fries. That's, that's, let's be honest,
McDonald's fries are good.
I haven't had them in a very long time 'cause allergies, blah, blah, blah.
But they're, they're made to make your brain go, holy.
Cow. They know what they're doing over there. Yeah.
They definitely know what they're doing.
Why this a billion dollar industry?
That's right. That's right. I often too wonder like, you know,
why don't people,
why doesn't this yellow nectarine get someone's attention the
way that it should?
And it's because the neurochemical reward associated with those other things
are, is so much higher that it,
it almost to the point where like a 10 year old might not even see the yellow
nectarine that's on the thing because it's not salient enough. And I,
I remember like, you know,
getting passionate about health and nutrition and having a transformation,
maybe I'll touch on that a little bit, but being,
being in graduate school to become a dietician,
and then there was all these programs to like, you know,
teach kids how to eat fruits and vegetables or give 'em like a gardening program
and like, when you actually collect data on these things, like none of 'em work.
Like they're all helpful interventions,
but they're not statistically significant things. Right. Like,
you can't really compete with those other players in the game. Is.
That an action figure in that tree? You.
Did .
So how do you feel was a genius invention?
So genius. Yeah. Yeah. So I got passionate about the food world.
And that was pretty much the minute you left incarceration or was it something
that was a trickle that turned into an ocean? Well.
It was a trickle that turned into an ocean. I started my life over at age 24.
This was now 2006. And no one, you know,
a big part of my career has been bringing,
bringing nutrition education into addiction treatment.
And like sometimes I wish,
I wonder like what would've been like if there would've been someone for me When
I got there in 2006, intuitively my,
my body just started telling me what to do.
And it wasn't that complicated. It was more like, I don't feel well.
I am not well. My skin is pale. I I don't sleep great.
I'm anxious. And so, like, the obvious thing to do was like,
do less of the things that you've been doing and do more of the things that
you've never done.
And so I did have a very intuitive positive view toward nutrition,
which was like, it wasn't so much like, all right,
now you need to focus on not eating this and not eating this and not eating
this. I really did,
as I started my life over have this deep curiosity for all the foods that I had
never really eaten. Right. You think about like a lentil or a pumpkin seed.
Different varieties of colorful fruits and vegetables. Like, you know,
I had had exposures to these things,
but I had never leaned into them and viewed them as potentially helpful to
my mental health journey.
It's weird too. I think I I have two. I don't wanna forget. Also,
was it hard to stay sober once you were out? But my,
the thing that was just popped in my head,
it's interesting how much language around, and we've talked about this,
just you and I before the language around food of, you know,
guilty pleasure or this. Mm.
But there's a lot of shame in even healthy eating because I feel if I don't eat
this healthy thing, I feel shame. But the body isn't really,
the brain isn't really registering one for the other.
It's just registering the shame. Hmm.
I always tell people the, the, the food won't kill you, but the guilt,
shame and remorse will. Right, right.
Some of those thinking patterns that lead to emotions can be more
deleterious to health sometimes than certain foods.
Of course there are people that have strong reactions to certain foods and
that's a different story. Sure.
Yeah. Which then since that's a whole other, that's,
that's that's a whole other thing. .
So was it hard to stay sober when you got out?
I'm gonna say yes and no. I,
I kind of had a little bit of a head start 'cause I had been programming for a
little while and I ended up sort of starting my life over right there in my
backyard. And I, I had hope and I had curiosity,
like, what could, what's possible for me? Like, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna stop telling all the stories.
And I stopped contacting a lot of people and just started my life over.
And I had a deep,
deep sense of hope that I could recreate a life that was meaningful. I did.
And a lot of that came from recovery and listening to people talk and share
their stories. Uh, of course there's like always that feeling of like,
I'm a convicted felon, you know, I had to like register as a narcotics offender.
Right. And this feeling of like, I'm in the system. Can I,
can I make this work call every day to find out if I was gonna get tested?
That went on for three years and eight months I couldn't leave Los Angeles
County. It was definitely that.
Hard to help people move on to,
to a new life if they're constantly being reminded of their old life. That's.
Right. That's right.
But the recovery world allowed me to feel hopeful and to
like just get into wellness. Yeah. And that's what I did.
And other people around me weren't, like,
that wasn't a thing that everyone was doing nowadays. Like, you know, in, in,
in addiction treatment, there's places that are very wellness focused.
It was like me going outta my way to like get, you know,
water and sunlight and to eat vegetables.
And I would go to my parents' house and my mom, she,
she knew that I was on this path and she would like cut up vegetables for me so
that when I came by , see there was food for me, so sweet.
And I didn't have a lot of money. Yeah. You know.
That was gonna be my next question is if the people who were important to you in
your life, I mean, they're the people that we know, these people are fun,
but I have to let them go because if I'm gonna rise to the occasion,
they're anchors on my shoes. Yeah. Yeah.
But to know that there are people that are really, they're,
they're there with the hand up and they're there with the hugs and they're there
saying, you can do this.
Yeah. There's sometimes this assumption that only people that have addiction or
alcohol journeys understand people that have similar journeys. And,
and for the most part, there's truth to that.
A lot of people just totally don't get it. But there are people who,
who get it out there. And I definitely encountered a few who didn't.
And I remember being like a year and a half separated from alcohol and hanging
out with a close friend, and he was like, so like, does this mean like,
you're never gonna drink with me? You know? And like,
I remember feeling really unsafe.
Like there was someone that was supposed to have my corner that was pressuring
me to drink with him. And I remember like,
I don't think I ever talked to that guy ever since. Like,
I severed ties with him. But after a few years, I remember thinking,
I don't think that he genuinely wanted something bad for me.
He genuinely didn't understand what I was dealing with.
Also, I think that in the face of folks who are in sobriety or who just aren't
interested in drinking or doing the thing, or drug drugging, whatever it is,
that if, if you don't do it, that mirror on them is so.
Yes. Hot.
Yes. That it makes them panic and say, oh, come on. You're,
you're gonna drink someday. Right? Yes.
Because the idea that you can go an entire lifetime without doing it. Yes.
What does that mean about.
Themselves? That's right. That's right. Very good point. Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, I,
I definitely like built a new network and that was difficult.
I went back to school, uh, to finish. So it took me,
I think it was a total of seven and a half years. There was a,
like a one and a half year break in there mm-hmm. .
And I had like 20 units left that I had to finish. And I,
I remember going back and I had to get my G p A up to a 2.0,
which is like the bare minimum to graduate. So I, I was like,
my life was starting over. I'm into nutrition, I'm starting to exercise.
I'm having rapid transformations in my body and in my mental health,
people are like noticing me way different. My energy is totally different.
I'm starting to give off safe vibes to people.
It was exciting to go take those last few classes and get, uh,
my undergraduate after, like, it being on hold.
I wasn't sure if I would get a chance to finish. So that was a,
a big milestone and what a moment it was. But then of course I thought, well,
now that I have an undergraduate degree,
the whole world's gonna just be lining up to give me a job.
And I was definitely met with some disappointment. 'cause you know, the,
the box that says, have you ever been convicted of a felony when it's a yes.
And you have to like, explain it. And, and especially in that case,
they were like, now these we're looking at like, you know,
18 years ago mm-hmm. . It's pretty, it's,
I'm comfortable explaining that. Not that I need to 'cause I work for myself,
but when it's 18 months ago, it's a different conversation with someone. Right.
So I had a difficult time finding my way. What am I gonna do? Mm-hmm.
. Um,
so I fell in love with nutrition because of my own personal experience with it,
revolutionized my life, changed everything about me, gave me hope,
gave me energy. I was really into fitness and I,
I climbed Mount Whitney and I did an LA marathon and probably had a little
exercise addiction. I can say that it wasn't harmful, it didn't like,
didn't affect my day-to-day life the way it, uh, an addiction can for someone.
But it was deeply reinforcing. Yeah. I was,
I was working as a trainer for a little while as a part of my early career.
And I went back to graduate school to study nutrition to become a dietician.
It seemed like that was a path that I could do with the big gap in my resume
as someone that felt like I was from a marginalized group. I had to find a way.
Like I wasn't gonna go to medical school or go to like, you know what I mean?
Like, my, my, my paths choice, my life choices did feel somewhat limited.
And I was like, nutrition makes sense. I'm gonna do this. And even that program,
I got rejected. I didn't even get in 'cause of my, the gap.
I had to reapply and go to community college and take classes
and get some A's, and do my basic science stuff.
So when I say started my life over, I mean really it started my life over, like,
I, I always give my mom and dad some credit.
It was like they kind of had to raise me twice mm-hmm. .
And I'm very fortunate to, like in my twenties, right.
I'm very advantaged in that sense to like, be able to like,
have a parent's house to like go back to at age 25. You know what I mean? Yeah.
You are very lucky. Very lucky. Because a lot of people aren't that lucky. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I was, I was fortunate.
I got into recovery. I felt like a home for me.
I built a new sense of self and a new identity of wellness.
And I eventually got into graduate school and I knew from the beginning that I
wanted to do nutrition for mental health. I like the stuff they were doing,
like calorie counting, b m i, you know,
bunch of math portion sizing. Like none of it was of interest to me.
I knew that I had to go through the classic training,
but I also knew that the training I was getting wasn't pure.
It was tainted by food industry interests. Mm-hmm. .
And it seemed like no one else in my program cared about any of that stuff.
I'm like,
doesn't it bother anyone that we're getting a webinar right now about high
fructose corn syrup that's paid for by the Corn Refiners Association. Like,
does anyone else think this is weird? And no one else seemed to care. Like,
I have this antenna, maybe it's from my trauma,
where like I sense when something is unsafe.
And I started to feel during my graduate school program that like the nutrition
landscape is unsafe. Like this is not filled with truth.
It's filled with spun narratives and hidden profit
motives and a lot of agendas and a lot of ways to, uh,
perpetuate inequities.
And all of this started to become really clear to me while I was being trained.
It almost feels like a dietician is to the food industry,
what a psychiatrist is to the pharmaceutical industry. Mm-hmm. ,
no disrespect to psychiatry. I have very close psychiatry friends,
and no disrespect to dieticians either,
but it does feel like there's these machines that are training you to be a part
of the machine. And here I am,
I'm like never been able to be a part of a system or a machine.
I'm in there detecting a funny business. And early in my career,
after I finished graduate school,
we formed a group of dieticians that like put our careers on the line and spoke
up about injustices in our field.
We were called dieticians for professional integrity.
And it was exciting because it was like the counterculture version of me,
but my mom was a hippie. Right. My dad told me, you know,
to stand tall in my own brand of dignity, I've had a lot of adversity,
now is a chance to like, we can rise up, like we can make a splash.
But of course most people that have social justice in our heart know that when
you go up against like big corporations, like they're not splashes,
they're just spritzes, . It's like a little mist. Yeah. Yeah. But one.
Can be a lot. I do believe that.
We made a difference. Mm-hmm. We made a difference. Yeah. My,
my master's thesis was called nutrition and substance abuse. And I,
I really developed some
expertise in how different different drugs and alcohol affect the body in
different ways. And that became of interest to me.
I built nutrition and recovery and started working in addiction treatment
centers and doing, uh,
group education and one-on-one counseling quickly became highly proficient in
working with eating disorders, learning about food addiction.
And then of course, like the gut health stuff. And I, um, yeah,
I brought it all together. I brought the nutrition, the, the, the addiction,
the mental health, the gut health, and then like this, the economics, right.
The understanding of psychology altogether to form, you know,
the practice,
the group practice that I started in 2013 called Nutrition and recovery
that I've done, um, you know, for the last, uh, 10 plus years.
Very fortunate to have been able to work with people all over the world.
And sometimes people reach out to me and they're like, I'm not in recovery.
Can I still come to see you? And that's why I'm like this, you know,
this isn't just, you know, everyone's in some form of recovery.
Also, I would point out too,
that disordered eating comes in many shapes and forms. That's right.
I think we are given this image of a disordered eater as someone who is either
anorexic or bulimic or, the truth of the matter is, there's so many for,
I'll use myself as an example when I, because a celiac,
so I already have this groupings of food I can't touch. That's right.
But as I get older, I find myself going through the grocery store and,
and, and then this feeling of abhorrence against pretty much all the foods.
Food doesn't even smell like food anymore.
The tomatoes don't smell like tomatoes. All this stuff. And,
and it creates this thing in my brain like, well,
I guess I'm not eating food anymore. Right. And that's a disorder. That's right.
I own that. I know that that's not right. I work on it.
But it is,
it is true that there are many levels of all these different types of things.
And that's what I've dedicated my career to. Right.
There's these boxes of these classic restrictive eating disorders, right?
Mm-hmm. person with anorexia nervosa that, you know,
developed it at age 15 and has O c D tendencies and
very classic cases and bulimia nervosa. Right. Very predictable.
But as you said,
there's a whole spectrum of disordered eating.
And exercise.
And exercise issues.
That thing I said earlier,
when people eat something and feel guilty or shame around it, that's a,
that's disordered. Mm-hmm. , that's not,
that's not how we're supposed to nurture our bodies. That's.
Right. One of the questions on my intake is how,
what percentage of the day do you spend thinking about food and what percentage
of the day do you spend thinking about your body? Right.
One could argue that if someone is spending more than 50% of the day,
day thinking about either one of those things, right. That's a,
that's a mental health issue. So yeah, these things exist on continuums,
on spectrums. There's a lot of atypical forms of them.
So a lot of my career work has been working at the intersection
of complicated issues. So when someone has gut issues and an eating disorder,
what do you do? Hmm. You know what I mean?
When someone has substance use disorder and some disordered eating and,
you know,
there's some biological abnormalities that need to be looked at through testing.
So yeah,
I've worked at the intersection and done a lot of really meaningful work with
complicated cases and also fortunate to do that work virtually with
people all over, not limited to the state of California,
but I fell in love with the research side of things.
That was like something that always called me.
Even after I was done with school, I did a, a a,
I guess it was a thesis where I,
I did like the collecting data thing and the deep literature reviews and like,
that always felt like part of my calling.
So even after I was out of school,
I was still doing that and making papers and putting together presentations.
And so at some point, I think probably around 2016,
I got the deep call. I was like, no, you gotta do more. I, and if I'm honest,
I wasn't fully satisfied with being a dietician because just, you know,
a master's level dietician, like I was successful.
I had people that worked for me.
I was able to live in West LA and have a full practice. And in many ways,
uh, it was satisfying,
but it lacked the scientific muster that I craved.
It wasn't like, um, like I said,
it felt tainted by industry interest rather than training people to be
independent thinkers who can audit the scientific literature.
I did apply for a PhD at U C L A and once again,
I got rejected a few times. You know, it's like,
I don't know if it's, you know,
the felony thing or the gaps in my resume or my demographics,
but like I wasn't a great applicant. And I did the same thing I did for,
uh, the master's program was like, you know, I showed up,
put on a nice outfit and showed up and, uh,
talked to some people and they realized that like, oh no,
this guy's got some really good ideas. And I, I did get into the, uh,
fielding School of Public Health at U C L A and the Community Health Sciences
department, and it, it really felt like a,
a dream come true because I was working full-time and now getting a a
in a full-time PhD program, which was like, you know,
a lot and you're not supposed to do that.
I almost had to lie about working because they kind of want you to work for
them. And I had this sort of attitude of like, well,
you're not giving me financial aid. I'm paying, so like,
you can't tell me what to do. And their thing is like, we kind of can. Um,
and there was a lot of conflict for me finding my way in the department.
A lot of the topics that I'm interested in, mental health, disordered eating,
food addiction, ultra processed foods, substance use disorders, depression,
anxiety, trauma.
Is that all? Yeah, that's.
That's.
My list.
That's my research interest list. Um, they weren't,
they weren't being, uh, looked at in my department. Yeah. It was, it was.
So it turned out to be like a real time of additional adversity.
And there was a part of me that's like, you know, why, you know,
I've been through so much. Why, why can't this be easy? And I'm glad it wasn't.
I, I definitely went in there with a little bit of an ego, like, oh,
PhD program. Like, I've already got a bunch of peer reviewed publications, like,
I'm already doing this. I might as well just do it on, you know, on the side.
And I think they picked up on some of that. I do that. It was too easy for me.
I'm publishing papers on topics without them on the paper,
you know what I'm saying? Hmm. And it did turn into a, a difficult time.
There was a definite period where I thought I wasn't gonna finish. Uh,
I think they, they kind of build it that way, you know what I mean?
Like a PhD program is supposed to be hard, you know, it's supposed to be.
And if they get a sense that it's not, they'll make sure that it is mm-hmm.
, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. . But yeah, it,
it's always been hard having progressive ideas because
in many ways it's like, we need progressive thinkers,
but progressive ideas are met with resistance. Well, also.
There's this idea that it happens in education. Right?
This one size fits all That's right. Per child.
And no tummy is the same. No brain is the same. That's right.
No environment that we've been raised in is the same.
We one child might go through a particular trauma and come out the other end no
problem, no foul. And another child could go through a lesser trauma. Right.
Whatever that means. That's right.
'cause it's apples and oranges and be completely devastated. That's right.
There is no one size fits all.
Which for somebody like you who's super curious and,
and can see the individuality, that's a rarity. I feel like,
especially in medicine. Mm-hmm. mm-hmm.
that is used to just as you put it before, here's your pill next.
Right. Here's your pill next. Yep.
And I think if I'm, if if I'm reflecting now on the program,
one of the hardest parts, and I'm a practitioner, right? Like,
I look at someone's genetic vulnerabilities to try to figure
out, I look at people as, you know, bio individuals. But in the,
in the program in public health, it's, we don't look at people,
we're looking at groups. Mm-hmm. We're looking at populations, right? Mm-hmm.
It's more like sociology. So learning how to think, uh, uh,
about individuals be helpful to people in the clinic,
to individuals that live in social context.
And then being able to think only about social context and not about
kind of individual heterogeneity per se. So it was like my mind,
it just exploded. And I started thinking from a bio-psychosocial perspective,
how do we look at biology?
How do we look at someone's psychology and put it all into social context?
And I always think about having variables to capture all of it. So, you know,
thinking about, you know, if you think about a person,
you also want to think about like the neighborhood they live in and all of that
collect variables there. So yeah, it was definitely a time of challenge.
But I rallied, I think part of it was, um, if I'm honest, like, you know,
I'm 41, turning 42 this year, so I'm like,
I'm a little older than some of the other people.
And I think because of my story, I've really, um,
internalized this idea that I'm behind in life and that I need to like,
work harder than the average person.
Because for seven years I was raving and going in and out of different
institutions. You know what I'm saying?
So it's really deepened this sense of like, I need to catch up.
I get that. But there's also, you could look at it in this way,
in that you spent seven years doing field research on a very much
ignored section of the population. That's right. Who eventually will need help.
That's right. When they're ready for it.
Thank you for that. And I, I couldn't agree more.
And no matter how much spiritual work I've done on it,
I still have this thing of like, I gotta go. I gotta go.
I'm still human.
We, that's, yeah. That's the thing. We're in this,
this corpus and we have to That's right. To deal with what it comes with.
That's right. Did you,
did you have an enlightened moment of realizing what you were driving away from
in a hurry all those times?
That's a good question. I might have to take that into meditation. Right?
What am I driving away from? Good question. Yeah.
I knew that I was like trying to drive toward,
but kind of something that resembles a, you know,
normal successful life in Los Angeles. You know,
I don't consume a lot of media or I try to be relatively
free from susceptibility to like the predictable social constructs,
but none of us are, you know what I'm saying?
Especially if you live somewhere like you're doing social context all day
long. I was really running to toward
wanting to get married and have a, have a child. And it was like,
I wasn't gonna do that during my PhD program,
so I was like pressuring to finish quickly so that I could do the next
thing. You know what I mean? Sure. And it was hard. And so yeah, I finished,
they like, they'll stretch you to six years at these places.
They want you to be the TA for the last year and Right.
They want to take their time and kind of milk the doctoral students. Mm-hmm.
and I wasn't having it. And I'm proud of myself for standing up.
For, for me, I was like pushing to end sooner. And I,
I finished in four and a half years.
I was the first in my cohort to finish and I was able to defend my
dissertation, which was, uh,
examining links between adverse childhood experiences mm-hmm.
and mental health outcomes like substance use disorder,
depression and anxiety.
And it was among socially disadvantaged men who have sex with men in Los
Angeles,
many of which were h i v positive data collected from the L G B T Q
um center and one of the U C L A clinics,
and it was very meaningful work. There was nothing nutrition related.
Most people know me as a dietician and a, you know,
functional medicine practitioner that you would assume that my PhD is on
related topics.
But I did mental health and I have a minor in health psychology.
And so I've been able to bring together all of my lived
experience, my clinical practice, my PhD work,
and you know,
especially in the minor in health psychology to really start a movement
or join a movement. It's definitely underway in other countries.
Uk, Australia, Canada, south America.
This is the movement of nutrition for mental health.
It's really looking at nutrition entirely differently.
The recommendations aren't that different if you think about it. Like what,
okay, what are we talking about when you say nutrition for depression?
Nutrition for addiction. It,
it still is like high fiber omega three
Mediterranean style eating, right? Good proteins,
like colorful fruits and vegetables.
It's nothing deeply novel in terms of like what is the main message,
but it's how the message comes across that matters and the endpoints,
the outcomes that we're looking for.
So most people would seek out a doctor dietician
for like specific health goals. Uh, I wanna improve my body composition.
I want to change my gut health. I wanna do some supplements to get more energy.
Most people still aren't thinking about my depression is really rough and the
SSRIs aren't working. I'm gonna contact Dr.
Wis to see if we can use nutrition and lifestyle medicine to improve this.
Those aren't things on people's radar.
Although we are getting better as a society to understand the link between gut
health and brain that they are. Yes, absolutely.
The system talking to each other. Yes.
And that fact is often ignored in the eating disorder field.
The eating disorder field is like moving slowly to like really
acknowledge the biology.
I think the eating disorder field is so stuck on social context and social
justice issues related to weight.
Looking at B M I as as a racist measure,
there's a lot of really good advocacy efforts that we've done in the eating
disorder field,
but it hasn't really incorporated a lot of this biological science,
the gut-brain access,
the neurobiology of reward and a lot of things that I've been able to focus on
and I'm able to bring that into the eating disorder world and say, you know,
there's mechanisms here that we need to think about. You know,
we know that people that have a lot of childhood adversity have larger bodies in
adulthood. We know that they have higher bmi, but why?
Is it because they grew up in disadvantaged households with less access to food?
Or is there biological embedding of adversity?
What are the actual pathways by which IT trauma gets underneath the skin
and affects health?
I always feel that from the people that I know that are what
one would consider obese in this society. And again,
not trying to judgment anything, but they tend to have had sexual trauma.
So they've made their bodies appear quote unquote undesirable or
it's like a giant pillow fort around them and to protect them.
That's the experiences of people that I know. I'm sure it's across the board,
all the different things, but I do find that really interesting.
I find it interesting too,
and I heard that from so many of my clients and patients over the years,
and I remember one time I asked someone, do you think that that's true?
And she said, no, is just what my therapist told me. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
And so I actually wrote a paper on that to challenge the psychodynamic
protective measure theory. Mm-hmm. ,
it doesn't suggest that that's a wrong theory,
but because it's such a good theory, it got extrapolated Sure.
To so many people, and.
This is information that I've been told from,
so maybe they got it from their therapist. Of.
Course. No,
it was a really great explanation for why people that had childhood sexual abuse
would regain weight rapidly after being in a weight loss program and, and,
and things of that nature. It made a lot of sense. It's called, you know, the,
the, they call it barrier weight or the protective measure theory.
It's like you are doing this as a protective measure to prevent future
revictimization mm-hmm.
excellent theory from psychodynamic literature. Uh,
but because it was so good,
it got so like kind of widely accepted that people started to assume that that
was always the case.
So I wrote a paper challenging that theory and suggesting that the
mechanisms by which a childhood sexual abuse can affect B M I is
through the biological embedding of adversity through the immune system,
alterations in the brain chemistry, the H p A access. Right.
There's lots of pathways that we won't get into today,
but those all create risk for substance use disorders,
eating disorders and addiction like eating.
So part of the paper was to suggest that part of the reason that that
association is so strong is because people are protecting themselves from
potential threat,
and the other is because the trauma changed their physiology and set up a
lifetime of addiction, like eating behaviors. Mm-hmm.
Which could lead to disordered eating efforts to suppress weight.
We know that when people diet and try to lose a lot of weight,
they end up probably gaining it back and then some more. So a lot of, uh,
substance use disorders lead to weight suppression. There's.
Also comfort in eating. Right. Comfort, of course.
Yeah. Yeah. I saw a paper the other day and not to dwell on this topic,
and you know, because I've done work in this area,
it really caught my attention. People that have, uh,
been exposed to childhood sexual abuse have higher ghrelin levels.
Ghrelin is a hunger hormone produced in the stomach.
So it's just another example of how,
depending on how you, your discipline, how you look at the world, you,
you see things through different lenses. Mm-hmm. ,
this is the biological lens. Right. The lens of like,
what are the biological mechanisms versus like the psychosocial context.
And so it's really important to always try to bring it all together. Yeah.
I mean, look at autoimmune diseases on the rise. You know, our bodies are not,
they don't know how to deal with anything anymore, so they just, what,
what's left? That's right. They go inward. That's right. And start attack.
That's right. Mechanisms.
That's right. Such a hot topic there. I know.
I feel like humans are in in trouble. You know, we're,
we're a bit of a mess.
And obviously disordered eating is certainly on the rise.
We see that everywhere. Mm-hmm. . So what do we do about it?
I mean, not everyone's gonna come to you obviously, or to people like you.
And some people won't even have self-awareness or they don't care either way.
Right. They're happy with where they are or they're unhappy with,
they're happy with their unhappiness. Right.
Or they don't know anything else.
Are we in trouble?
Do you see a trend toward self understanding and and collectively
as healing?
Or do you see it more of a trend of we're going off a cliff and saying our
sweetheart?
I think that consciousness is growing for sure. Right.
It's like really easy to point to systemic issues in society and, you know,
look at this country and identify the darkness.
I do think that there's a lot of waking up in the mental health space.
Um,
part of it due to acknowledging the role of nutrition,
part of it is acknowledging the role of early life trauma,
the psychedelic revolution, right.
Certainly bringing in a lot of layers of consciousness, trauma,
healing that I've been following with deep curiosity.
I was pushed a few years ago to think about writing a book, you know,
about nutrition for mental health. What can we do?
And it felt pretty obvious to me that like,
people are reading books less and less audible, , you know,
people are listening to audibles, right? And then it was like, well,
what's everyone else doing? It's like, oh, you make an online course. Right?
And that started to float in my consciousness and like, you know, what would,
what would the message be?
How do you use nutrition and lifestyle medicine for various mental health
outcomes? Acknowledging that not all mental health outcomes are the same.
Someone that has anorexia nervosa clustering with, you know,
O C D and Orthorexia nervosa might be very different than a person that has
a long history of trauma and meth addiction and now has binge eating disorder.
Those are different cases.
Is it possible to create consistent language that isn't geared toward one
or the other,
but that has a level of neutrality to it that can allow people to follow their
own sort of healing path? As a clinician working with many years,
I use a food log,
and that's been really exciting to see how tech can be used to keep the
practitioner and client in touch. And then it was, yeah,
crystal clear about two years ago, what am I gonna do to make a difference?
The one-on-one work that I do is great. It's really not covered by insurance,
so I only get to work with socially advantaged groups. The reach is,
uh, is great, but it's, it's limited. So I built an app,
it's called Wise Mind Nutrition. It combines a, a, a novel food log.
It uses my framework, my food groups, my hunger, fullness, scale,
all the tools that I've used in my practice. It's got a food log in there,
which is entirely free. Anyone can use it.
And I put some personalized targeted programming in there.
So there's, uh,
43 days of treatment and there's a 30 day specific
program to where someone will choose their own adventure as they
go through it. I am gonna ask for some information.
It's totally optional if someone wants to fill out the mental health screeners,
but if someone's screening for anxiety,
if someone's screening for a substance use disorder,
it does create some targeted messaging for them.
So here are some additional things for you to consider.
Here are some supplements that might be helpful.
Here are some recipes that might be helpful,
whether someone has a D H D P T S D, uh, anxiety,
depression, eating disorder, food addiction, uh, sleep related issues.
There is a,
a program based on nutrition and lifestyle medicine.
It's called Why is My Nutrition? It's an app. And, uh, has it launched?
It is actually at 99.9.
I have about 35 people in test flight. Maybe you can test flight for me.
Okay. , uh, give me some feedback.
I just wanna just like get a bunch of people through the program.
I don't wanna be the guy that releases the app that has a bug in the first week.
So like, I'm doing such a deep calm, I say that now, like .
Yeah, yeah. Got it. Yeah. So it's been ready. Yeah. Um, but I'm putting some,
some final touches on it and launching about to launch.
So it's a really exciting time in my life.
And Nutrition and recovery is the name of the clinical practice,
and that is nutrition and recovery.com. I also have a great newsletter there,
so please sign up. Yay. You know,
I shared a bit of my story today on a personal note, you know,
I've been through a lot and like to come and, um, you know,
the statistics aren't high for,
for people that have some of my background to get a doctorate is uncommon.
You know,
I moved into the tech space and I spent two years really putting love and
a lot of, uh, nights and weekends into this,
waiting for the day to share with the world. It's exciting. We're kind of here.
Yeah. It's kind of happening.
It's super exciting. Yeah.
I'm gonna ask you all the ways that people can find you, but I do want,
I have one more question. Yes. And you've been so gracious with your time.
I'm curious,
as we move into a society that is open to psychedelics for therapy
and for healing,
how do you balance that as someone who is in recovery?
And how do you deal with that?
With other people who are in recovery where we know this is a thing that is
helpful Yeah. But it is dipping, its well,
it's diving right into a space Yeah.
That.
Has a history. Yeah. What, how do you balance that?
Yeah. Th those are a lot of conversations that,
that people in my circle are having. Because on one hand,
I'm from, you know, the recovery world, which is like the altruistic movement,
which has a,
has a long history going back into the late 1930s and like
a lot of entrenched ideas about how things should be.
And then we,
I have the world of like the mental health treatment industry where like I have
colleagues and we look at the science and stuff like that.
So as someone that gets alerts in my email inbox about the latest
randomized control trials and stuff like that,
like when I see the data coming in,
that's a definite area of interest in the kind of mental health space.
And a lot of my colleagues and friends have moved into that space.
It's a difficult line to walk because in the recovery
world,
we do see people that experiment with those things and it does not go well.
People that, that like, that were like very abstinent sober.
They dive into that and then they're back on heroin and stuff like that.
So I've seen that happen enough to be very cautious.
Or they've convinced themselves that whatever treatment they're doing is,
is to the sole purpose of whatever the issue they're trying to deal with and not
realizing that they're habitualizing. Right. It.
That's right. Yeah.
There's a lot of tricky ways that the mind can build cases.
And I've seen it get dark for, uh, some people.
I don't recommend it. I'm not someone that would recommend that to someone.
But I've had clients and patients that have done that on their own and came and
sat in this room to report to me what has gone on.
And I've actually seen some pretty big revolutions with body image.
I've seen people that have had a lifetime of eating disorders come back into my
office and tell me I'm starting to feel more comfortable in my skin.
I had a big experience.
And even though I'm biased as a person in recovery towards safety
and like that, that narrow road,
how could I be a doctor sitting here and listen to someone say that and be
negative about it?
Totally .
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah.
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. So, so fascinating. Such beautiful,
interesting work that is,
I feel on the precipice of just humongous
e exploration. Yes. Which is so exciting. It's exciting.
It's deep space is coming your way. It is. Which is fun. Yeah.
Tell people how they might find you. Yeah. So.
Why is my nutrition is the app and there's a YouTube,
there's a, uh, Instagram and a TikTok.
And they're all under the same name.
They're all under Wise Mind Nutrition. W i s e. Oh. Uh,
wise Mind comes from D B T. So Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Oh.
The Wise Mind is the kind of intersection between the Hot Mind and the more
Logical Mind. The Wise Mind is the, is the, yeah. Common ground.
Right. Okay. So that's what, so spell it all out for.
People. Yeah. W i s E M i N D nutrition, Instagram,
YouTube, TikTok has some underscores in there. My personal Instagram is Dr.
David Wiss, so d r d a v i d w i S s.
I definitely share nutrition and health stuff there,
but also throw in a little bit of family and fun.
And the website is wise Mind nutrition.com. If you join the newsletter,
you're gonna get some freebies. You're gonna get alerted to, uh, the app.
By the time this comes out, it's probably gonna be available. Uh,
but it's always good to sign up on the website 'cause people that are on the
newsletter get some additional love. Mm-hmm. . So please sign up.
Uh,
I'd love to connect with people that are on a wellness journey and learn about
your journey as well.
Thanks for listening everybody. Thank you, David. Yeah.
This was so awesome. Thank you so much. And goodbye to everyone.
Bye everybody. This has been really great. I thought it was.
Pretty good.
Bye.
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human on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Bye.