1 00:00:07,980 --> 00:00:10,360 Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here. 2 00:00:10,620 --> 00:00:14,120 Thanks for listening to another episode of Hey Human Podcast. 3 00:00:15,830 --> 00:00:16,120 This. 4 00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:20,440 Is episode 373, and I had a conversation with Dr. 5 00:00:20,530 --> 00:00:21,440 David Wiss. 6 00:00:21,650 --> 00:00:25,960 David founded Mind Wise Nutrition and Nutrition and Recovery, 7 00:00:25,970 --> 00:00:30,800 which is a group practice of rdns specializing in the treatment of eating 8 00:00:30,860 --> 00:00:32,400 and substance use disorders. 9 00:00:32,820 --> 00:00:36,320 His work explores the link between childhood trauma and disordered eating, 10 00:00:36,530 --> 00:00:37,363 among other things. 11 00:00:38,060 --> 00:00:42,640 He developed a specialized nutrition curriculum that has been incorporated in 12 00:00:42,640 --> 00:00:46,840 more than 50 addiction treatment centers in SoCal and Worldwide. 13 00:00:47,420 --> 00:00:51,560 And his own story is one of achieving triumph over addiction and 14 00:00:52,090 --> 00:00:56,440 those resulting consequences. Really fascinating guy. I myself, 15 00:00:56,630 --> 00:01:01,480 have been to him for help with my belly problems as a celiac, 16 00:01:02,260 --> 00:01:06,560 and he's really great, super smart, super interesting life story. 17 00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:11,000 I think you're gonna enjoy this check out. Hey, human podcast for links. 18 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:15,400 And to learn more about my guests and my show, check out susan ruth.com. 19 00:01:15,580 --> 00:01:18,280 To learn more about me and my other artistic endeavors, 20 00:01:18,580 --> 00:01:22,160 follow Susan Ruths and hey, human podcast on social media. 21 00:01:22,990 --> 00:01:26,560 Find my albums on Spotify, apple music, Amazon music, 22 00:01:26,700 --> 00:01:29,720 or wherever you get your music. Look for my album. 23 00:01:29,740 --> 00:01:33,160 All I ever wanted was everything that's the most recent, but there's also, 24 00:01:33,180 --> 00:01:36,720 how to Say Goodbye, surfacing to breathe, lots of stuff out there. 25 00:01:37,450 --> 00:01:41,200 Check out my relationships and sex show with sexologist and healthcare 26 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:45,080 practitioner, Mara Edelman on YouTube, under Are We There yet? 27 00:01:45,080 --> 00:01:49,400 Podcast show rate review and subscribe to, Hey, 28 00:01:49,400 --> 00:01:53,560 human podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. 29 00:01:54,140 --> 00:01:56,240 And thank you for listening. Be well, 30 00:01:57,060 --> 00:02:01,640 be kind and you know, let's, uh, be there for each other. 31 00:02:01,870 --> 00:02:06,000 Lift each other up. Thank you for listening. And here we go. 32 00:02:08,100 --> 00:02:11,120 Dr. David with welcome to Hey Human. 33 00:02:11,740 --> 00:02:13,560 Hey human. I'm so happy to be here. 34 00:02:13,960 --> 00:02:14,840 , happy to have you. 35 00:02:14,840 --> 00:02:15,673 Here. Thank you. 36 00:02:15,940 --> 00:02:18,480 Before we, uh, full disclosure for the audience, 37 00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:23,920 I met you because I was seeking out a nutritionist and someone to help me with 38 00:02:23,940 --> 00:02:28,600 my belly stuff as a celiac and as a person who, you know, 39 00:02:29,050 --> 00:02:31,520 feels like they have less and less things that they can eat. 40 00:02:32,140 --> 00:02:35,840 And I read about you online and I thought, okay, well, I'll try him. 41 00:02:35,870 --> 00:02:38,720 I've tried everybody else. So that's how we met. 42 00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:39,660 I love that. 43 00:02:39,660 --> 00:02:43,480 I'm so fortunate to come across various walks of life and I've been so blessed 44 00:02:43,480 --> 00:02:46,960 to have you in my journey and I'm grateful to be part of yours. Yeah. 45 00:02:47,140 --> 00:02:50,600 I'm excited. So thank you for saying yes. When I asked you to be on the show. 46 00:02:50,800 --> 00:02:53,280 I know that this probably causes a little bit of a, 47 00:02:53,720 --> 00:02:55,480 I didn't know if it would be a conflict or what, 48 00:02:55,500 --> 00:02:58,040 but I figured whatever I'm gonna ask anyway. So. 49 00:02:58,130 --> 00:02:59,240 Let's roll with it. . 50 00:02:59,540 --> 00:03:01,560 So explain all the things that you are. 51 00:03:01,830 --> 00:03:05,400 Well, first of all, I am a human. I am, uh, 52 00:03:05,600 --> 00:03:10,360 a father and a husband and a son and a brother. I get to, 53 00:03:10,700 --> 00:03:14,160 uh, bask in the glory of my family that lives here in Los Angeles. 54 00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:17,600 Everyone's nearby. So that's a big part of my life. 55 00:03:17,690 --> 00:03:21,440 We're in West LA now in my office. Yeah, I am a practitioner. 56 00:03:21,680 --> 00:03:24,760 I do functional medicine. I'm a registered dietician nutritionist. 57 00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:26,200 I specialize in mental health, 58 00:03:26,580 --> 00:03:30,480 so I get to work with people that have gut issues, uh, 59 00:03:30,800 --> 00:03:32,080 disordered eating challenges. 60 00:03:32,480 --> 00:03:35,120 I have a long history of working with people in recovery. 61 00:03:35,700 --> 00:03:38,240 My group practice is called Nutrition and Recovery, 62 00:03:39,100 --> 00:03:42,880 and I love nutrition, but I have a particular passion for recovery, 63 00:03:42,880 --> 00:03:46,080 especially people on the substance use disorder, recovery path. 64 00:03:46,310 --> 00:03:51,040 There's a lot of needs for attention to the gut and to the immune system. 65 00:03:51,180 --> 00:03:55,760 And so I use nutrition and lifestyle medicine to help improve people's, 66 00:03:56,260 --> 00:04:00,280 uh, connection with their body, connection to food and overall experience, 67 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:02,160 quality of life on this earth. 68 00:04:02,550 --> 00:04:06,280 Yeah, I wanna get into all of that. I do find it interesting to think about, 69 00:04:06,290 --> 00:04:08,280 which I think a lot of people maybe don't, 70 00:04:08,790 --> 00:04:13,680 that people who do happen to have addictive personalities or 71 00:04:14,100 --> 00:04:17,600 who are finding band-aids for bullet holes, let's just say Mm. 72 00:04:17,790 --> 00:04:21,280 That there is a desire to disconnect from one's body mm-hmm. . 73 00:04:21,300 --> 00:04:25,160 And then once you do that, how do you, how do you tether yourself back? 74 00:04:25,220 --> 00:04:26,960 Or maybe the tether is not even there. 75 00:04:27,020 --> 00:04:29,120 How do you find yourself to the tether to get back? 76 00:04:30,350 --> 00:04:35,160 It's a journey. Yeah. And, and we know now a lot more about trauma and how, 77 00:04:35,300 --> 00:04:35,640 you know, 78 00:04:35,640 --> 00:04:40,520 dissociative states can create a separation feeling between the body 79 00:04:40,540 --> 00:04:45,080 and the mind and how that can be adaptive in some ways can be supportive to some 80 00:04:45,080 --> 00:04:45,540 people. 81 00:04:45,540 --> 00:04:48,920 And then the recovery journey from some of that is about bringing the body and 82 00:04:48,920 --> 00:04:51,920 the mind back together, feeling like you're in sync, 83 00:04:52,110 --> 00:04:57,000 able to move through life with more grace. And that process can take a while, 84 00:04:57,590 --> 00:04:58,760 nutrition's a part of it. 85 00:04:59,140 --> 00:05:03,320 But we also think about contemplative practices like breathing and yoga, 86 00:05:04,210 --> 00:05:06,920 sleep, um, we call it lifestyle medicine. 87 00:05:06,980 --> 00:05:11,520 All the different things that we can use to bring someone back into homeostasis. 88 00:05:11,660 --> 00:05:14,640 And everyone's different. So everyone needs different things. 89 00:05:14,870 --> 00:05:19,840 Sometimes I found that the thing people are the most resistant to is 90 00:05:19,840 --> 00:05:21,560 the thing. Sometimes people need the most. 91 00:05:21,660 --> 00:05:26,240 The person who does not like yoga probably would benefit the most from yoga. 92 00:05:26,580 --> 00:05:30,720 The person who has such an aversion to certain types of foods could probably 93 00:05:30,720 --> 00:05:33,840 benefit from some of the nutrients that are in some of those foods, right? 94 00:05:33,900 --> 00:05:34,540 Mm-hmm. . 95 00:05:34,540 --> 00:05:38,040 So I always like to say the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you 96 00:05:38,040 --> 00:05:38,860 seek. 97 00:05:38,860 --> 00:05:41,120 Are you from California originally? Yes. 98 00:05:41,680 --> 00:05:44,600 I grew up in Los Angeles. I went to public school. 99 00:05:45,180 --> 00:05:45,910 Dun, dun dumb. 100 00:05:45,910 --> 00:05:47,000 Yeah, I dunno. 101 00:05:47,200 --> 00:05:49,400 the way you said that. I. 102 00:05:49,400 --> 00:05:53,880 Mean, it was a, it was a tricky time in the ear. I'm, I'm born in 1981. 103 00:05:54,280 --> 00:05:57,440 I think about 19 92, 93. 104 00:05:57,680 --> 00:06:01,760 A lot of civil unrest in Los Angeles, in, in public school. You could feel it. 105 00:06:02,680 --> 00:06:07,560 I could feel it. And so, like I grew up with some exposure to unsafety. 106 00:06:08,220 --> 00:06:11,440 And, and that was definitely something that shaped my, my lived experience. 107 00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:16,680 Learning how to like, appear tougher than I am. Learning how to wear masks, 108 00:06:17,400 --> 00:06:20,680 learning how to survive. Taking the bus in Los Angeles, 109 00:06:21,130 --> 00:06:24,880 there was also a period of time where there was some, uh, 110 00:06:24,880 --> 00:06:28,160 little rollerblading movement. I was just a little kid. And like, 111 00:06:28,160 --> 00:06:32,080 it was like rollerbladers fought with skateboarders, you know, just tension. 112 00:06:32,110 --> 00:06:35,920 Growing up in Los Angeles and learning, where do I fit in in this world? 113 00:06:36,060 --> 00:06:39,440 Who am I? How can I survive? How can I, you know, 114 00:06:39,440 --> 00:06:42,760 show up for life and feel confident when I'm really scared? Did you. 115 00:06:42,760 --> 00:06:43,593 Have a close family? 116 00:06:44,310 --> 00:06:47,800 Yeah, my dad worked a lot. And so, you know, 117 00:06:47,860 --> 00:06:52,760 he wasn't around a ton. Um, my brother's a year and a half older than me, 118 00:06:52,940 --> 00:06:56,200 so there was a natural competitive piece in growing up, 119 00:06:56,610 --> 00:07:00,880 which I think can be harmful in some cases and helpful in others. You know, 120 00:07:00,880 --> 00:07:03,240 like we're so close in age. We shared friends, 121 00:07:03,420 --> 00:07:07,600 but there was also the competitive dynamic that wasn't always great. You know, 122 00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:11,640 like you learn how to push your, uh, people close to use buttons. 123 00:07:12,260 --> 00:07:17,200 And so, um, yeah. And my, my mother, she's just such a blessing. 124 00:07:17,260 --> 00:07:22,040 My mother was a hippie and so she always had like a rebel 125 00:07:22,040 --> 00:07:26,960 spirit and a counterculture sort of attitude that I always appreciated. 126 00:07:27,010 --> 00:07:29,120 She's also from Southern California. 127 00:07:29,880 --> 00:07:32,680 I followed in her footsteps a little bit. You know, 128 00:07:32,680 --> 00:07:36,720 there was the rave scene that really took off in the late nineties here in 129 00:07:36,880 --> 00:07:41,200 Southern California. And I always wanted to be a part of something special, 130 00:07:42,080 --> 00:07:45,240 a movement of some sort. I identify with counterculture. 131 00:07:46,080 --> 00:07:51,080 I tend to have a natural spirit that rejects things that are mainstream. 132 00:07:51,460 --> 00:07:55,000 And I really aren't, I'm not like a rebel because I wanna be a rebel. Like, 133 00:07:55,000 --> 00:07:57,160 I wanna be different. Like, I genuinely wanna join. 134 00:07:57,720 --> 00:08:02,200 I genuinely wanna join like the rest of society and go along with the common 135 00:08:02,200 --> 00:08:06,000 narratives and watch all the things that everyone else watches and do all the 136 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:10,560 small talk. But I've never really been able to. Uh, but I, I'll tell you, 137 00:08:10,560 --> 00:08:15,000 when I found rave culture in 19 98, 99, 138 00:08:15,460 --> 00:08:18,240 it really like helped me, uh, uh, 139 00:08:18,390 --> 00:08:20,600 feel like I was finally a part of something. 140 00:08:21,800 --> 00:08:25,600 Probably the same way that other movements in history have brought people 141 00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:29,000 together. And it gives you this feeling of like, ah, my people, 142 00:08:29,590 --> 00:08:33,640 this is my tribe. Ah, finally I can breathe. What. 143 00:08:33,640 --> 00:08:35,800 Was it about them particularly that you liked? 144 00:08:36,620 --> 00:08:41,320 Uh, that culture? Yeah. Uh, probably the drugs. Yeah. Okay. 145 00:08:41,480 --> 00:08:46,000 I say that with a smile. Uh, I definitely, uh, connected with the music. 146 00:08:46,440 --> 00:08:50,640 I, I grew up listening to hip hop music, you know, in, in the early nineties. 147 00:08:50,700 --> 00:08:52,880 It was like, it was gangster rap, you know what I mean? 148 00:08:52,910 --> 00:08:56,360 That was the early influence. And it probably connects back to some, 149 00:08:56,430 --> 00:08:59,480 some of the things I was saying about the masks and the showing up for the 150 00:08:59,480 --> 00:09:04,360 world. Rap music was a big part of growing up for me in the nineties, right? 151 00:09:04,780 --> 00:09:07,520 And there was music from LA and there was music from New York, 152 00:09:07,580 --> 00:09:10,600 and I wanted to be from New York so bad 'cause I had never really been there. 153 00:09:11,140 --> 00:09:14,520 So I listened to people that made New York rap, and I wear the, uh, 154 00:09:14,580 --> 00:09:18,360 the clothing to match the underground hip hop scene took off in, 155 00:09:18,380 --> 00:09:20,560 in Los Angeles in the late nineties, 156 00:09:21,260 --> 00:09:25,600 and then underground hip hop merged with rave culture. 157 00:09:26,180 --> 00:09:29,560 So it wasn't just trance music, the way you think about it, 158 00:09:29,560 --> 00:09:34,280 like from the early nineties, eighties, just like underground warehouse. 159 00:09:34,380 --> 00:09:39,320 It was like counterculture electronic music merging with hip 160 00:09:39,380 --> 00:09:43,120 hop. And then we had this drum and bass movement and like, 161 00:09:43,280 --> 00:09:47,080 I really liked to stomp the ground and stay awake all night and meet other 162 00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:48,960 like-minded people. Mm. Mm-hmm. 163 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:53,280 . Yeah. Did your parents red flag you on any of that? 164 00:09:53,490 --> 00:09:56,800 Great question. I think because they both grew up, you know, 165 00:09:57,650 --> 00:10:02,520 being part of similar movements, they like accepted that. 166 00:10:02,590 --> 00:10:02,880 Like, 167 00:10:02,880 --> 00:10:06,800 they're not gonna prevent a 17 year old from being in love with a certain type 168 00:10:06,800 --> 00:10:11,040 of music. Right. Like, that's probably not good. Uh, parenting. 169 00:10:12,060 --> 00:10:15,920 But I lived by, by myself by the time I was 17. Hmm. Yeah. 170 00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:18,720 I went to U SS C in the downtown LA area, 171 00:10:19,070 --> 00:10:23,760 very fortunate to get into that school. And like my, my life dream came true, 172 00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:28,600 I moved to South Central Los Angeles . And, and so by the time I was 17, 173 00:10:28,760 --> 00:10:32,080 I had my own apartment. I had my own car, 174 00:10:32,300 --> 00:10:34,920 and I had my own illusion of adulthood. 175 00:10:35,540 --> 00:10:36,680 And, and during this time, 176 00:10:36,980 --> 00:10:41,920 did your brother and you stay close or was he thinking totally differently 177 00:10:41,920 --> 00:10:42,280 from you? 178 00:10:42,280 --> 00:10:46,400 Because I think that there is a thing where we grow up and whatever our parents 179 00:10:46,540 --> 00:10:50,080 are there, there may be a natural inclination to be the opposite of that. 180 00:10:50,260 --> 00:10:51,920 And then whatever our siblings are, 181 00:10:52,010 --> 00:10:56,270 especially depending on their relationship with your parents, right? Every, 182 00:10:56,270 --> 00:10:59,030 always trying to say, no, look at me, I'm different. Yeah. 183 00:10:59,490 --> 00:11:03,510 We had a lot of overlap, but I think I was a little more bold. Hmm. 184 00:11:03,870 --> 00:11:07,190 I think that I was real more willing to, uh, uh, 185 00:11:07,440 --> 00:11:12,190 adopt cultures and I was into fashion and music and 186 00:11:12,910 --> 00:11:15,790 probably working pretty hard to prove to the world that I'm important. 187 00:11:16,370 --> 00:11:19,590 My brother was a little bit more like, okay, this is kind of what we're doing. 188 00:11:19,600 --> 00:11:24,110 Let's go, let's be safe. He went to school in Colorado at Boulder, 189 00:11:24,610 --> 00:11:29,270 so I had a chance to go visit him a few times and check out the rave scene out 190 00:11:29,270 --> 00:11:30,590 there. We were close, 191 00:11:30,890 --> 00:11:34,790 but I think there was probably a time pretty quickly where he was like, 192 00:11:35,220 --> 00:11:37,670 this guy's going too far. Hmm. Yeah. 193 00:11:38,090 --> 00:11:39,150 Did you go too far? I went. 194 00:11:39,150 --> 00:11:39,740 Too far. 195 00:11:39,740 --> 00:11:40,500 What happened? 196 00:11:40,500 --> 00:11:43,710 Yeah. I think all was well for several years. 197 00:11:44,400 --> 00:11:48,830 Being able to sort of lead a double life with, you know, I'm a student. 198 00:11:49,290 --> 00:11:53,720 I'm from la, I'm a nice kid from a nice family. And then, 199 00:11:54,020 --> 00:11:55,000 you know, you know, 200 00:11:55,000 --> 00:11:59,800 you start staying awake for two days at a time and yeah, 201 00:11:59,810 --> 00:12:02,120 three days turning, you start on the brain. You know what I mean? 202 00:12:02,640 --> 00:12:07,400 I did okay managing the double life for many years, you know, 203 00:12:07,400 --> 00:12:08,680 and then it was like, you know, 204 00:12:08,860 --> 00:12:13,000 21 that opens a whole nother world of possibilities. 205 00:12:13,820 --> 00:12:18,280 But I was, I was bouncing around as a undergrad from major to major, 206 00:12:19,100 --> 00:12:22,640 not knowing what I wanted to do and really trying to like, stall off, 207 00:12:22,640 --> 00:12:27,040 having to make decisions. I wasn't ready to enter adulthood, 208 00:12:27,660 --> 00:12:30,280 but I wanted to be an adult, you know what I mean? 209 00:12:30,700 --> 00:12:35,320 So it was a perfect sort of smokescreen to be in school. 210 00:12:35,660 --> 00:12:39,480 And so my academic journey as an undergrad went from like, you know, 211 00:12:39,500 --> 00:12:44,480 the classic four year thing to the five year thing. And then it's like, 212 00:12:44,620 --> 00:12:48,800 uh, I dropped these classes, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to max it out. 213 00:12:49,060 --> 00:12:53,480 My dad got fed up at some point and I had to like, pay for my own life. 214 00:12:54,220 --> 00:12:59,080 And I was hustling and doing the things that were necessary in that world to 215 00:12:59,080 --> 00:13:02,960 get that illusion of adulthood. I don't regret any of it. 216 00:13:03,080 --> 00:13:05,960 I get to tell my story sometimes, and I hold it near and dear. 217 00:13:06,260 --> 00:13:09,960 It doesn't come from a place of shame. It comes from a place of like, yeah, I, 218 00:13:10,100 --> 00:13:13,840 I'm a survivor. Um, I was part of something. Um, 219 00:13:13,940 --> 00:13:17,480 but that rave culture definitely chewed up and spit out a lot of people, 220 00:13:17,980 --> 00:13:18,960 you know, because. 221 00:13:18,960 --> 00:13:19,630 Of the drugs. 222 00:13:19,630 --> 00:13:21,320 Because of the drugs. Yeah. 223 00:13:21,780 --> 00:13:25,160 And this was also at the time of the opioid crises, 224 00:13:25,420 --> 00:13:29,120 the first wave of the opioid epidemic. So it was like, you know, 225 00:13:29,120 --> 00:13:32,840 really well-intentioned young people that just want to connect and party. 226 00:13:32,980 --> 00:13:36,840 And then all of a sudden there's like Oxycontin eighties on the street 227 00:13:36,840 --> 00:13:41,200 everywhere. And this is now right around 2000, 2001, 228 00:13:41,300 --> 00:13:45,840 2002, um, still in school, managing the double life, 229 00:13:46,170 --> 00:13:47,080 doing pretty well. 230 00:13:47,310 --> 00:13:49,960 Were you at that point an, an addict, do you think? 231 00:13:50,410 --> 00:13:55,000 Great question. I'm gonna go ahead and say yes. I, it's safe to say that I, I, 232 00:13:55,280 --> 00:13:59,200 I have a genetic legacy on my mom's side, and so I, 233 00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:04,080 I would venture to say that I crossed that line probably pretty early. 234 00:14:04,700 --> 00:14:07,440 It was like pretty obvious to me that like, you know, 235 00:14:07,790 --> 00:14:10,800 most people on Wednesday when they woke up, 236 00:14:10,800 --> 00:14:15,000 weren't thinking about the rave on Saturday, weren't preparing, 237 00:14:15,620 --> 00:14:18,600 you know, and, and doing all those things. And, and, and I just, 238 00:14:18,680 --> 00:14:22,440 I do have a classic story in, in many ways of like, you know, 239 00:14:22,500 --> 00:14:24,440 you're able to do it successfully in the beginning, 240 00:14:24,500 --> 00:14:27,320 and then it comes a little more often than you do it when you didn't want to. 241 00:14:27,620 --> 00:14:31,040 And then you're doing things every day and then you're trying to quit and then 242 00:14:31,040 --> 00:14:35,200 you're not, and Right. And that definitely was a part of my story. Did. 243 00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:39,600 You have an awareness of, oh, I shouldn't be doing this? Or was it more like, 244 00:14:40,120 --> 00:14:44,320 I now have a habitual pattern that I have to feed and 245 00:14:44,980 --> 00:14:47,560 so that other voice gets quieter and quieter? 246 00:14:48,270 --> 00:14:49,480 It's a really good question. 247 00:14:49,960 --> 00:14:53,920 I think that I always made an assumption that I knew, 248 00:14:54,040 --> 00:14:57,360 I knew I had gone deep. I knew that I was going deep into the world, 249 00:14:57,500 --> 00:15:01,680 but I made an assumption that it would be easy to change directions at some 250 00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:04,120 point. Mm-hmm. , I kind of assumed that like, you know, 251 00:15:04,230 --> 00:15:06,360 this is what we do when we're in our early twenties. 252 00:15:06,910 --> 00:15:11,560 This is what life looks like. And then you sort of grow out of it, you know, 253 00:15:11,560 --> 00:15:16,280 and you sort of decide enough is enough, maybe fall in love, get married, 254 00:15:16,330 --> 00:15:21,080 start a family, get a, like a salary job sort of thing, which I've never had, 255 00:15:21,080 --> 00:15:25,560 by the way, , and just assume that it would be outgrown. 256 00:15:25,620 --> 00:15:28,640 And I think that that's what my, my parents assume to, 257 00:15:29,380 --> 00:15:33,720 and it's a safe assumption that people that have willpower will be able to 258 00:15:34,040 --> 00:15:38,800 exercise their willpower at some point and make some critical life choices. It. 259 00:15:38,800 --> 00:15:39,880 Is interesting too, though, 260 00:15:40,030 --> 00:15:44,760 when I talked with people who have a family unit around them that is, 261 00:15:45,450 --> 00:15:48,720 let's put quotes around this, a healthy family unit where, you know, 262 00:15:48,720 --> 00:15:50,520 things look normal. Mm-hmm. , uh, 263 00:15:50,670 --> 00:15:53,400 that nobody wants to say anything. 264 00:15:53,700 --> 00:15:57,280 The elephant in the room starts tiny and then it keeps growing until it's taking 265 00:15:57,300 --> 00:15:58,133 up the whole house. 266 00:15:58,500 --> 00:16:01,160 But nobody wants to say anything either because they don't know how, 267 00:16:01,350 --> 00:16:03,280 they don't have the skills. Right. They don't know how, 268 00:16:03,710 --> 00:16:08,040 they are worried that they'll be the bad, the bad guy. 269 00:16:08,510 --> 00:16:12,440 They don't want people who love them to suddenly not love them because of what, 270 00:16:12,440 --> 00:16:16,000 because addiction is a monster. Yeah. And it, 271 00:16:16,300 --> 00:16:20,000 it will do what it needs to do. Yes. To feed the habit. Yes. 272 00:16:20,620 --> 00:16:24,080 To such extremes in some cases. Yes. 273 00:16:25,700 --> 00:16:28,240 As I'm listening to you and, and looking at you, 274 00:16:28,400 --> 00:16:33,280 I just had like a moment of additional vulnerability crack open and I wanna add 275 00:16:33,520 --> 00:16:38,480 a, a layer to my story. I think it's safe to say that I also, 276 00:16:38,700 --> 00:16:40,280 you know, born in 1981, 277 00:16:41,270 --> 00:16:44,960 grew up with a lot of ultra processed foods. 278 00:16:45,500 --> 00:16:50,000 And I had that early addiction pattern before the drugs and alcohol 279 00:16:50,430 --> 00:16:52,400 with highly palatable foods. Right. 280 00:16:52,550 --> 00:16:54,800 That are definitely made to be addictive. Yes. 281 00:16:54,940 --> 00:16:56,960 In case anybody just heard that statement and went, huh. 282 00:16:57,740 --> 00:17:01,240 But those foods were genetically modified to make you crave them. 283 00:17:01,590 --> 00:17:06,080 They're engineered for palatability Yeah. For optimal reward. Mm-hmm. 284 00:17:06,120 --> 00:17:08,600 in the brain to register, make 'em memorable, 285 00:17:08,700 --> 00:17:12,880 and get someone to repeat the behavior again. Right. Boot crack. Yeah. So that, 286 00:17:12,880 --> 00:17:16,880 that was a big part of my story. And I lived in a body that was uncomfortable. 287 00:17:17,380 --> 00:17:21,040 And when I found stimulants and raving and dancing, 288 00:17:21,780 --> 00:17:26,080 it did something for me that was significant that I usually don't talk about. 289 00:17:26,420 --> 00:17:29,720 And it feels important today. Like that was a big part of it as well. 290 00:17:29,790 --> 00:17:34,240 Like being able to not be hungry all the time and have other 291 00:17:34,560 --> 00:17:39,240 interests. Oftentimes men don't talk about body image. Right. 292 00:17:39,340 --> 00:17:41,360 It feels like something they wanna avoid. 293 00:17:41,380 --> 00:17:44,360 And I probably have wanted to avoid it at parts in my life, 294 00:17:44,420 --> 00:17:47,560 but as a practitioner and as someone that works in recovery, 295 00:17:48,150 --> 00:17:51,320 it's important to share. Yeah. I had that too. 296 00:17:51,900 --> 00:17:56,640 So needless to say, even though I knew things were like getting tricky, 297 00:17:57,150 --> 00:18:00,960 like there weren't a lot of really easy options. Alternatives. 298 00:18:01,380 --> 00:18:02,840 And zero conversation around it. 299 00:18:03,030 --> 00:18:05,200 Zero conversation at that time. Yes. Still. 300 00:18:05,200 --> 00:18:09,480 Barely there now, but yes. And that was an era I would say. 301 00:18:10,200 --> 00:18:11,880 I think the seventies were starting to do it, 302 00:18:11,980 --> 00:18:16,160 but into the eighties and nineties, this be an excessive person, 303 00:18:17,540 --> 00:18:21,440 be concerned about what you look like or how you smell or who you're talking to. 304 00:18:21,780 --> 00:18:23,400 It suddenly that rhetoric, 305 00:18:23,450 --> 00:18:26,880 which had been primarily focused on women and girls, 306 00:18:27,840 --> 00:18:32,640 suddenly they saw a huge financial gain from making men feel like shit. 307 00:18:32,640 --> 00:18:34,760 Mm-hmm. and boys feel like shit about themselves. Mm-hmm. 308 00:18:34,800 --> 00:18:36,840 . And that was the boom of that. 309 00:18:37,580 --> 00:18:40,400 If you can make people feel insecure, they're more likely to spend money. 310 00:18:40,960 --> 00:18:41,250 Absolutely. 311 00:18:41,250 --> 00:18:42,083 Right. 312 00:18:42,570 --> 00:18:43,100 Right. 313 00:18:43,100 --> 00:18:45,000 The worse you feel, the more you spend. 314 00:18:45,180 --> 00:18:49,600 The more susceptible. Mm-hmm. Hmm. So yeah, that was a, a part of it. 315 00:18:49,820 --> 00:18:54,680 And then when it like, started to feel serious, like, 316 00:18:54,700 --> 00:18:57,840 oh my God, like actually I'm, I might not finish college. 317 00:18:58,460 --> 00:19:02,160 It was like really clear, like, oh no, I'm on academic probation right now. 318 00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:06,360 I don't have units. My dad's cutting me off. Where's this headed? 319 00:19:06,820 --> 00:19:09,880 You know what I mean? Gret row. Yeah. And it was pretty obvious like, oh, 320 00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:14,560 I need to, you know, get it together. And I tried, I tried, you know, 321 00:19:14,560 --> 00:19:18,440 like the new semester, you buy the new books and get a new backpack and get the, 322 00:19:18,660 --> 00:19:23,480 get the pens and I'm all ready to show up and I could like clean it up for a few 323 00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:25,480 days. Right. But it would always go back. 324 00:19:25,780 --> 00:19:29,640 Was there anything that was sparking your interest academically or were you just 325 00:19:29,900 --> 00:19:30,733 not interested? 326 00:19:31,390 --> 00:19:35,080 Such a good question. I was bouncing around. I have like a, 327 00:19:35,240 --> 00:19:37,240 a a business side to me. I couldn't, 328 00:19:37,560 --> 00:19:41,280 I couldn't make it in the U S C Marshall School of Business. Right. 329 00:19:41,340 --> 00:19:43,600 It was pretty obvious that I wasn't gonna compete there. 330 00:19:44,360 --> 00:19:48,360 I bounced around to the music industry 'cause I was in rave culture and in 331 00:19:48,360 --> 00:19:52,720 nightlife and I had friends and we'd put on a few events and I thought that 332 00:19:52,720 --> 00:19:56,200 would be a career trajectory for me. If I'm honest, looking back on it now, 333 00:19:56,820 --> 00:20:01,040 it wasn't that that was my truest, truest purpose. It was like, 334 00:20:01,040 --> 00:20:04,680 that would be the path that would allow me to keep getting loaded to be in that 335 00:20:05,040 --> 00:20:07,640 industry. Yeah. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah. And I didn't, 336 00:20:07,760 --> 00:20:09,640 I couldn't hang there either. Yeah. 337 00:20:09,720 --> 00:20:13,600 I was about to flunk out and then it was kind of like, you know, 338 00:20:13,730 --> 00:20:17,480 where is this headed? And then I started getting in trouble. Yeah. 339 00:20:17,700 --> 00:20:21,800 2005. I caught two cases. Uh, explain. 340 00:20:21,800 --> 00:20:23,680 What that means. 'cause people don't know the language. Yeah. 341 00:20:23,840 --> 00:20:28,360 I had my first, I had a d u I, it was, uh, the, 342 00:20:28,980 --> 00:20:32,760 uh, day before my best friend was gonna go to rehab. So we were celebrating, 343 00:20:32,980 --> 00:20:37,080 we call it prehab know. Yeah. My, 344 00:20:37,460 --> 00:20:39,680 my grandfather had passed away. 345 00:20:40,340 --> 00:20:45,280 My grandfather was a sober member of a 12 step program for many years. 346 00:20:45,300 --> 00:20:46,880 So what's his first name? Gil. 347 00:20:47,420 --> 00:20:49,720 Gil. Yeah. Hi Gil. I like to say hi. 348 00:20:50,030 --> 00:20:54,800 Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and yeah, he, he, it's funny, 349 00:20:55,060 --> 00:20:55,580 he, he, 350 00:20:55,580 --> 00:21:00,280 he was really into recovery and I got a chance to see like some of his little 351 00:21:00,280 --> 00:21:03,560 journals and some of the things he underlined some of the things that resonated 352 00:21:03,560 --> 00:21:08,200 with him for his journey. I did a overnight stay in jail. Well, 353 00:21:08,520 --> 00:21:11,720 I missed his funeral. And that was like the beginning of like, okay, 354 00:21:11,830 --> 00:21:16,480 this is like ridiculous. Right. And I had my first D u I case, 355 00:21:17,210 --> 00:21:20,520 which was a little messy 'cause there was a car accident and I was at fault. 356 00:21:20,780 --> 00:21:21,840 People involved. 357 00:21:22,570 --> 00:21:26,720 There was charges and it was like a really clear sign, 358 00:21:27,070 --> 00:21:30,600 wake up, consequences are here, get it together. 359 00:21:31,140 --> 00:21:35,720 And I think most people would assume that that's what's needed for someone to 360 00:21:35,720 --> 00:21:38,600 get it together. And, you know, I assumed that too. 361 00:21:38,800 --> 00:21:42,680 I was like kind of relieved that night. I was like, ah, let's get it together. 362 00:21:42,980 --> 00:21:46,600 You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go start my life over. 363 00:21:47,060 --> 00:21:47,520 And you. 364 00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:50,560 Didn't have to come to the table. It was the table was brought to you. 365 00:21:50,670 --> 00:21:54,080 It's brought to me. But needless to say, I couldn't, I couldn't pull it off. 366 00:21:54,220 --> 00:21:57,720 And that's what makes me someone that identifies as a person in long term 367 00:21:58,520 --> 00:22:03,000 recovery that has Right. Like what people would call a substance use disorder. 368 00:22:03,070 --> 00:22:05,600 Like, I, I, I wanted to stop and I kept going. 369 00:22:06,060 --> 00:22:08,720 So it took another year or so, 370 00:22:09,540 --> 00:22:13,720 and like an maybe there was a rehab in there or two. And then I, 371 00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:18,240 I ended up getting in trouble again, you know, on driving again, 372 00:22:18,460 --> 00:22:22,400 all my, all my trauma was on the road One time a couple years ago. 373 00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:25,720 I actually went to a yoga retreat somewhere. And, uh, 374 00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:30,800 I went to go get away for a few days and I had just leased a new car and 375 00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:35,440 someone bashed it, like, while I was there. And it really affected me deeply. 376 00:22:36,140 --> 00:22:38,960 And, and I realized that I had a lot of like, accidents. 377 00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:40,880 'cause I'm from la I was into car culture. 378 00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:43,360 I like playing loud rap music when I drive. 379 00:22:43,760 --> 00:22:45,520 I like making the car with the tinted windows. 380 00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:49,200 I spent all my time on the road and it was just like, car trauma, accidents, 381 00:22:49,560 --> 00:22:50,060 accidents. 382 00:22:50,060 --> 00:22:54,280 And I remember one night I did a little inventory of all my Los Angeles based 383 00:22:54,500 --> 00:22:58,360 car drama. Like all the little incidents I had on the road. And it was ex, 384 00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:02,200 I mean, I had like, um, fights with tow truck drivers. You know what I'm saying? 385 00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:07,200 I had like a long list of just car drama and car trauma. Uh, 386 00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:08,240 and it all made sense. 387 00:23:08,340 --> 00:23:12,880 You know why I live a block from where I work and I 388 00:23:13,180 --> 00:23:17,680 put the least amount of miles on my car as possible. Now you mean now? Yeah. I, 389 00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:20,880 I, I actually lived a block from here for many years. Um, 390 00:23:20,900 --> 00:23:23,680 I'm a little further now, but, uh, needless to say, 391 00:23:23,680 --> 00:23:27,720 it was like another episode on the road, another incident. And that, 392 00:23:27,790 --> 00:23:32,440 that was when it, that's what it really took for me. Um, and I, I, I, 393 00:23:32,540 --> 00:23:37,240 did you have to go to prison? I caught some charges, yeah. And I spent 2006, 394 00:23:37,900 --> 00:23:40,720 the greater part of 2006 at Supermax, 395 00:23:40,930 --> 00:23:45,560 which is North County Corrections. And yeah, I mean, it was like, 396 00:23:46,390 --> 00:23:49,200 just like anything else when you, when you get there, it's a shock. 397 00:23:49,700 --> 00:23:54,160 And then you adapt quickly. And then pretty soon I learned how to, you know, 398 00:23:55,390 --> 00:23:58,800 meander, make it work, thrive even mm-hmm. , right? Mm-hmm. 399 00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:00,520 to the point where like, when it was time to go, 400 00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:03,480 I was really excited to go, but I definitely was like, I could stay. 401 00:24:03,870 --> 00:24:07,280 Like I understand how people get used to that life. Uh, 402 00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:08,840 but one of the trickiest parts of, 403 00:24:09,020 --> 00:24:12,400 or I should say interesting parts about that journey was like, yeah, 404 00:24:12,460 --> 00:24:16,800 the food came back. It's like now, like, what do you got when you're, you know, 405 00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:20,320 locked up? It's like you got the honey bun and you've got the, oh, it's a. 406 00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:21,880 Carbohydrate dream in prison. 407 00:24:22,060 --> 00:24:25,200 You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And there's like, you know, you, 408 00:24:25,220 --> 00:24:29,080 you go to store and you learn how to make food and these big 409 00:24:29,990 --> 00:24:34,520 soup concoctions, and it's the currency. And so, like, you know, 410 00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:38,800 with the alcohol and the drugs gone, it's like now, although that's. 411 00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:40,120 Readily available in prison. 412 00:24:40,860 --> 00:24:44,120 Uh, there was definitely some, some access. I, 413 00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:47,880 I was at a place where there wasn't a lot. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. 414 00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:49,920 I was at a place where it wasn't a lot, 415 00:24:50,020 --> 00:24:54,920 it was definitely more prevalent in some of the long-term state facilities for 416 00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:55,180 sure. 417 00:24:55,180 --> 00:24:58,440 Did they put you in a program while you were in prison? I. 418 00:24:58,740 --> 00:25:02,800 Was in, like I said, in, in a supermax mm-hmm. , 419 00:25:02,800 --> 00:25:06,560 which is part of the county system. It's by Magic Mountain, 420 00:25:06,580 --> 00:25:09,040 if you know where it is. So it feels far and it feels remote, 421 00:25:09,420 --> 00:25:13,160 but it's not a place where people do long stretches. Right. 422 00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:18,160 But I meant did they say, oh, you have a history of drug and alcohol addiction, 423 00:25:18,490 --> 00:25:21,600 we're gonna put you in a program, because some, sometimes in prison, 424 00:25:22,270 --> 00:25:26,240 it's an understanding that you immediately get put into a sobriety program. 425 00:25:26,870 --> 00:25:31,800 Yeah, I, I think that I had worked out in court that I would go to one after Ah, 426 00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:34,880 got it. Yeah. Got it, got it. So I transitioned from there, 427 00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:40,040 straight released into a program, uh, in West la uh, 428 00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:43,480 a Jewish rehab. Yeah. A nonprofit place, 429 00:25:43,480 --> 00:25:46,000 like literally few blocks from where I went to high school. 430 00:25:46,060 --> 00:25:48,880 So I was like back on my home turf mm-hmm. . 431 00:25:49,020 --> 00:25:52,200 But if I could tell one story about incarceration, 432 00:25:52,260 --> 00:25:54,880 it was just like the hustle and bustle for, for the, 433 00:25:55,100 --> 00:25:58,680 for like the food as the currency. You know what I mean? Like, 434 00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:01,120 I would wa I washed trays, 435 00:26:01,710 --> 00:26:06,440 food trays all day long for chocolate muffins. There was a time when I, like, I, 436 00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:08,880 you know, I had to do what I had to do to get like, some coffee, 437 00:26:09,500 --> 00:26:12,200 you know what I mean? And like, we'd drink it as thick as mud. 438 00:26:12,430 --> 00:26:16,160 I've always been interested in like addiction, 439 00:26:16,230 --> 00:26:20,360 like eating behaviors and how food interacts with 440 00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:24,480 substance use disorder, mental health body image. 441 00:26:25,020 --> 00:26:29,160 And it really like gave me some fundamental lived experience that would allow me 442 00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:30,680 to see things a little bit differently. 443 00:26:31,580 --> 00:26:33,560 Was that the beginning of a light bulb going off for you, 444 00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:35,480 of what you wanted to do? Or were. 445 00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:36,560 You still It was Okay. It was, 446 00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:41,760 I was able to view food as like a major unspoken tool of oppression 447 00:26:42,100 --> 00:26:46,040 in our society. It, it's really easy to, you know, 448 00:26:46,350 --> 00:26:51,000 control people with psychological warfare. We know that. Right. 449 00:26:51,020 --> 00:26:53,600 You give people things to think about and things to fight about. 450 00:26:54,020 --> 00:26:58,920 But there are also ways to keep groups marginalized through limited 451 00:26:59,220 --> 00:27:03,120 access to quality food. Right? Absolutely. And, and it, 'cause. 452 00:27:03,120 --> 00:27:05,680 It relates to body function, brain function. 453 00:27:05,780 --> 00:27:09,320 You keep people obese and tired and sickly. 454 00:27:09,830 --> 00:27:11,640 They're much easier to control. 455 00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:15,800 There's a reason why there are fast food restaurants on every corner. That's. 456 00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:17,400 Right. That's right. Some of the. 457 00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:18,920 Feeding that pace. 458 00:27:19,900 --> 00:27:23,400 And, and it's, it's a, it's a uncomfortable conversation to have. You know, 459 00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:28,200 I've done research now on trauma and addictions and looking at 460 00:27:28,300 --> 00:27:33,120 how stress, trauma and adversity drive addiction, like eating and how stress, 461 00:27:33,120 --> 00:27:37,440 trauma and adversity are also related to socioeconomic status and the 462 00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:40,160 neighborhood people live in. And then there's the food environment. 463 00:27:40,180 --> 00:27:43,640 So if you get people growing up in an environment that's unsafe, 464 00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,440 there's limited resources and those things are on every corner, 465 00:27:46,980 --> 00:27:48,480 that's probably what's gonna happen. 466 00:27:48,780 --> 00:27:49,360 You know, 467 00:27:49,360 --> 00:27:53,520 I used to live in Los Filas and in Los Filas every block had fruit trees. Hmm. 468 00:27:53,780 --> 00:27:56,480 And, you know, I would walk the neighborhood and I, 469 00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:01,440 I remember I'd always pick fruit and bring it home or eat it on the fly. 470 00:28:01,620 --> 00:28:06,600 And I remember thinking then how odd it was that not everyone 471 00:28:06,620 --> 00:28:08,600 was doing that. Right. And I thought, 472 00:28:08,780 --> 00:28:13,160 why is nobody eating of this gorgeous food? Yes. And it, 473 00:28:13,500 --> 00:28:17,240 but they would stop at nothing to get fries. That's, that's, let's be honest, 474 00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:18,640 McDonald's fries are good. 475 00:28:18,680 --> 00:28:21,760 I haven't had them in a very long time 'cause allergies, blah, blah, blah. 476 00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:26,200 But they're, they're made to make your brain go, holy. 477 00:28:26,300 --> 00:28:28,280 Cow. They know what they're doing over there. Yeah. 478 00:28:28,510 --> 00:28:29,640 They definitely know what they're doing. 479 00:28:29,980 --> 00:28:31,240 Why this a billion dollar industry? 480 00:28:31,260 --> 00:28:35,320 That's right. That's right. I often too wonder like, you know, 481 00:28:35,740 --> 00:28:36,760 why don't people, 482 00:28:37,500 --> 00:28:42,440 why doesn't this yellow nectarine get someone's attention the 483 00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:43,273 way that it should? 484 00:28:43,460 --> 00:28:47,000 And it's because the neurochemical reward associated with those other things 485 00:28:47,180 --> 00:28:49,560 are, is so much higher that it, 486 00:28:49,580 --> 00:28:54,360 it almost to the point where like a 10 year old might not even see the yellow 487 00:28:54,670 --> 00:28:59,000 nectarine that's on the thing because it's not salient enough. And I, 488 00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:00,240 I remember like, you know, 489 00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:04,640 getting passionate about health and nutrition and having a transformation, 490 00:29:04,850 --> 00:29:06,840 maybe I'll touch on that a little bit, but being, 491 00:29:06,970 --> 00:29:09,360 being in graduate school to become a dietician, 492 00:29:09,820 --> 00:29:12,160 and then there was all these programs to like, you know, 493 00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:15,960 teach kids how to eat fruits and vegetables or give 'em like a gardening program 494 00:29:16,500 --> 00:29:20,320 and like, when you actually collect data on these things, like none of 'em work. 495 00:29:20,710 --> 00:29:22,600 Like they're all helpful interventions, 496 00:29:22,940 --> 00:29:25,880 but they're not statistically significant things. Right. Like, 497 00:29:25,980 --> 00:29:29,840 you can't really compete with those other players in the game. Is. 498 00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:31,720 That an action figure in that tree? You. 499 00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:32,553 Did . 500 00:29:33,420 --> 00:29:35,880 So how do you feel was a genius invention? 501 00:29:36,380 --> 00:29:41,040 So genius. Yeah. Yeah. So I got passionate about the food world. 502 00:29:41,340 --> 00:29:46,120 And that was pretty much the minute you left incarceration or was it something 503 00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:48,760 that was a trickle that turned into an ocean? Well. 504 00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:52,800 It was a trickle that turned into an ocean. I started my life over at age 24. 505 00:29:53,110 --> 00:29:56,760 This was now 2006. And no one, you know, 506 00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:58,480 a big part of my career has been bringing, 507 00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:01,280 bringing nutrition education into addiction treatment. 508 00:30:01,660 --> 00:30:03,440 And like sometimes I wish, 509 00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:07,640 I wonder like what would've been like if there would've been someone for me When 510 00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:11,520 I got there in 2006, intuitively my, 511 00:30:11,660 --> 00:30:14,440 my body just started telling me what to do. 512 00:30:15,260 --> 00:30:18,880 And it wasn't that complicated. It was more like, I don't feel well. 513 00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:24,400 I am not well. My skin is pale. I I don't sleep great. 514 00:30:25,780 --> 00:30:29,000 I'm anxious. And so, like, the obvious thing to do was like, 515 00:30:29,100 --> 00:30:32,960 do less of the things that you've been doing and do more of the things that 516 00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:33,793 you've never done. 517 00:30:34,100 --> 00:30:38,920 And so I did have a very intuitive positive view toward nutrition, 518 00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:41,120 which was like, it wasn't so much like, all right, 519 00:30:41,180 --> 00:30:44,240 now you need to focus on not eating this and not eating this and not eating 520 00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:45,360 this. I really did, 521 00:30:45,740 --> 00:30:50,640 as I started my life over have this deep curiosity for all the foods that I had 522 00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:54,360 never really eaten. Right. You think about like a lentil or a pumpkin seed. 523 00:30:54,750 --> 00:30:58,600 Different varieties of colorful fruits and vegetables. Like, you know, 524 00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:01,000 I had had exposures to these things, 525 00:31:01,460 --> 00:31:06,400 but I had never leaned into them and viewed them as potentially helpful to 526 00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:07,400 my mental health journey. 527 00:31:07,990 --> 00:31:11,720 It's weird too. I think I I have two. I don't wanna forget. Also, 528 00:31:11,780 --> 00:31:15,400 was it hard to stay sober once you were out? But my, 529 00:31:15,540 --> 00:31:17,120 the thing that was just popped in my head, 530 00:31:17,790 --> 00:31:20,920 it's interesting how much language around, and we've talked about this, 531 00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:24,000 just you and I before the language around food of, you know, 532 00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:25,600 guilty pleasure or this. Mm. 533 00:31:25,780 --> 00:31:30,480 But there's a lot of shame in even healthy eating because I feel if I don't eat 534 00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:34,960 this healthy thing, I feel shame. But the body isn't really, 535 00:31:34,980 --> 00:31:37,680 the brain isn't really registering one for the other. 536 00:31:37,830 --> 00:31:40,040 It's just registering the shame. Hmm. 537 00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:43,920 I always tell people the, the, the food won't kill you, but the guilt, 538 00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:45,880 shame and remorse will. Right, right. 539 00:31:46,790 --> 00:31:51,200 Some of those thinking patterns that lead to emotions can be more 540 00:31:51,590 --> 00:31:54,480 deleterious to health sometimes than certain foods. 541 00:31:54,540 --> 00:31:58,120 Of course there are people that have strong reactions to certain foods and 542 00:31:58,120 --> 00:31:59,520 that's a different story. Sure. 543 00:31:59,630 --> 00:32:01,960 Yeah. Which then since that's a whole other, that's, 544 00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,160 that's that's a whole other thing. . 545 00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:06,440 So was it hard to stay sober when you got out? 546 00:32:06,860 --> 00:32:10,000 I'm gonna say yes and no. I, 547 00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:14,960 I kind of had a little bit of a head start 'cause I had been programming for a 548 00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:18,920 little while and I ended up sort of starting my life over right there in my 549 00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:23,800 backyard. And I, I had hope and I had curiosity, 550 00:32:23,950 --> 00:32:27,200 like, what could, what's possible for me? Like, I'm gonna, 551 00:32:27,260 --> 00:32:28,960 I'm gonna stop telling all the stories. 552 00:32:29,100 --> 00:32:33,560 And I stopped contacting a lot of people and just started my life over. 553 00:32:34,060 --> 00:32:35,680 And I had a deep, 554 00:32:35,870 --> 00:32:40,240 deep sense of hope that I could recreate a life that was meaningful. I did. 555 00:32:40,620 --> 00:32:43,840 And a lot of that came from recovery and listening to people talk and share 556 00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:47,480 their stories. Uh, of course there's like always that feeling of like, 557 00:32:47,580 --> 00:32:52,000 I'm a convicted felon, you know, I had to like register as a narcotics offender. 558 00:32:52,370 --> 00:32:55,920 Right. And this feeling of like, I'm in the system. Can I, 559 00:32:56,300 --> 00:33:00,480 can I make this work call every day to find out if I was gonna get tested? 560 00:33:00,990 --> 00:33:04,280 That went on for three years and eight months I couldn't leave Los Angeles 561 00:33:04,460 --> 00:33:07,480 County. It was definitely that. 562 00:33:07,750 --> 00:33:10,000 Hard to help people move on to, 563 00:33:10,540 --> 00:33:14,040 to a new life if they're constantly being reminded of their old life. That's. 564 00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:15,000 Right. That's right. 565 00:33:15,180 --> 00:33:19,720 But the recovery world allowed me to feel hopeful and to 566 00:33:20,070 --> 00:33:24,720 like just get into wellness. Yeah. And that's what I did. 567 00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:26,560 And other people around me weren't, like, 568 00:33:26,750 --> 00:33:30,960 that wasn't a thing that everyone was doing nowadays. Like, you know, in, in, 569 00:33:31,100 --> 00:33:34,480 in addiction treatment, there's places that are very wellness focused. 570 00:33:35,300 --> 00:33:40,200 It was like me going outta my way to like get, you know, 571 00:33:40,410 --> 00:33:43,720 water and sunlight and to eat vegetables. 572 00:33:44,060 --> 00:33:47,640 And I would go to my parents' house and my mom, she, 573 00:33:47,700 --> 00:33:52,480 she knew that I was on this path and she would like cut up vegetables for me so 574 00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:56,320 that when I came by , see there was food for me, so sweet. 575 00:33:56,460 --> 00:33:58,760 And I didn't have a lot of money. Yeah. You know. 576 00:33:59,110 --> 00:34:03,480 That was gonna be my next question is if the people who were important to you in 577 00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:07,080 your life, I mean, they're the people that we know, these people are fun, 578 00:34:07,100 --> 00:34:09,960 but I have to let them go because if I'm gonna rise to the occasion, 579 00:34:10,510 --> 00:34:13,240 they're anchors on my shoes. Yeah. Yeah. 580 00:34:13,500 --> 00:34:17,520 But to know that there are people that are really, they're, 581 00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:20,680 they're there with the hand up and they're there with the hugs and they're there 582 00:34:20,680 --> 00:34:21,920 saying, you can do this. 583 00:34:22,390 --> 00:34:26,880 Yeah. There's sometimes this assumption that only people that have addiction or 584 00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:31,360 alcohol journeys understand people that have similar journeys. And, 585 00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:33,000 and for the most part, there's truth to that. 586 00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:36,520 A lot of people just totally don't get it. But there are people who, 587 00:34:36,620 --> 00:34:40,480 who get it out there. And I definitely encountered a few who didn't. 588 00:34:40,820 --> 00:34:44,600 And I remember being like a year and a half separated from alcohol and hanging 589 00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:47,840 out with a close friend, and he was like, so like, does this mean like, 590 00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:50,520 you're never gonna drink with me? You know? And like, 591 00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:52,080 I remember feeling really unsafe. 592 00:34:52,190 --> 00:34:56,040 Like there was someone that was supposed to have my corner that was pressuring 593 00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:58,120 me to drink with him. And I remember like, 594 00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:00,440 I don't think I ever talked to that guy ever since. Like, 595 00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:03,760 I severed ties with him. But after a few years, I remember thinking, 596 00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:07,120 I don't think that he genuinely wanted something bad for me. 597 00:35:07,500 --> 00:35:10,000 He genuinely didn't understand what I was dealing with. 598 00:35:10,350 --> 00:35:15,160 Also, I think that in the face of folks who are in sobriety or who just aren't 599 00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:18,640 interested in drinking or doing the thing, or drug drugging, whatever it is, 600 00:35:19,190 --> 00:35:23,760 that if, if you don't do it, that mirror on them is so. 601 00:35:24,340 --> 00:35:25,173 Yes. Hot. 602 00:35:25,580 --> 00:35:29,760 Yes. That it makes them panic and say, oh, come on. You're, 603 00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:31,360 you're gonna drink someday. Right? Yes. 604 00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:35,640 Because the idea that you can go an entire lifetime without doing it. Yes. 605 00:35:35,710 --> 00:35:36,560 What does that mean about. 606 00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:41,000 Themselves? That's right. That's right. Very good point. Yeah. 607 00:35:41,540 --> 00:35:42,680 So yeah, I mean, I, 608 00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:47,560 I definitely like built a new network and that was difficult. 609 00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:52,000 I went back to school, uh, to finish. So it took me, 610 00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,880 I think it was a total of seven and a half years. There was a, 611 00:35:55,910 --> 00:35:58,040 like a one and a half year break in there mm-hmm. . 612 00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:01,480 And I had like 20 units left that I had to finish. And I, 613 00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:04,840 I remember going back and I had to get my G p A up to a 2.0, 614 00:36:05,090 --> 00:36:08,480 which is like the bare minimum to graduate. So I, I was like, 615 00:36:08,660 --> 00:36:12,560 my life was starting over. I'm into nutrition, I'm starting to exercise. 616 00:36:13,340 --> 00:36:16,920 I'm having rapid transformations in my body and in my mental health, 617 00:36:17,180 --> 00:36:21,600 people are like noticing me way different. My energy is totally different. 618 00:36:21,980 --> 00:36:25,360 I'm starting to give off safe vibes to people. 619 00:36:25,780 --> 00:36:30,720 It was exciting to go take those last few classes and get, uh, 620 00:36:30,740 --> 00:36:33,920 my undergraduate after, like, it being on hold. 621 00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,760 I wasn't sure if I would get a chance to finish. So that was a, 622 00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:42,480 a big milestone and what a moment it was. But then of course I thought, well, 623 00:36:42,540 --> 00:36:44,400 now that I have an undergraduate degree, 624 00:36:44,420 --> 00:36:47,280 the whole world's gonna just be lining up to give me a job. 625 00:36:47,900 --> 00:36:51,880 And I was definitely met with some disappointment. 'cause you know, the, 626 00:36:52,140 --> 00:36:55,680 the box that says, have you ever been convicted of a felony when it's a yes. 627 00:36:55,740 --> 00:36:59,280 And you have to like, explain it. And, and especially in that case, 628 00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:03,080 they were like, now these we're looking at like, you know, 629 00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:06,840 18 years ago mm-hmm. . It's pretty, it's, 630 00:37:06,900 --> 00:37:10,320 I'm comfortable explaining that. Not that I need to 'cause I work for myself, 631 00:37:10,740 --> 00:37:14,360 but when it's 18 months ago, it's a different conversation with someone. Right. 632 00:37:14,660 --> 00:37:18,880 So I had a difficult time finding my way. What am I gonna do? Mm-hmm. 633 00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:19,460 . Um, 634 00:37:19,460 --> 00:37:23,880 so I fell in love with nutrition because of my own personal experience with it, 635 00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:29,200 revolutionized my life, changed everything about me, gave me hope, 636 00:37:29,310 --> 00:37:32,760 gave me energy. I was really into fitness and I, 637 00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:37,480 I climbed Mount Whitney and I did an LA marathon and probably had a little 638 00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:41,400 exercise addiction. I can say that it wasn't harmful, it didn't like, 639 00:37:41,620 --> 00:37:46,200 didn't affect my day-to-day life the way it, uh, an addiction can for someone. 640 00:37:46,860 --> 00:37:49,080 But it was deeply reinforcing. Yeah. I was, 641 00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:53,440 I was working as a trainer for a little while as a part of my early career. 642 00:37:53,980 --> 00:37:58,880 And I went back to graduate school to study nutrition to become a dietician. 643 00:37:58,940 --> 00:38:03,880 It seemed like that was a path that I could do with the big gap in my resume 644 00:38:04,660 --> 00:38:09,200 as someone that felt like I was from a marginalized group. I had to find a way. 645 00:38:09,350 --> 00:38:13,320 Like I wasn't gonna go to medical school or go to like, you know what I mean? 646 00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:18,320 Like, my, my, my paths choice, my life choices did feel somewhat limited. 647 00:38:18,900 --> 00:38:23,280 And I was like, nutrition makes sense. I'm gonna do this. And even that program, 648 00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,120 I got rejected. I didn't even get in 'cause of my, the gap. 649 00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:32,080 I had to reapply and go to community college and take classes 650 00:38:32,460 --> 00:38:35,400 and get some A's, and do my basic science stuff. 651 00:38:35,660 --> 00:38:39,480 So when I say started my life over, I mean really it started my life over, like, 652 00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:42,320 I, I always give my mom and dad some credit. 653 00:38:42,380 --> 00:38:44,680 It was like they kind of had to raise me twice mm-hmm. . 654 00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:47,640 And I'm very fortunate to, like in my twenties, right. 655 00:38:47,860 --> 00:38:50,680 I'm very advantaged in that sense to like, be able to like, 656 00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:55,520 have a parent's house to like go back to at age 25. You know what I mean? Yeah. 657 00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:58,360 You are very lucky. Very lucky. Because a lot of people aren't that lucky. Yeah. 658 00:38:58,750 --> 00:39:02,200 Yeah. Yeah. So I, I was, I was fortunate. 659 00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:06,200 I got into recovery. I felt like a home for me. 660 00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:10,000 I built a new sense of self and a new identity of wellness. 661 00:39:10,540 --> 00:39:14,760 And I eventually got into graduate school and I knew from the beginning that I 662 00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:18,600 wanted to do nutrition for mental health. I like the stuff they were doing, 663 00:39:18,790 --> 00:39:23,040 like calorie counting, b m i, you know, 664 00:39:23,210 --> 00:39:27,280 bunch of math portion sizing. Like none of it was of interest to me. 665 00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:30,000 I knew that I had to go through the classic training, 666 00:39:30,580 --> 00:39:33,720 but I also knew that the training I was getting wasn't pure. 667 00:39:34,180 --> 00:39:37,160 It was tainted by food industry interests. Mm-hmm. . 668 00:39:37,180 --> 00:39:40,040 And it seemed like no one else in my program cared about any of that stuff. 669 00:39:40,140 --> 00:39:40,440 I'm like, 670 00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:44,840 doesn't it bother anyone that we're getting a webinar right now about high 671 00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:48,880 fructose corn syrup that's paid for by the Corn Refiners Association. Like, 672 00:39:49,230 --> 00:39:53,400 does anyone else think this is weird? And no one else seemed to care. Like, 673 00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:55,800 I have this antenna, maybe it's from my trauma, 674 00:39:56,090 --> 00:39:58,480 where like I sense when something is unsafe. 675 00:39:58,900 --> 00:40:02,520 And I started to feel during my graduate school program that like the nutrition 676 00:40:02,710 --> 00:40:07,680 landscape is unsafe. Like this is not filled with truth. 677 00:40:08,390 --> 00:40:13,080 It's filled with spun narratives and hidden profit 678 00:40:13,350 --> 00:40:17,360 motives and a lot of agendas and a lot of ways to, uh, 679 00:40:17,570 --> 00:40:18,880 perpetuate inequities. 680 00:40:19,500 --> 00:40:22,920 And all of this started to become really clear to me while I was being trained. 681 00:40:23,340 --> 00:40:27,080 It almost feels like a dietician is to the food industry, 682 00:40:27,230 --> 00:40:30,640 what a psychiatrist is to the pharmaceutical industry. Mm-hmm. , 683 00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:34,120 no disrespect to psychiatry. I have very close psychiatry friends, 684 00:40:34,540 --> 00:40:36,320 and no disrespect to dieticians either, 685 00:40:36,460 --> 00:40:40,160 but it does feel like there's these machines that are training you to be a part 686 00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:41,880 of the machine. And here I am, 687 00:40:41,980 --> 00:40:45,240 I'm like never been able to be a part of a system or a machine. 688 00:40:45,660 --> 00:40:49,960 I'm in there detecting a funny business. And early in my career, 689 00:40:49,970 --> 00:40:51,400 after I finished graduate school, 690 00:40:51,420 --> 00:40:55,760 we formed a group of dieticians that like put our careers on the line and spoke 691 00:40:55,780 --> 00:40:57,760 up about injustices in our field. 692 00:40:57,760 --> 00:40:59,960 We were called dieticians for professional integrity. 693 00:41:00,540 --> 00:41:04,720 And it was exciting because it was like the counterculture version of me, 694 00:41:04,740 --> 00:41:07,800 but my mom was a hippie. Right. My dad told me, you know, 695 00:41:07,860 --> 00:41:11,080 to stand tall in my own brand of dignity, I've had a lot of adversity, 696 00:41:11,340 --> 00:41:15,160 now is a chance to like, we can rise up, like we can make a splash. 697 00:41:15,500 --> 00:41:19,400 But of course most people that have social justice in our heart know that when 698 00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:24,080 you go up against like big corporations, like they're not splashes, 699 00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:28,920 they're just spritzes, . It's like a little mist. Yeah. Yeah. But one. 700 00:41:28,980 --> 00:41:30,360 Can be a lot. I do believe that. 701 00:41:30,940 --> 00:41:33,920 We made a difference. Mm-hmm. We made a difference. Yeah. My, 702 00:41:34,340 --> 00:41:38,440 my master's thesis was called nutrition and substance abuse. And I, 703 00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:40,120 I really developed some 704 00:41:41,980 --> 00:41:46,790 expertise in how different different drugs and alcohol affect the body in 705 00:41:46,790 --> 00:41:49,390 different ways. And that became of interest to me. 706 00:41:50,190 --> 00:41:54,070 I built nutrition and recovery and started working in addiction treatment 707 00:41:54,070 --> 00:41:56,070 centers and doing, uh, 708 00:41:56,070 --> 00:42:00,550 group education and one-on-one counseling quickly became highly proficient in 709 00:42:00,550 --> 00:42:04,030 working with eating disorders, learning about food addiction. 710 00:42:04,370 --> 00:42:07,790 And then of course, like the gut health stuff. And I, um, yeah, 711 00:42:07,830 --> 00:42:12,710 I brought it all together. I brought the nutrition, the, the, the addiction, 712 00:42:12,810 --> 00:42:17,470 the mental health, the gut health, and then like this, the economics, right. 713 00:42:17,490 --> 00:42:21,990 The understanding of psychology altogether to form, you know, 714 00:42:21,990 --> 00:42:22,570 the practice, 715 00:42:22,570 --> 00:42:27,070 the group practice that I started in 2013 called Nutrition and recovery 716 00:42:27,620 --> 00:42:31,830 that I've done, um, you know, for the last, uh, 10 plus years. 717 00:42:32,460 --> 00:42:35,630 Very fortunate to have been able to work with people all over the world. 718 00:42:35,690 --> 00:42:38,350 And sometimes people reach out to me and they're like, I'm not in recovery. 719 00:42:38,530 --> 00:42:41,550 Can I still come to see you? And that's why I'm like this, you know, 720 00:42:41,740 --> 00:42:44,670 this isn't just, you know, everyone's in some form of recovery. 721 00:42:45,420 --> 00:42:47,030 Also, I would point out too, 722 00:42:47,030 --> 00:42:50,910 that disordered eating comes in many shapes and forms. That's right. 723 00:42:51,030 --> 00:42:55,590 I think we are given this image of a disordered eater as someone who is either 724 00:42:55,990 --> 00:43:00,670 anorexic or bulimic or, the truth of the matter is, there's so many for, 725 00:43:01,140 --> 00:43:04,990 I'll use myself as an example when I, because a celiac, 726 00:43:05,010 --> 00:43:07,990 so I already have this groupings of food I can't touch. That's right. 727 00:43:08,410 --> 00:43:13,270 But as I get older, I find myself going through the grocery store and, 728 00:43:13,810 --> 00:43:18,190 and, and then this feeling of abhorrence against pretty much all the foods. 729 00:43:18,220 --> 00:43:19,870 Food doesn't even smell like food anymore. 730 00:43:20,090 --> 00:43:22,830 The tomatoes don't smell like tomatoes. All this stuff. And, 731 00:43:22,830 --> 00:43:25,390 and it creates this thing in my brain like, well, 732 00:43:25,510 --> 00:43:29,390 I guess I'm not eating food anymore. Right. And that's a disorder. That's right. 733 00:43:29,750 --> 00:43:33,670 I own that. I know that that's not right. I work on it. 734 00:43:34,290 --> 00:43:35,830 But it is, 735 00:43:35,970 --> 00:43:39,550 it is true that there are many levels of all these different types of things. 736 00:43:40,570 --> 00:43:42,990 And that's what I've dedicated my career to. Right. 737 00:43:42,990 --> 00:43:46,470 There's these boxes of these classic restrictive eating disorders, right? 738 00:43:46,470 --> 00:43:49,590 Mm-hmm. person with anorexia nervosa that, you know, 739 00:43:50,020 --> 00:43:54,350 developed it at age 15 and has O c D tendencies and 740 00:43:55,020 --> 00:43:59,750 very classic cases and bulimia nervosa. Right. Very predictable. 741 00:44:00,250 --> 00:44:01,350 But as you said, 742 00:44:01,350 --> 00:44:05,310 there's a whole spectrum of disordered eating. 743 00:44:05,650 --> 00:44:06,483 And exercise. 744 00:44:06,610 --> 00:44:07,790 And exercise issues. 745 00:44:08,340 --> 00:44:09,230 That thing I said earlier, 746 00:44:09,260 --> 00:44:12,830 when people eat something and feel guilty or shame around it, that's a, 747 00:44:12,830 --> 00:44:14,510 that's disordered. Mm-hmm. , that's not, 748 00:44:14,810 --> 00:44:18,710 that's not how we're supposed to nurture our bodies. That's. 749 00:44:18,710 --> 00:44:21,510 Right. One of the questions on my intake is how, 750 00:44:21,510 --> 00:44:24,870 what percentage of the day do you spend thinking about food and what percentage 751 00:44:24,870 --> 00:44:26,630 of the day do you spend thinking about your body? Right. 752 00:44:26,650 --> 00:44:30,870 One could argue that if someone is spending more than 50% of the day, 753 00:44:30,950 --> 00:44:33,450 day thinking about either one of those things, right. That's a, 754 00:44:33,450 --> 00:44:36,960 that's a mental health issue. So yeah, these things exist on continuums, 755 00:44:37,380 --> 00:44:40,680 on spectrums. There's a lot of atypical forms of them. 756 00:44:41,180 --> 00:44:45,640 So a lot of my career work has been working at the intersection 757 00:44:46,180 --> 00:44:49,880 of complicated issues. So when someone has gut issues and an eating disorder, 758 00:44:50,430 --> 00:44:52,280 what do you do? Hmm. You know what I mean? 759 00:44:52,430 --> 00:44:57,240 When someone has substance use disorder and some disordered eating and, 760 00:44:57,660 --> 00:44:57,960 you know, 761 00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:01,920 there's some biological abnormalities that need to be looked at through testing. 762 00:45:02,420 --> 00:45:02,910 So yeah, 763 00:45:02,910 --> 00:45:06,360 I've worked at the intersection and done a lot of really meaningful work with 764 00:45:06,910 --> 00:45:11,840 complicated cases and also fortunate to do that work virtually with 765 00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:15,280 people all over, not limited to the state of California, 766 00:45:16,060 --> 00:45:19,280 but I fell in love with the research side of things. 767 00:45:19,790 --> 00:45:21,760 That was like something that always called me. 768 00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,400 Even after I was done with school, I did a, a a, 769 00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:27,560 I guess it was a thesis where I, 770 00:45:27,720 --> 00:45:32,400 I did like the collecting data thing and the deep literature reviews and like, 771 00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:35,240 that always felt like part of my calling. 772 00:45:35,820 --> 00:45:37,560 So even after I was out of school, 773 00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:42,040 I was still doing that and making papers and putting together presentations. 774 00:45:42,460 --> 00:45:47,080 And so at some point, I think probably around 2016, 775 00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:52,160 I got the deep call. I was like, no, you gotta do more. I, and if I'm honest, 776 00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:57,240 I wasn't fully satisfied with being a dietician because just, you know, 777 00:45:57,280 --> 00:45:59,760 a master's level dietician, like I was successful. 778 00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:01,120 I had people that worked for me. 779 00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:05,960 I was able to live in West LA and have a full practice. And in many ways, 780 00:46:06,500 --> 00:46:08,040 uh, it was satisfying, 781 00:46:08,380 --> 00:46:13,360 but it lacked the scientific muster that I craved. 782 00:46:13,740 --> 00:46:15,840 It wasn't like, um, like I said, 783 00:46:15,860 --> 00:46:20,600 it felt tainted by industry interest rather than training people to be 784 00:46:21,310 --> 00:46:24,480 independent thinkers who can audit the scientific literature. 785 00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:28,600 I did apply for a PhD at U C L A and once again, 786 00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:32,520 I got rejected a few times. You know, it's like, 787 00:46:32,640 --> 00:46:34,560 I don't know if it's, you know, 788 00:46:34,580 --> 00:46:38,720 the felony thing or the gaps in my resume or my demographics, 789 00:46:39,100 --> 00:46:43,400 but like I wasn't a great applicant. And I did the same thing I did for, 790 00:46:44,140 --> 00:46:46,720 uh, the master's program was like, you know, I showed up, 791 00:46:47,020 --> 00:46:49,960 put on a nice outfit and showed up and, uh, 792 00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,280 talked to some people and they realized that like, oh no, 793 00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:56,000 this guy's got some really good ideas. And I, I did get into the, uh, 794 00:46:56,000 --> 00:47:00,440 fielding School of Public Health at U C L A and the Community Health Sciences 795 00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:03,120 department, and it, it really felt like a, 796 00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:08,040 a dream come true because I was working full-time and now getting a a 797 00:47:08,100 --> 00:47:11,160 in a full-time PhD program, which was like, you know, 798 00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:13,720 a lot and you're not supposed to do that. 799 00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,920 I almost had to lie about working because they kind of want you to work for 800 00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:20,840 them. And I had this sort of attitude of like, well, 801 00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:23,480 you're not giving me financial aid. I'm paying, so like, 802 00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:28,320 you can't tell me what to do. And their thing is like, we kind of can. Um, 803 00:47:28,820 --> 00:47:32,400 and there was a lot of conflict for me finding my way in the department. 804 00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:38,000 A lot of the topics that I'm interested in, mental health, disordered eating, 805 00:47:38,510 --> 00:47:43,120 food addiction, ultra processed foods, substance use disorders, depression, 806 00:47:43,150 --> 00:47:44,200 anxiety, trauma. 807 00:47:45,300 --> 00:47:46,640 Is that all? Yeah, that's. 808 00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:46,960 That's. 809 00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:47,793 My list. 810 00:47:47,860 --> 00:47:51,720 That's my research interest list. Um, they weren't, 811 00:47:51,910 --> 00:47:56,160 they weren't being, uh, looked at in my department. Yeah. It was, it was. 812 00:47:56,160 --> 00:47:59,520 So it turned out to be like a real time of additional adversity. 813 00:47:59,940 --> 00:48:02,520 And there was a part of me that's like, you know, why, you know, 814 00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:06,480 I've been through so much. Why, why can't this be easy? And I'm glad it wasn't. 815 00:48:07,240 --> 00:48:10,560 I, I definitely went in there with a little bit of an ego, like, oh, 816 00:48:11,460 --> 00:48:15,320 PhD program. Like, I've already got a bunch of peer reviewed publications, like, 817 00:48:15,620 --> 00:48:19,080 I'm already doing this. I might as well just do it on, you know, on the side. 818 00:48:19,500 --> 00:48:23,360 And I think they picked up on some of that. I do that. It was too easy for me. 819 00:48:23,540 --> 00:48:27,320 I'm publishing papers on topics without them on the paper, 820 00:48:27,420 --> 00:48:31,320 you know what I'm saying? Hmm. And it did turn into a, a difficult time. 821 00:48:31,730 --> 00:48:35,880 There was a definite period where I thought I wasn't gonna finish. Uh, 822 00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:38,960 I think they, they kind of build it that way, you know what I mean? 823 00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:43,280 Like a PhD program is supposed to be hard, you know, it's supposed to be. 824 00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:46,200 And if they get a sense that it's not, they'll make sure that it is mm-hmm. 825 00:48:46,240 --> 00:48:48,520 , you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. . But yeah, it, 826 00:48:48,630 --> 00:48:53,160 it's always been hard having progressive ideas because 827 00:48:53,580 --> 00:48:56,160 in many ways it's like, we need progressive thinkers, 828 00:48:56,700 --> 00:48:59,760 but progressive ideas are met with resistance. Well, also. 829 00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:02,840 There's this idea that it happens in education. Right? 830 00:49:02,950 --> 00:49:06,280 This one size fits all That's right. Per child. 831 00:49:06,540 --> 00:49:10,200 And no tummy is the same. No brain is the same. That's right. 832 00:49:10,260 --> 00:49:13,520 No environment that we've been raised in is the same. 833 00:49:13,820 --> 00:49:18,520 We one child might go through a particular trauma and come out the other end no 834 00:49:18,520 --> 00:49:22,560 problem, no foul. And another child could go through a lesser trauma. Right. 835 00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:23,760 Whatever that means. That's right. 836 00:49:24,080 --> 00:49:27,400 'cause it's apples and oranges and be completely devastated. That's right. 837 00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:30,080 There is no one size fits all. 838 00:49:30,170 --> 00:49:32,760 Which for somebody like you who's super curious and, 839 00:49:33,140 --> 00:49:36,920 and can see the individuality, that's a rarity. I feel like, 840 00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:38,720 especially in medicine. Mm-hmm. mm-hmm. 841 00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:42,880 that is used to just as you put it before, here's your pill next. 842 00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:44,880 Right. Here's your pill next. Yep. 843 00:49:45,620 --> 00:49:48,880 And I think if I'm, if if I'm reflecting now on the program, 844 00:49:50,060 --> 00:49:53,080 one of the hardest parts, and I'm a practitioner, right? Like, 845 00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:58,200 I look at someone's genetic vulnerabilities to try to figure 846 00:49:58,340 --> 00:50:02,880 out, I look at people as, you know, bio individuals. But in the, 847 00:50:02,900 --> 00:50:06,400 in the program in public health, it's, we don't look at people, 848 00:50:06,810 --> 00:50:10,400 we're looking at groups. Mm-hmm. We're looking at populations, right? Mm-hmm. 849 00:50:10,400 --> 00:50:14,360 It's more like sociology. So learning how to think, uh, uh, 850 00:50:14,360 --> 00:50:17,520 about individuals be helpful to people in the clinic, 851 00:50:17,660 --> 00:50:19,680 to individuals that live in social context. 852 00:50:20,260 --> 00:50:24,760 And then being able to think only about social context and not about 853 00:50:25,190 --> 00:50:29,400 kind of individual heterogeneity per se. So it was like my mind, 854 00:50:30,140 --> 00:50:34,560 it just exploded. And I started thinking from a bio-psychosocial perspective, 855 00:50:34,940 --> 00:50:36,000 how do we look at biology? 856 00:50:36,660 --> 00:50:41,040 How do we look at someone's psychology and put it all into social context? 857 00:50:41,460 --> 00:50:46,400 And I always think about having variables to capture all of it. So, you know, 858 00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:48,360 thinking about, you know, if you think about a person, 859 00:50:48,420 --> 00:50:51,320 you also want to think about like the neighborhood they live in and all of that 860 00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:55,640 collect variables there. So yeah, it was definitely a time of challenge. 861 00:50:55,820 --> 00:51:00,480 But I rallied, I think part of it was, um, if I'm honest, like, you know, 862 00:51:00,500 --> 00:51:04,920 I'm 41, turning 42 this year, so I'm like, 863 00:51:05,060 --> 00:51:08,000 I'm a little older than some of the other people. 864 00:51:08,140 --> 00:51:11,960 And I think because of my story, I've really, um, 865 00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:16,200 internalized this idea that I'm behind in life and that I need to like, 866 00:51:16,230 --> 00:51:17,800 work harder than the average person. 867 00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:22,560 Because for seven years I was raving and going in and out of different 868 00:51:22,560 --> 00:51:23,840 institutions. You know what I'm saying? 869 00:51:24,220 --> 00:51:27,440 So it's really deepened this sense of like, I need to catch up. 870 00:51:27,720 --> 00:51:31,120 I get that. But there's also, you could look at it in this way, 871 00:51:31,120 --> 00:51:35,720 in that you spent seven years doing field research on a very much 872 00:51:35,790 --> 00:51:40,320 ignored section of the population. That's right. Who eventually will need help. 873 00:51:40,620 --> 00:51:42,400 That's right. When they're ready for it. 874 00:51:43,410 --> 00:51:46,320 Thank you for that. And I, I couldn't agree more. 875 00:51:46,660 --> 00:51:49,240 And no matter how much spiritual work I've done on it, 876 00:51:49,720 --> 00:51:52,680 I still have this thing of like, I gotta go. I gotta go. 877 00:51:53,140 --> 00:51:53,973 I'm still human. 878 00:51:54,180 --> 00:51:55,013 I'm still human. 879 00:51:55,460 --> 00:51:58,200 We, that's, yeah. That's the thing. We're in this, 880 00:51:58,430 --> 00:52:02,000 this corpus and we have to That's right. To deal with what it comes with. 881 00:52:02,220 --> 00:52:03,520 That's right. Did you, 882 00:52:04,140 --> 00:52:08,280 did you have an enlightened moment of realizing what you were driving away from 883 00:52:08,460 --> 00:52:09,800 in a hurry all those times? 884 00:52:10,580 --> 00:52:15,200 That's a good question. I might have to take that into meditation. Right? 885 00:52:15,230 --> 00:52:18,720 What am I driving away from? Good question. Yeah. 886 00:52:19,480 --> 00:52:21,760 I knew that I was like trying to drive toward, 887 00:52:22,620 --> 00:52:25,880 but kind of something that resembles a, you know, 888 00:52:25,940 --> 00:52:29,840 normal successful life in Los Angeles. You know, 889 00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:33,880 I don't consume a lot of media or I try to be relatively 890 00:52:34,870 --> 00:52:39,120 free from susceptibility to like the predictable social constructs, 891 00:52:39,300 --> 00:52:41,240 but none of us are, you know what I'm saying? 892 00:52:41,240 --> 00:52:46,080 Especially if you live somewhere like you're doing social context all day 893 00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:49,560 long. I was really running to toward 894 00:52:51,350 --> 00:52:55,200 wanting to get married and have a, have a child. And it was like, 895 00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:59,240 I wasn't gonna do that during my PhD program, 896 00:53:00,140 --> 00:53:04,960 so I was like pressuring to finish quickly so that I could do the next 897 00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:09,640 thing. You know what I mean? Sure. And it was hard. And so yeah, I finished, 898 00:53:10,070 --> 00:53:12,360 they like, they'll stretch you to six years at these places. 899 00:53:13,030 --> 00:53:16,760 They want you to be the TA for the last year and Right. 900 00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:20,760 They want to take their time and kind of milk the doctoral students. Mm-hmm. 901 00:53:20,800 --> 00:53:23,760 and I wasn't having it. And I'm proud of myself for standing up. 902 00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:26,760 For, for me, I was like pushing to end sooner. And I, 903 00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:28,160 I finished in four and a half years. 904 00:53:28,720 --> 00:53:33,320 I was the first in my cohort to finish and I was able to defend my 905 00:53:33,920 --> 00:53:36,840 dissertation, which was, uh, 906 00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:40,000 examining links between adverse childhood experiences mm-hmm. 907 00:53:40,040 --> 00:53:42,920 and mental health outcomes like substance use disorder, 908 00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:44,480 depression and anxiety. 909 00:53:44,940 --> 00:53:49,720 And it was among socially disadvantaged men who have sex with men in Los 910 00:53:49,720 --> 00:53:50,390 Angeles, 911 00:53:50,390 --> 00:53:54,800 many of which were h i v positive data collected from the L G B T Q 912 00:53:55,620 --> 00:53:58,640 um center and one of the U C L A clinics, 913 00:53:58,940 --> 00:54:02,800 and it was very meaningful work. There was nothing nutrition related. 914 00:54:03,270 --> 00:54:06,200 Most people know me as a dietician and a, you know, 915 00:54:06,520 --> 00:54:11,120 functional medicine practitioner that you would assume that my PhD is on 916 00:54:11,790 --> 00:54:12,680 related topics. 917 00:54:13,340 --> 00:54:16,800 But I did mental health and I have a minor in health psychology. 918 00:54:17,580 --> 00:54:22,240 And so I've been able to bring together all of my lived 919 00:54:22,330 --> 00:54:26,920 experience, my clinical practice, my PhD work, 920 00:54:27,060 --> 00:54:27,560 and you know, 921 00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:32,200 especially in the minor in health psychology to really start a movement 922 00:54:32,500 --> 00:54:36,840 or join a movement. It's definitely underway in other countries. 923 00:54:37,380 --> 00:54:39,560 Uk, Australia, Canada, south America. 924 00:54:40,110 --> 00:54:42,680 This is the movement of nutrition for mental health. 925 00:54:43,230 --> 00:54:45,960 It's really looking at nutrition entirely differently. 926 00:54:46,540 --> 00:54:49,520 The recommendations aren't that different if you think about it. Like what, 927 00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:52,040 okay, what are we talking about when you say nutrition for depression? 928 00:54:52,230 --> 00:54:54,320 Nutrition for addiction. It, 929 00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:57,960 it still is like high fiber omega three 930 00:54:58,630 --> 00:55:01,760 Mediterranean style eating, right? Good proteins, 931 00:55:01,950 --> 00:55:03,760 like colorful fruits and vegetables. 932 00:55:04,270 --> 00:55:09,080 It's nothing deeply novel in terms of like what is the main message, 933 00:55:09,820 --> 00:55:14,600 but it's how the message comes across that matters and the endpoints, 934 00:55:14,600 --> 00:55:16,920 the outcomes that we're looking for. 935 00:55:17,460 --> 00:55:21,800 So most people would seek out a doctor dietician 936 00:55:23,020 --> 00:55:27,560 for like specific health goals. Uh, I wanna improve my body composition. 937 00:55:27,720 --> 00:55:31,480 I want to change my gut health. I wanna do some supplements to get more energy. 938 00:55:31,990 --> 00:55:36,680 Most people still aren't thinking about my depression is really rough and the 939 00:55:37,090 --> 00:55:39,800 SSRIs aren't working. I'm gonna contact Dr. 940 00:55:39,980 --> 00:55:43,720 Wis to see if we can use nutrition and lifestyle medicine to improve this. 941 00:55:43,930 --> 00:55:45,480 Those aren't things on people's radar. 942 00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:49,360 Although we are getting better as a society to understand the link between gut 943 00:55:49,360 --> 00:55:51,560 health and brain that they are. Yes, absolutely. 944 00:55:51,780 --> 00:55:54,440 The system talking to each other. Yes. 945 00:55:55,140 --> 00:55:59,560 And that fact is often ignored in the eating disorder field. 946 00:55:59,900 --> 00:56:04,840 The eating disorder field is like moving slowly to like really 947 00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:05,760 acknowledge the biology. 948 00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:11,160 I think the eating disorder field is so stuck on social context and social 949 00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:13,200 justice issues related to weight. 950 00:56:13,350 --> 00:56:16,320 Looking at B M I as as a racist measure, 951 00:56:16,510 --> 00:56:20,280 there's a lot of really good advocacy efforts that we've done in the eating 952 00:56:20,520 --> 00:56:21,353 disorder field, 953 00:56:21,420 --> 00:56:24,880 but it hasn't really incorporated a lot of this biological science, 954 00:56:25,220 --> 00:56:26,320 the gut-brain access, 955 00:56:26,380 --> 00:56:30,720 the neurobiology of reward and a lot of things that I've been able to focus on 956 00:56:30,900 --> 00:56:34,160 and I'm able to bring that into the eating disorder world and say, you know, 957 00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:37,400 there's mechanisms here that we need to think about. You know, 958 00:56:37,400 --> 00:56:41,640 we know that people that have a lot of childhood adversity have larger bodies in 959 00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:46,440 adulthood. We know that they have higher bmi, but why? 960 00:56:46,820 --> 00:56:51,160 Is it because they grew up in disadvantaged households with less access to food? 961 00:56:51,300 --> 00:56:54,000 Or is there biological embedding of adversity? 962 00:56:54,150 --> 00:56:58,960 What are the actual pathways by which IT trauma gets underneath the skin 963 00:56:59,340 --> 00:57:00,360 and affects health? 964 00:57:00,760 --> 00:57:05,760 I always feel that from the people that I know that are what 965 00:57:05,980 --> 00:57:09,320 one would consider obese in this society. And again, 966 00:57:09,420 --> 00:57:13,160 not trying to judgment anything, but they tend to have had sexual trauma. 967 00:57:13,620 --> 00:57:18,440 So they've made their bodies appear quote unquote undesirable or 968 00:57:18,950 --> 00:57:23,120 it's like a giant pillow fort around them and to protect them. 969 00:57:23,540 --> 00:57:27,680 That's the experiences of people that I know. I'm sure it's across the board, 970 00:57:27,700 --> 00:57:30,800 all the different things, but I do find that really interesting. 971 00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:32,720 I find it interesting too, 972 00:57:32,740 --> 00:57:36,800 and I heard that from so many of my clients and patients over the years, 973 00:57:37,260 --> 00:57:40,000 and I remember one time I asked someone, do you think that that's true? 974 00:57:40,460 --> 00:57:44,160 And she said, no, is just what my therapist told me. Oh, interesting. Yeah. 975 00:57:44,220 --> 00:57:48,800 And so I actually wrote a paper on that to challenge the psychodynamic 976 00:57:49,010 --> 00:57:50,680 protective measure theory. Mm-hmm. , 977 00:57:51,060 --> 00:57:53,440 it doesn't suggest that that's a wrong theory, 978 00:57:53,980 --> 00:57:57,440 but because it's such a good theory, it got extrapolated Sure. 979 00:57:57,540 --> 00:57:58,760 To so many people, and. 980 00:57:58,760 --> 00:58:01,080 This is information that I've been told from, 981 00:58:01,100 --> 00:58:03,040 so maybe they got it from their therapist. Of. 982 00:58:03,040 --> 00:58:03,600 Course. No, 983 00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:08,240 it was a really great explanation for why people that had childhood sexual abuse 984 00:58:08,610 --> 00:58:13,240 would regain weight rapidly after being in a weight loss program and, and, 985 00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:16,960 and things of that nature. It made a lot of sense. It's called, you know, the, 986 00:58:17,140 --> 00:58:21,000 the, they call it barrier weight or the protective measure theory. 987 00:58:21,190 --> 00:58:24,960 It's like you are doing this as a protective measure to prevent future 988 00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:26,640 revictimization mm-hmm. 989 00:58:26,680 --> 00:58:30,040 excellent theory from psychodynamic literature. Uh, 990 00:58:30,040 --> 00:58:31,120 but because it was so good, 991 00:58:31,120 --> 00:58:36,080 it got so like kind of widely accepted that people started to assume that that 992 00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:36,913 was always the case. 993 00:58:37,300 --> 00:58:41,880 So I wrote a paper challenging that theory and suggesting that the 994 00:58:41,890 --> 00:58:46,800 mechanisms by which a childhood sexual abuse can affect B M I is 995 00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:50,280 through the biological embedding of adversity through the immune system, 996 00:58:50,750 --> 00:58:54,920 alterations in the brain chemistry, the H p A access. Right. 997 00:58:54,920 --> 00:58:57,840 There's lots of pathways that we won't get into today, 998 00:58:58,220 --> 00:59:01,320 but those all create risk for substance use disorders, 999 00:59:01,500 --> 00:59:03,840 eating disorders and addiction like eating. 1000 00:59:04,260 --> 00:59:09,200 So part of the paper was to suggest that part of the reason that that 1001 00:59:09,270 --> 00:59:13,880 association is so strong is because people are protecting themselves from 1002 00:59:14,030 --> 00:59:14,920 potential threat, 1003 00:59:15,180 --> 00:59:19,520 and the other is because the trauma changed their physiology and set up a 1004 00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:21,840 lifetime of addiction, like eating behaviors. Mm-hmm. 1005 00:59:21,850 --> 00:59:24,920 Which could lead to disordered eating efforts to suppress weight. 1006 00:59:25,220 --> 00:59:27,680 We know that when people diet and try to lose a lot of weight, 1007 00:59:27,680 --> 00:59:32,080 they end up probably gaining it back and then some more. So a lot of, uh, 1008 00:59:32,560 --> 00:59:34,840 substance use disorders lead to weight suppression. There's. 1009 00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:37,120 Also comfort in eating. Right. Comfort, of course. 1010 00:59:37,630 --> 00:59:41,280 Yeah. Yeah. I saw a paper the other day and not to dwell on this topic, 1011 00:59:41,420 --> 00:59:43,400 and you know, because I've done work in this area, 1012 00:59:43,420 --> 00:59:47,040 it really caught my attention. People that have, uh, 1013 00:59:47,070 --> 00:59:51,120 been exposed to childhood sexual abuse have higher ghrelin levels. 1014 00:59:51,560 --> 00:59:53,720 Ghrelin is a hunger hormone produced in the stomach. 1015 00:59:54,300 --> 00:59:57,640 So it's just another example of how, 1016 00:59:58,430 --> 01:00:02,600 depending on how you, your discipline, how you look at the world, you, 1017 01:00:02,660 --> 01:00:05,680 you see things through different lenses. Mm-hmm. , 1018 01:00:05,680 --> 01:00:07,840 this is the biological lens. Right. The lens of like, 1019 01:00:07,840 --> 01:00:11,920 what are the biological mechanisms versus like the psychosocial context. 1020 01:00:12,380 --> 01:00:15,760 And so it's really important to always try to bring it all together. Yeah. 1021 01:00:15,840 --> 01:00:20,160 I mean, look at autoimmune diseases on the rise. You know, our bodies are not, 1022 01:00:20,160 --> 01:00:23,520 they don't know how to deal with anything anymore, so they just, what, 1023 01:00:23,520 --> 01:00:26,680 what's left? That's right. They go inward. That's right. And start attack. 1024 01:00:26,700 --> 01:00:27,920 That's right. Mechanisms. 1025 01:00:27,980 --> 01:00:30,840 That's right. Such a hot topic there. I know. 1026 01:00:31,360 --> 01:00:35,280 I feel like humans are in in trouble. You know, we're, 1027 01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:36,433 we're a bit of a mess. 1028 01:00:36,700 --> 01:00:40,880 And obviously disordered eating is certainly on the rise. 1029 01:00:40,980 --> 01:00:45,560 We see that everywhere. Mm-hmm. . So what do we do about it? 1030 01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:49,280 I mean, not everyone's gonna come to you obviously, or to people like you. 1031 01:00:49,820 --> 01:00:54,680 And some people won't even have self-awareness or they don't care either way. 1032 01:00:54,730 --> 01:00:57,720 Right. They're happy with where they are or they're unhappy with, 1033 01:00:57,790 --> 01:00:59,800 they're happy with their unhappiness. Right. 1034 01:01:00,220 --> 01:01:01,440 Or they don't know anything else. 1035 01:01:01,980 --> 01:01:02,813 Are we in trouble? 1036 01:01:03,020 --> 01:01:07,960 Do you see a trend toward self understanding and and collectively 1037 01:01:08,100 --> 01:01:08,933 as healing? 1038 01:01:09,100 --> 01:01:13,600 Or do you see it more of a trend of we're going off a cliff and saying our 1039 01:01:13,600 --> 01:01:14,433 sweetheart? 1040 01:01:14,880 --> 01:01:18,400 I think that consciousness is growing for sure. Right. 1041 01:01:18,510 --> 01:01:23,160 It's like really easy to point to systemic issues in society and, you know, 1042 01:01:23,160 --> 01:01:26,200 look at this country and identify the darkness. 1043 01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:31,960 I do think that there's a lot of waking up in the mental health space. 1044 01:01:32,740 --> 01:01:33,190 Um, 1045 01:01:33,190 --> 01:01:37,840 part of it due to acknowledging the role of nutrition, 1046 01:01:38,110 --> 01:01:41,040 part of it is acknowledging the role of early life trauma, 1047 01:01:41,620 --> 01:01:43,720 the psychedelic revolution, right. 1048 01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:47,560 Certainly bringing in a lot of layers of consciousness, trauma, 1049 01:01:47,560 --> 01:01:52,280 healing that I've been following with deep curiosity. 1050 01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:56,880 I was pushed a few years ago to think about writing a book, you know, 1051 01:01:56,880 --> 01:01:59,000 about nutrition for mental health. What can we do? 1052 01:01:59,020 --> 01:02:01,040 And it felt pretty obvious to me that like, 1053 01:02:01,040 --> 01:02:03,880 people are reading books less and less audible, , you know, 1054 01:02:03,880 --> 01:02:06,680 people are listening to audibles, right? And then it was like, well, 1055 01:02:06,680 --> 01:02:09,920 what's everyone else doing? It's like, oh, you make an online course. Right? 1056 01:02:10,580 --> 01:02:15,440 And that started to float in my consciousness and like, you know, what would, 1057 01:02:15,870 --> 01:02:17,120 what would the message be? 1058 01:02:17,260 --> 01:02:21,240 How do you use nutrition and lifestyle medicine for various mental health 1059 01:02:21,520 --> 01:02:25,040 outcomes? Acknowledging that not all mental health outcomes are the same. 1060 01:02:25,230 --> 01:02:29,200 Someone that has anorexia nervosa clustering with, you know, 1061 01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:34,520 O C D and Orthorexia nervosa might be very different than a person that has 1062 01:02:34,560 --> 01:02:38,840 a long history of trauma and meth addiction and now has binge eating disorder. 1063 01:02:38,850 --> 01:02:39,920 Those are different cases. 1064 01:02:40,420 --> 01:02:45,280 Is it possible to create consistent language that isn't geared toward one 1065 01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:46,113 or the other, 1066 01:02:46,140 --> 01:02:50,520 but that has a level of neutrality to it that can allow people to follow their 1067 01:02:50,540 --> 01:02:54,280 own sort of healing path? As a clinician working with many years, 1068 01:02:54,440 --> 01:02:55,480 I use a food log, 1069 01:02:55,940 --> 01:03:00,800 and that's been really exciting to see how tech can be used to keep the 1070 01:03:00,800 --> 01:03:04,840 practitioner and client in touch. And then it was, yeah, 1071 01:03:04,840 --> 01:03:08,600 crystal clear about two years ago, what am I gonna do to make a difference? 1072 01:03:08,660 --> 01:03:13,040 The one-on-one work that I do is great. It's really not covered by insurance, 1073 01:03:13,180 --> 01:03:17,640 so I only get to work with socially advantaged groups. The reach is, 1074 01:03:17,980 --> 01:03:21,840 uh, is great, but it's, it's limited. So I built an app, 1075 01:03:22,110 --> 01:03:26,280 it's called Wise Mind Nutrition. It combines a, a, a novel food log. 1076 01:03:26,280 --> 01:03:30,080 It uses my framework, my food groups, my hunger, fullness, scale, 1077 01:03:30,080 --> 01:03:33,720 all the tools that I've used in my practice. It's got a food log in there, 1078 01:03:33,720 --> 01:03:36,040 which is entirely free. Anyone can use it. 1079 01:03:36,700 --> 01:03:41,440 And I put some personalized targeted programming in there. 1080 01:03:41,660 --> 01:03:43,000 So there's, uh, 1081 01:03:43,090 --> 01:03:48,080 43 days of treatment and there's a 30 day specific 1082 01:03:48,080 --> 01:03:53,040 program to where someone will choose their own adventure as they 1083 01:03:53,040 --> 01:03:55,800 go through it. I am gonna ask for some information. 1084 01:03:55,870 --> 01:03:59,000 It's totally optional if someone wants to fill out the mental health screeners, 1085 01:03:59,260 --> 01:04:01,080 but if someone's screening for anxiety, 1086 01:04:01,460 --> 01:04:03,960 if someone's screening for a substance use disorder, 1087 01:04:04,540 --> 01:04:07,160 it does create some targeted messaging for them. 1088 01:04:07,300 --> 01:04:10,400 So here are some additional things for you to consider. 1089 01:04:10,710 --> 01:04:12,600 Here are some supplements that might be helpful. 1090 01:04:12,870 --> 01:04:14,680 Here are some recipes that might be helpful, 1091 01:04:14,910 --> 01:04:19,320 whether someone has a D H D P T S D, uh, anxiety, 1092 01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:23,760 depression, eating disorder, food addiction, uh, sleep related issues. 1093 01:04:24,090 --> 01:04:25,440 There is a, 1094 01:04:26,640 --> 01:04:29,680 a program based on nutrition and lifestyle medicine. 1095 01:04:30,070 --> 01:04:34,080 It's called Why is My Nutrition? It's an app. And, uh, has it launched? 1096 01:04:34,300 --> 01:04:36,440 It is actually at 99.9. 1097 01:04:36,520 --> 01:04:41,280 I have about 35 people in test flight. Maybe you can test flight for me. 1098 01:04:41,510 --> 01:04:43,200 Okay. , uh, give me some feedback. 1099 01:04:43,360 --> 01:04:45,520 I just wanna just like get a bunch of people through the program. 1100 01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:49,840 I don't wanna be the guy that releases the app that has a bug in the first week. 1101 01:04:50,180 --> 01:04:54,400 So like, I'm doing such a deep calm, I say that now, like . 1102 01:04:54,950 --> 01:04:59,000 Yeah, yeah. Got it. Yeah. So it's been ready. Yeah. Um, but I'm putting some, 1103 01:04:59,030 --> 01:05:02,160 some final touches on it and launching about to launch. 1104 01:05:02,500 --> 01:05:04,720 So it's a really exciting time in my life. 1105 01:05:05,020 --> 01:05:07,800 And Nutrition and recovery is the name of the clinical practice, 1106 01:05:08,060 --> 01:05:12,480 and that is nutrition and recovery.com. I also have a great newsletter there, 1107 01:05:12,480 --> 01:05:14,480 so please sign up. Yay. You know, 1108 01:05:14,520 --> 01:05:18,040 I shared a bit of my story today on a personal note, you know, 1109 01:05:18,190 --> 01:05:21,400 I've been through a lot and like to come and, um, you know, 1110 01:05:21,400 --> 01:05:23,080 the statistics aren't high for, 1111 01:05:23,260 --> 01:05:27,800 for people that have some of my background to get a doctorate is uncommon. 1112 01:05:28,420 --> 01:05:28,760 You know, 1113 01:05:28,760 --> 01:05:33,560 I moved into the tech space and I spent two years really putting love and 1114 01:05:33,800 --> 01:05:37,360 a lot of, uh, nights and weekends into this, 1115 01:05:37,470 --> 01:05:40,680 waiting for the day to share with the world. It's exciting. We're kind of here. 1116 01:05:40,790 --> 01:05:42,080 Yeah. It's kind of happening. 1117 01:05:42,190 --> 01:05:43,040 It's super exciting. Yeah. 1118 01:05:43,060 --> 01:05:45,640 I'm gonna ask you all the ways that people can find you, but I do want, 1119 01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:48,560 I have one more question. Yes. And you've been so gracious with your time. 1120 01:05:48,940 --> 01:05:49,920 I'm curious, 1121 01:05:50,180 --> 01:05:54,720 as we move into a society that is open to psychedelics for therapy 1122 01:05:55,060 --> 01:05:55,893 and for healing, 1123 01:05:57,100 --> 01:06:01,080 how do you balance that as someone who is in recovery? 1124 01:06:01,380 --> 01:06:02,480 And how do you deal with that? 1125 01:06:02,480 --> 01:06:07,320 With other people who are in recovery where we know this is a thing that is 1126 01:06:07,320 --> 01:06:10,400 helpful Yeah. But it is dipping, its well, 1127 01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:13,240 it's diving right into a space Yeah. 1128 01:06:13,240 --> 01:06:13,540 That. 1129 01:06:13,540 --> 01:06:16,040 Has a history. Yeah. What, how do you balance that? 1130 01:06:16,150 --> 01:06:18,440 Yeah. Th those are a lot of conversations that, 1131 01:06:18,550 --> 01:06:22,560 that people in my circle are having. Because on one hand, 1132 01:06:23,060 --> 01:06:27,280 I'm from, you know, the recovery world, which is like the altruistic movement, 1133 01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:28,000 which has a, 1134 01:06:28,000 --> 01:06:32,920 has a long history going back into the late 1930s and like 1135 01:06:33,240 --> 01:06:36,480 a lot of entrenched ideas about how things should be. 1136 01:06:37,220 --> 01:06:38,280 And then we, 1137 01:06:38,320 --> 01:06:42,480 I have the world of like the mental health treatment industry where like I have 1138 01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:45,080 colleagues and we look at the science and stuff like that. 1139 01:06:45,180 --> 01:06:50,040 So as someone that gets alerts in my email inbox about the latest 1140 01:06:50,130 --> 01:06:52,120 randomized control trials and stuff like that, 1141 01:06:52,120 --> 01:06:54,280 like when I see the data coming in, 1142 01:06:54,580 --> 01:06:59,240 that's a definite area of interest in the kind of mental health space. 1143 01:06:59,460 --> 01:07:03,360 And a lot of my colleagues and friends have moved into that space. 1144 01:07:03,790 --> 01:07:08,640 It's a difficult line to walk because in the recovery 1145 01:07:08,690 --> 01:07:09,140 world, 1146 01:07:09,140 --> 01:07:13,600 we do see people that experiment with those things and it does not go well. 1147 01:07:13,860 --> 01:07:17,040 People that, that like, that were like very abstinent sober. 1148 01:07:17,510 --> 01:07:20,760 They dive into that and then they're back on heroin and stuff like that. 1149 01:07:20,820 --> 01:07:25,720 So I've seen that happen enough to be very cautious. 1150 01:07:26,060 --> 01:07:29,520 Or they've convinced themselves that whatever treatment they're doing is, 1151 01:07:29,900 --> 01:07:33,880 is to the sole purpose of whatever the issue they're trying to deal with and not 1152 01:07:33,880 --> 01:07:36,600 realizing that they're habitualizing. Right. It. 1153 01:07:36,660 --> 01:07:37,520 That's right. Yeah. 1154 01:07:37,590 --> 01:07:41,680 There's a lot of tricky ways that the mind can build cases. 1155 01:07:42,380 --> 01:07:46,920 And I've seen it get dark for, uh, some people. 1156 01:07:47,400 --> 01:07:52,040 I don't recommend it. I'm not someone that would recommend that to someone. 1157 01:07:52,660 --> 01:07:56,800 But I've had clients and patients that have done that on their own and came and 1158 01:07:56,820 --> 01:08:00,480 sat in this room to report to me what has gone on. 1159 01:08:00,820 --> 01:08:05,080 And I've actually seen some pretty big revolutions with body image. 1160 01:08:05,550 --> 01:08:09,920 I've seen people that have had a lifetime of eating disorders come back into my 1161 01:08:09,920 --> 01:08:13,360 office and tell me I'm starting to feel more comfortable in my skin. 1162 01:08:13,560 --> 01:08:14,800 I had a big experience. 1163 01:08:15,180 --> 01:08:19,400 And even though I'm biased as a person in recovery towards safety 1164 01:08:20,100 --> 01:08:21,880 and like that, that narrow road, 1165 01:08:22,060 --> 01:08:27,040 how could I be a doctor sitting here and listen to someone say that and be 1166 01:08:27,240 --> 01:08:27,790 negative about it? 1167 01:08:27,790 --> 01:08:28,640 Totally . 1168 01:08:28,640 --> 01:08:29,840 You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. 1169 01:08:29,870 --> 01:08:33,640 Totally. Yeah. Yeah. So, so fascinating. Such beautiful, 1170 01:08:34,320 --> 01:08:36,120 interesting work that is, 1171 01:08:36,480 --> 01:08:40,080 I feel on the precipice of just humongous 1172 01:08:41,480 --> 01:08:45,080 e exploration. Yes. Which is so exciting. It's exciting. 1173 01:08:45,110 --> 01:08:48,280 It's deep space is coming your way. It is. Which is fun. Yeah. 1174 01:08:48,280 --> 01:08:50,240 Tell people how they might find you. Yeah. So. 1175 01:08:50,700 --> 01:08:54,560 Why is my nutrition is the app and there's a YouTube, 1176 01:08:55,150 --> 01:08:58,600 there's a, uh, Instagram and a TikTok. 1177 01:08:58,740 --> 01:08:59,840 And they're all under the same name. 1178 01:08:59,840 --> 01:09:04,200 They're all under Wise Mind Nutrition. W i s e. Oh. Uh, 1179 01:09:04,230 --> 01:09:07,960 wise Mind comes from D B T. So Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Oh. 1180 01:09:08,140 --> 01:09:12,880 The Wise Mind is the kind of intersection between the Hot Mind and the more 1181 01:09:12,910 --> 01:09:16,960 Logical Mind. The Wise Mind is the, is the, yeah. Common ground. 1182 01:09:17,010 --> 01:09:19,040 Right. Okay. So that's what, so spell it all out for. 1183 01:09:19,040 --> 01:09:23,600 People. Yeah. W i s E M i N D nutrition, Instagram, 1184 01:09:23,600 --> 01:09:28,360 YouTube, TikTok has some underscores in there. My personal Instagram is Dr. 1185 01:09:28,370 --> 01:09:31,480 David Wiss, so d r d a v i d w i S s. 1186 01:09:31,760 --> 01:09:34,000 I definitely share nutrition and health stuff there, 1187 01:09:34,380 --> 01:09:36,560 but also throw in a little bit of family and fun. 1188 01:09:37,020 --> 01:09:41,280 And the website is wise Mind nutrition.com. If you join the newsletter, 1189 01:09:41,700 --> 01:09:46,320 you're gonna get some freebies. You're gonna get alerted to, uh, the app. 1190 01:09:46,460 --> 01:09:50,080 By the time this comes out, it's probably gonna be available. Uh, 1191 01:09:50,100 --> 01:09:53,160 but it's always good to sign up on the website 'cause people that are on the 1192 01:09:53,160 --> 01:09:57,320 newsletter get some additional love. Mm-hmm. . So please sign up. 1193 01:09:57,580 --> 01:09:57,860 Uh, 1194 01:09:57,860 --> 01:10:01,120 I'd love to connect with people that are on a wellness journey and learn about 1195 01:10:01,120 --> 01:10:01,960 your journey as well. 1196 01:10:02,460 --> 01:10:05,480 Thanks for listening everybody. Thank you, David. Yeah. 1197 01:10:05,910 --> 01:10:09,080 This was so awesome. Thank you so much. And goodbye to everyone. 1198 01:10:09,340 --> 01:10:11,800 Bye everybody. This has been really great. I thought it was. 1199 01:10:11,800 --> 01:10:12,633 Pretty good. 1200 01:10:12,660 --> 01:10:13,493 Bye. 1201 01:10:13,950 --> 01:10:15,760 Rate review and subscribe to Hey, 1202 01:10:15,760 --> 01:10:19,640 human on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Bye.