Latest / SpaceTomatoes / My Immune System Has Narcolepsy: Black Mold, Swiss Cheese Brain & Becoming Your Own Doctor with Dr. Jeff Bone S3-EP2

Transcript

My Immune System Has Narcolepsy: Black Mold, Swiss Cheese Brain & Becoming Your Own Doctor with Dr. Jeff Bone S3-EP2 · SpaceTomatoes

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  You know the whole middle part of the grocery store?
• 0:03
  Yeah, just don't go there.
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  We've talked about that several times on this program.
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  We just shop the periphery of the store.
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  The vegetables, the meat, and that's pretty much it.
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  All the junk in the boxes, forget it.
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  And if you can find a farm stand instead of a store, do that.
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  all right everybody welcome back to another episode of the space tomatoes podcast i'm one
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  of your hosts havoc my lex hello is that other guy the other guy today today we have we have with
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  us a very special guest, Dr. Jeffrey Bone, who is a chronic illness mentor and coach,
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  as well as a psychologist practicing, I believe. Yes.
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  No, just doing the coaching as I am using my podcast as a way to spread the word across the
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  land. And by all means, just call me Jeff. All right, Jeff, it is. I like that.
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  Thanks for coming on, Jeff.
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  Appreciate it.
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  Well, thanks for having me.
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  Thanks for hosting me.
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  Absolutely.
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  LX had pointed out at one point that you kind of maybe missed the perfect calling.
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  You could have become an orthopedic surgeon.
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  Orthopedic surgeon, urologist, you never know.
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  Urologist.
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  I wasn't going to take it there, but I grew up with it.
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  So I guess let's just get right into it.
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  So you were practicing psychology at one point and an issue presented itself that landed you with your own chronic illness of sorts.
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  What actually happened and what was that process like?
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  And what did it feel like to go from the person treating people to the person being hopefully treated?
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  Well, about a decade ago, I was in my own office.
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  I was the only one in there.
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  I had a waiting room, I had two offices, a little restroom.
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  And the problem was that after about three years or so, I had this horrible sinusitis,
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  just this headache that just would not go away.
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  And so I went to the ENT, you know, just the ear, nose, throat, and, you know, showed some
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  sinus issues, was given some prednisone.
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  And after I took the prednisone, my body flipped out.
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  It felt like I was walking on vibrating sand.
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  My bladder hurt.
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  It was holiday time.
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  So all the Christmas lights, they were just distracting and they were nauseating me.
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  Couldn't watch anything on television because just the motion on the screen was overwhelming.
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  My memory, I couldn't remember my kids' names, my animals' names.
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  It was just horrific.
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  So I go to all the doctors, the neurologists.
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  I go to multiple ENTs, internists, you name it.
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  And it's either like, oh, just wait a little bit.
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  Everything's going to be fine.
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  Or it's just anxiety.
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  And it's just not resolving, not resolving.
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  I continue to look.
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  I continue to seek.
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  And then eventually I go to one doctor, a functional med doctor, does some blood work and says, I think you may have a mold problem.
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  And so a higher environmentalist checks out the house, checks out the office.
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  Turns out there's two neurotoxic species of mold in that HVAC.
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  And it was stachybotrys, which is the most famous black mold, another one I can't remember off the top of my head.
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  And that had kind of spiraled me into the world of chronic inflammatory response syndrome.
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  And you would think the fun would stop right there, but the fun continues.
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  So after spending a lot of money and doing everything in that world, I'm better.
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  I do strange things like ozone therapy, do lots of binders, do these different things to kind of like help clear myself with the mycotoxins.
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  And I do get better.
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  And we're moving in the right direction, but I have no good days.
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  And I was going to go to the Mayo Clinic, which is kind of like the car wash of doctors.
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  You get, you know, spun around by all these different doctors.
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  But I have some decent health systems near me.
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  So I'm like, why don't I just look at the hospital directory?
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  Because I've been to lots of doctors at this point.
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  And I'm just like, maybe there's something that I haven't tried yet.
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  So I go through and I see one that just says toxicology.
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  And I'm just like, hey, I don't know what toxicology does, but I'm feeling toxic.
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  So I'm going to go there.
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  And he doesn't believe in the mold stuff.
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  He's just kind of pooh-poohs that idea.
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  I don't have a problem with that.
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  But he's listening to me.
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  and he takes me seriously and he can see that I still have a little slight tremor.
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  It gives me a piece of paper.
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  I hold it out there and he can see the tremor that I have.
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  So he's kind of curious.
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  And one of the things that he looks for, thankfully, is my immunogoblins, part of the immune system.
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  Well, my immunogoblins are clinically low.
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  So I get sent to the immunologist and the immunologist gives me a vaccine.
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  A month later, I come back and get the blood work done.
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  My body does not make antibodies to the vaccine.
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  And so what do I have?
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  I have common variable immune deficiency at that point, primary immune disorder.
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  And although it's a rare disease, it has common in the name because it's the most common primary immune deficiency disorder.
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  And so then I have to take immunoglobulins.
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  I have to infuse them in once a week for the rest of my life.
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  so is that an autoimmune disease that you had underlying that was triggered by the mold or
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  it was probably yes they call it epigenetics so it's probably the due to the environmental stressor
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  i have the expression of then the common variable immune disorder and it's a primary immune disorder
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  so basically my immune system is has like narcolepsy it won't get out of bed autoimmune
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  disorders, that's where the immune system is overactive and will destroy healthy tissue,
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  get arthritis. It's like your joints are perfectly fine. And then it's like, nah,
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  the joints are the bad guys. We got to get them. That's the autoimmune disorder. I've got the
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  complete opposite, the primary immune thing. Okay. Wow. And then to say, you know, what's that like?
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  It's very humbling because my life has always been about other people's stories. It's just the
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  story of the other person and how can I kind of tailor that, help that insight, whatever it is,
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  to be able to assist with them. And now I'm being told, oh, you have anxiety. Now, mind you,
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  I've always had anxiety. I've always been an anxious kid my entire life. Just anxiety is
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  nothing new. Now, I know systemically that's not why my bladder hurts. You know, that's not why my
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  body's in, in absolute chaos. And so when I get into the patient role, it's very, it's very,
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  very scary. Because at first, I'm like, Oh, just go see the doctor, the doctor will know how to fix
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  me. And it's like, well, that one didn't. And that one didn't. And that one, and wait a second,
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  I'm starting to get a pattern here, that I'm not fitting into that decision tree into the box of
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  how they see people. And I'm getting kind of dismissed. And I'm just taking every single
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  supplement because I'm feeling very overwhelmed. My brain is literally inflamed and I'm having
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  major problems. It just so happens I had a SPECT scan. I don't know if you know who Dr. Daniel
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  Amon is, but he's famous for doing these brain imaging SPECT scans. And I had one in the early
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  2000s, which is before the mold. And I had one in 2022. And it clearly showed a huge difference
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  in terms of my brain functioning. So you could see the impact of it neurologically. So with this
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  impaired, broken brain, I'm Googling. We don't have AI at that point. So it's kind of like,
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  I'm just good old fashioned Google. And I'm Googling things. I'm trying every single supplement
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  that I can find. Maybe it's this one. Maybe it's that one. I need some NAC or I need some
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  black oil, seed, seed oil, whatever it is. I'm trying everything and nothing is kind of moving
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  the needle. And all of it is this hope. I'm just hoping to the next one, to the next one.
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  Because I go to the doctor and it's one of those things that only the real kind of chronically ill
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  will kind of recognize one things I never knew. It's like you, a new doctor is like Christmas.
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  I mean, you were just so excited to see the specialist. And then you get the usual, like,
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  I've got no idea what's going on. And you go back to the car, but it's so demoralizing.
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  And your compass is spinning because you just don't, because you had just been looking forward
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  to that, you know, event for so long.
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  And then it's like Christmas day and like, yeah, you know, no presents for you.
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  And then the demoralization that hits and then you're just kind of existentially kind
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  of spinning.
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  And it's like, what am I going to do?
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  How am I going to fix this?
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  Who's going to help me?
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  I can't be the only one that's experiencing this.
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  There's nothing new under the sun.
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  Why can't they see me?
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  Why can't they see what's wrong with me?
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  I think a lot of people experience that. I mean, they go to the doctor looking for answers. And I think a lot of the time the doctors kind of, they don't want to listen to you as much because I don't know. And you're not like a random person off the street. You're a physician and you're going in there and they're kind of telling you. And I know I've been told like either they don't say it outright, but they kind of act like you're making stuff up or that you're, you don't actually have those symptoms and you really don't know what you're talking about.
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  and they still don't have the answers either.
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  So it makes it hard for people that are seeking answers.
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  Absolutely.
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  And because they won't use the phrase, I don't know.
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  And it's just going to, it's so hard
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  because so many of our symptoms are subjective in nature.
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  And it's kind of like, and they rely heavily on just like,
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  what's the imaging or the blood work may say,
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  but they refuse to say, I don't know.
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  That's why they'll throw it in the,
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  oh, you're exaggerating.
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  Oh, it's a psychosomatic issue
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  rather than just like, you know what? Honestly, I don't know. Maybe here, let me refer you to this
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  other person or whomever it may be. But they use way too much of something called the swag technique,
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  which is a scientific wild ass guess. And so. Well, it's, it's actually, it's actually taught
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  in medical school, right? I mean, there's, there's actually kind of a, a, a built in decision. It's
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  not a decision tree so much, but it is, but it's kind of a, a, a refined mechanism that says that
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  if this do this 90 plus percent of the time that resolves it, they don't get any training.
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  Not all of them. Some of them do, but they're highly specialized in that remaining five to 10%.
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  And that's where the issue comes, right? And, you know, in talking with people and also having gone through things myself, I find one of the most frustrating things is the need to have intense levels of self-advocacy in that process.
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  Yes, absolutely. That's essential. And I know doctors hate when you come in with the chat results and this, this and that, but it's the idea. And I always tell people that I'm talking to, it's like, you're the expert of you. I'm not the expert of you. You are the expert of you. And I have my own little area of expertise and we're going to put those together.
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  and so many doctors refuse to work as a team with the patient
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  because maybe it's just like they only have so much time
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  and they're just kind of moving through.
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  And like you said, they'll be right most of the time,
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  but they are stubborn about that 10%
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  and they'll put it into the psychosomatic area.
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  And I always say it psychosomatic until we understand the pathways And then all of a sudden okay I guess well that not psychosomatic Oh I guess that not psychosomatic And it just more and more of that
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  Now, the psychology matters,
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  but it matters in degrees of suffering
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  and how we experience some of the symptoms,
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  not the underlining disease.
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  Okay, so it helps the symptoms sometimes
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  and symptom management, how we experience it,
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  but not the underlying disease.
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  It's kind of like placebo.
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  you can have a placebo
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  and it's like oh this is going to take away blah blah blah
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  and it will some of the time
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  but it doesn't do anything for the
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  underlying disease just the perception
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  of it temporarily so
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  yeah
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  I think the other battle that we have to
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  contend with is what the insurance is going to
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  pay for or not
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  yeah and they want anything that's even
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  like touching the idea of like wellness
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  or it gets into this
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  complicated kind of space
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  And I remember way back when reading about, so there's something called ACOM. It gets used in work comp all the time, but it's the American Academy of Occupation and Environmental Medicine. And they realized ahead of the game that mold was an issue.
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  and they have the attorneys write up the sections associated with black mold that would protect
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  basically the insurance companies the doctors and everyone kind of like in that game so but the thing
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  is it's like if you ask farmers about it and they talk about farmers and mold in uh in the feed that
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  they're giving their animals they are all on top that's where the research is because the health of
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  those animals in terms of how big and strong and healthy they are it's kind of like it's all the
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  information is right there so it's kind of strange but they got ahead of the game so mold would not
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  be taken so seriously of course of course they did same with like lime and things like that and
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  just environmental medicine kind of in general. They want to dismiss that.
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  And mold's a huge one, right? We, I live on a small farm. So, you know, if we get a feed sack
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  that has mold in it, the whole thing is, is gone. It's no longer any good. And if you feed mold to
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  animals, it will, it will alter their health in a very detrimental manner very quickly too. It's,
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  it's not a slow moving thing. It's, it's pretty quick.
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  It's almost like we're mammals.
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  I know how weird, right?
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  It's very, very, very strange. I mean,
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  we have fancy thoughts and we wear clothes and we have this, this and that,
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  but we're mammals. And, and,
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  and what's confusing is that not everyone reacts to mold the exact same way.
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  It's like some people are lactose intolerant.
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  Some people can take the lactose.
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  sometimes people can clear mycotoxins easily and some people cannot clear it. So there's variability
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  to it, which then kind of reminds me of the David Foster Wallace quote, how can I have all of this
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  inside of me, but to you, it's just words. So the person's suffering and it's like they have a
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  tempest, they have a storm within them, but it's just words that come out because pain's unshareable.
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  I can't give you the burning in my right foot.
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  No one can feel that.
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  I can give you a metaphor.
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  It feels like it's by a campfire, but I can't give you that pain.
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  And then I'm in a position where I just have to hope that you believe me because that's all that can be there.
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  It's like you either believe me or you don't, but can't really test it.
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  I've had the nerve testing.
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  I've had the MRI.
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  I've had the blood work.
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  I've had all this stuff.
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  It's just kind of like it is what it is.
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  you believe me or you don't. And sometimes we get into those doctors where they just don't.
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  And for whatever reason, maybe wrong time of day, or they just don't believe in that or whatever it
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  may be. Well, there's, there's a huge push to, to in the medical field, right. And, and insurance
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  as well. And you mentioned this, right. They don't cover things like supplements. Doctors will rarely,
• 17:21
  rarely look at even the most simple things for problematic areas, unless it's, you know,
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  absolutely tried and true tied to this, right? But diet, right? Supplementation, exercise,
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  things of this nature, you go to a doctor and you're going to get a prescription and it's great,
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  but, you know, is it something, well, this will clear it up. What's the foundational problem here?
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  And they're like, ah, next, we got to get the train rolling, you know?
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  Yeah. When I went to the urologist, they're like, here's some Flomax.
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  You know, it's kind of like it's a take.
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  Again, it's like he had no idea.
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  He's like, try this Tic Tac.
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  And it's kind of like, you know, didn't make a difference.
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  But I have a great example of it, too.
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  I had this horrible insomnia during this time.
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  I mean, zero sleep, zero sleep.
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  There were times where I was given heavy duty medication and I still wouldn't sleep.
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  It was that bad.
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  I had a home sleep study. I had a sleep study in a lab, you know, it's like, and again, they paid for all of that kind of stuff and they paid for the, my medication. But it wasn't until I went to the functional medicine doctor and he had me test my cortisol throughout the day spitting into a tube. And then that showed my cortisol levels were just off the charts.
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  just so happens they have they have medication that will raise your cortisol they don't have
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  medication that will diminish your cortisol but there are supplements that do there are adaptogens
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  that do decrease cortisol and so it's kind of like i'm talking to the head of sleep you know
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  medicine for the larger large you know hoag hospital you know a very well respected health
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  system here and they're throwing their sleep studies and medications and the sleep studies
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  is just kind of like selling CPAPs, you know, it's kind of like, and, and not that people don't need
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  it. It's kind of like, but it doesn't help a lot of people. Let's say that, but they don't start
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  off with the basics of like, let's test your cortisol and let's test it kind of throughout
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  the day and let's look at other ways to kind of bring that down and it's like it's frustrating
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  they bring you into a a sterile hospital room with a hospital bed hook a bunch of wires up to
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  you and then tell you get a good night's rest and you're like i don't think i've ever been this
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  uncomfortable i think they do a lot from home now though a lot of i did both i did both and it was
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  easy i did one from home and then i did one in the lab and they both showed you know the same
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  thing. I didn't have sleep apnea, but, uh, they were both very billable for the individuals
• 20:11
  prescribing it. Right. Yeah. And, and, um, you got to, you got to experience what I call the gray
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  man. Uh, I, I have suffered throughout periods of my life with insomnia, not, not quite zero sleep,
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  but two, maybe three hours a night max. Uh, and I, I always describe it as, you know, like my wife
• 20:34
  would ask me like, are you okay? Are you, you know, what's going on? And I said, it's just gray.
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  Everything's gray. Yes. I mean, all the time, like my feelings are gray. My vision is gray.
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  My interaction is gray. And what do I mean by that? It's drab. It's just bland and it's,
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  and it's in the background somewhere kind of fuzzy is what it felt like to me.
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  Do you get irritable too? Cause I can only imagine I would be slightly cranky if I only got,
• 21:02
  I was grumpy before. And so, yeah, I was irritable. I was grumpy. And actually, probably what saved other people was that I was so fatigued. I was absolutely just, I was to the point, it wasn't just the sleep, but it was just the chaos of my immune system that just wasn't working.
• 21:25
  and if someone told me I needed to drive 30 minutes and hit a button to save the world,
• 21:33
  we'd all be dead. I mean, I just couldn't, I couldn't imagine someone say, oh, go to the
• 21:38
  grocery store and go get the eggs, go get the butter. It's like, it's in the back. It's like,
• 21:42
  I can't do that. I just, I, and people don't really understand. I have, I've had severe
• 21:49
  chronic pain and I've had severe fatigue, I would rather have severe, uh, pain than fatigue.
• 21:55
  Uh, it sounds, it may sound, you know, controversial, but like I can do things in pain. I can't do
• 22:04
  anything when I'm, when I have severe, severe fatigue.
• 22:08
  Yeah. You can, you can push through pain. You can, you know, at some point it becomes
• 22:13
  background. It's, you know, yeah, I have, I have back pain, right. And it's always there.
• 22:22
  It's just always there, but I just do what I have to do and it is what it is. But yeah,
• 22:29
  when you get fatigued, it's kind of like, I can't lift my legs. Like I physically can't walk. Like
• 22:36
  I just walked to the front door and I feel like I've just ran 10 miles or something, you know?
• 22:41
  Absolutely.
• 22:42
  Yeah. Without the adrenaline rush and the beneficial portions.
• 22:48
  Yes.
• 22:48
  What supplements have you found that, you know, natural type supplements have you found that have helped?
• 22:54
  And you had said black seed oil.
• 22:56
  And it's funny.
• 22:58
  I think it's a religious text.
• 23:00
  I know it's a religious text and I think it's often misquoted to the Quran.
• 23:05
  And I think it's another one of theirs called the Hadid.
• 23:08
  If I'm wrong, comment, let us know.
• 23:11
  I'm wrong. I'm happy to admit it. But I think in there, there's a piece that says that black seed oil is something to the effect of it. It's so potent a healer that the only thing it won't cure is death.
• 23:27
  Wow. Well, that's impressive. And so, unfortunately, it didn't heal me. And the things that ultimately made a difference were the adaptogens. Now, I started off with ashwagandha. I started off with, I think it was KSM-66, if I'm correct. But then there was another one that worked a little bit better for me. I think it was called like Samunil or something of that nature.
• 23:56
  and now it's like, okay, I'm sleeping better.
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  But it took me a while to figure it out.
• 24:03
  It was giving me anhedonia.
• 24:05
  It was flattening me out too much.
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  And I just really, really kind of didn't care.
• 24:12
  And I believe it was phosphatidylserine,
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  which was better for me in terms of bringing down the cortisol,
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  but without the same mood flattening that the ashwagandha was causing.
• 24:24
  and I'm out of my league here talking about the supplements in terms of,
• 24:30
  that's okay.
• 24:31
  And,
• 24:31
  but it was,
• 24:32
  you know,
• 24:33
  I,
• 24:33
  you know,
• 24:33
  it was always,
• 24:34
  you know,
• 24:35
  when you go to see the functional medicine doctors,
• 24:38
  you always find the,
• 24:39
  the liposomal version of it,
• 24:41
  you know,
• 24:42
  it's kind of like the Cadillac version of it.
• 24:44
  And so it's kind of like,
• 24:46
  but none of those kind of particularly kind of saved the day.
• 24:50
  I tried a lot of them and it's kind of like,
• 24:53
  And you have these different boutiques and you're spending a few hundred dollars, you know, a month on it.
• 24:59
  And it's just like, and it just wasn't saving the day.
• 25:04
  And, but I did find, you know, some, you know, in, in, in, when things became a little bit more stable, that taurine and glycine, some of the amino acids were very beneficial for sleep as well as magnesium.
• 25:19
  Magnesium's huge.
• 25:21
  Yes.
• 25:21
  And so I found some of those basic ones to be beneficial for, for the world of sleep, as long as you're not in complete free fall with your immune system.
• 25:33
  Have you, have you tried fighting fungus with fungus at all?
• 25:38
  Yes, into the world of like Paul Stamets and, and, and, uh, myco defense.
• 25:48
  And, uh, there's a, there's a few different, um, mushrooms, uh, kind of
• 25:53
  complexes uh the lion mane um and so uh and so I I have tried but see some of it my memory is not fantastic because it turned my brain into Swiss cheese
• 26:08
  So some of the timeline got spliced up a little bit.
• 26:11
  But I believe I was trying a lot of those things as well as some of the peptides.
• 26:15
  I was taking peptides a decade ago.
• 26:19
  Some of the biohacking, early biohacking people.
• 26:23
  And 2016 is not really biohacking, but it wasn't where it is kind of quite now in terms of it because it was mainstream enough for Dave Asprey to be talking about it.
• 26:37
  And, you know, then you're pretty kind of mainstream.
• 26:40
  But I was trying all of that.
• 26:42
  I was injecting all of it and it just wasn't making a huge difference.
• 26:46
  It wasn't until I really stabilized with the immunoglobulins.
• 26:51
  besides the physical toll all this stuff takes on you there's also an emotional or psychological
• 26:58
  toll it takes on you too especially when you're going to doctors and they essentially tell you
• 27:03
  there's nothing wrong with you or they don't know what's wrong with you that i mean and then you just
• 27:06
  start thinking i'm never gonna figure this stuff yeah you start feeling hopeless and helpless uh
• 27:12
  hopeless is that things aren't going to get better and helpless is that there's nothing that i can do
• 27:17
  to get things better.
• 27:19
  And that's where right next to me,
• 27:21
  I have a little ultrasound wand.
• 27:23
  I use ultrasound on myself.
• 27:25
  I use a red light panel.
• 27:28
  One of the things that I found to be incredibly effective
• 27:32
  because my brain was shot to all heck
• 27:35
  and I used a bi-light
• 27:39
  where you put the red light up your nose.
• 27:43
  And it's not the sexiest look,
• 27:45
  Not that I ever bring the sexiest look, but it was helpful.
• 27:50
  And I'm just like, this is expensive.
• 27:53
  And it's like, I think it was like $300 at the time.
• 27:57
  And I was absolutely blown away of just how beneficial it was when I was in a very, very compromised state.
• 28:07
  All right.
• 28:08
  I have psoriasis and with the psoriatic arthritis component, I feel fatigued a lot.
• 28:14
  And I've been to the doctor and they say, oh, the fatigue is not part of that at all.
• 28:18
  And, you know, it has nothing to do with it.
• 28:20
  And you're just, you know, I don't know, being lazy or whatever.
• 28:23
  You just got to get out and do that.
• 28:24
  That's really not how things work.
• 28:25
  But anyway, long story short, I did buy a red blue panel probably six or eight months ago.
• 28:32
  And I think it works pretty good.
• 28:34
  It helps with the flare ups on my arms and stuff.
• 28:37
  But you've had pretty good results with the red light therapy.
• 28:40
  I use a red light panel now and I use it on my foot and it's kind of the nerve pain that I have in my foot.
• 28:48
  And it is it is helpful.
• 28:50
  And it's it's odd that they don't talk about it as much.
• 28:54
  Right.
• 28:55
  But it is helpful.
• 28:56
  And I use an ultrasound.
• 28:59
  It's like one hundred and fifty dollar ultrasound wand that I use on the bursa.
• 29:04
  That's likely causing the nerve pain in my right.
• 29:07
  But I also use it on my head.
• 29:10
  And it makes a difference.
• 29:12
  It actually helps.
• 29:14
  You know, there we actually help the people and to give them tools, you know, to be able to help themselves instead.
• 29:22
  And again, I'm not anti-medication.
• 29:25
  I'm not anti-anything.
• 29:26
  I'm pro-everything.
• 29:28
  Put everything on the menu.
• 29:30
  Show me everything that I can.
• 29:31
  And it's kind of like, what's everything?
• 29:33
  And then, you know, that's where the doctors are like, oh, don't look up chat.
• 29:37
  And it's like, but chat will give me everything.
• 29:38
  chat will show me the menu. You won't show me the menu. And it's kind of like, what am I supposed
• 29:43
  to do? And so I want to see the menu. Uh, uh, and, uh, yeah, I want to see all my options.
• 29:53
  I really am a huge advocate of, um, so I'm not, I'm not necessarily anti-Western medicine,
• 30:01
  right i i believe that it has a form and it has a function um i tend to say things like
• 30:08
  if if a long hard thing is in more pieces than you started with good time to be at a doctor
• 30:14
  yes if you're if you're leaking also a good time to be at the doctor um you know so when in other
• 30:21
  words i i tend to to uh keep that at a minimum for me i am not going to tell anyone else what
• 30:30
  to do. You do you and be happy with, with your results. Um, but you're like every other guy you
• 30:36
  go, if you're dying. Well, maybe if, if I'm dying bad enough, if I'm not dying that bad,
• 30:42
  it'd probably be the quality of the death, you know, it's seven minutes of DMT, you know,
• 30:48
  don't undersell it. But, uh, but the thing that I've always had like a biggest problem with is,
• 30:55
  is doctors won't even consider naturopath, you know, homeopath type remedies, even though they
• 31:04
  know there is science to back up the fact that it does work. I was actually quite shocked. I broke
• 31:11
  my collarbone, right. And like piece of it sticking up and all that good stuff. So they had to go in
• 31:17
  and put it back together and put a plate and some screws. But, uh, you know, I had told the doctor,
• 31:22
  He asked if I was on any medication.
• 31:24
  I said, no, but I take an herbal tea and I described it to him.
• 31:28
  And after all this, he gave me this, you know, bunch of medication to take.
• 31:32
  And, uh, there, there was nothing in there for like a, uh, anti-inflammatory or, or anything
• 31:38
  like that.
• 31:39
  And I was like, you know, is, isn't that important?
• 31:41
  He goes, there is nothing I can give you that's as powerful as a tea you're already drinking.
• 31:46
  And I was like blown away by that.
• 31:50
  And, and for me, I would love to find an advocacy group that I could get behind that actually is trying to change the medical world to incorporate that back in. Like, I'm not saying don't use medication where, where it's, you know, relevant, important, necessary, et cetera.
• 32:07
  but I am saying that if you have the option to tell someone, Hey, if you, if you take turmeric,
• 32:12
  it's going to help, you know, with inflammation, uh, if you, you know, et cetera. Right. And there
• 32:19
  are a lot of natural remedies out there that really help. Like for me, I'm under the weather
• 32:25
  right now. And I will tell you right now, I found this, you know, uh, a local farm stand to us. A
• 32:31
  lady does a bunch of tinctures and stuff like that. And, uh, you know, the first time I found
• 32:37
  it, I was actually taking codeine cough syrup because my cough is so bad. And this is like
• 32:42
  honey, frankincense, lavender, um, and, uh, a few other things in there.
• 32:48
  Throw on some elderberry, some zinc.
• 32:50
  Right. And, and you just take a little teaspoon of this, put it in your mouth. And I'm telling you
• 32:54
  instantaneous relief. It just stops it all. And I'm like, wait a second here.
• 33:00
  You know, so I've always been a big fan of that.
• 33:04
  And I think it's really neat that you also have incorporated that into your journey or
• 33:08
  tried several paths, right?
• 33:10
  Because I think everyone has a blind spot.
• 33:13
  Absolutely.
• 33:14
  Right.
• 33:15
  And I think in general, there's, you know, there's a prescribed, you know, mechanism
• 33:20
  or, or path to go down, but we are all individual and, you know, very much so your body is different
• 33:28
  from mine, which is different from Alex's. So treating us as all the same thing, probably not
• 33:35
  the best way we can treat people. And the thing that they really undersell are the side effects
• 33:42
  of these medications and the withdrawal of these medications, um, which can be extremely problematic.
• 33:50
  And so it blows my mind that we don't start with like Sammy.
• 34:00
  And again, I'm not the expert here, but someone's experiencing depression.
• 34:05
  It's like, why wouldn't you start with the supplement instead of something with a black box warning that indicates that they may be more suicidal afterwards?
• 34:14
  And I've talked to many people who they take one dose and they're right to the ER because they're having these panic attacks is the reaction because, you know, it's going to be very intense.
• 34:25
  And again, I'm not anti this is not anti rant of, you know, SSRI medications, but I'm always dumbfounded by why don't we start simpler?
• 34:36
  You know, why don't we start, you know, you know, somewhere else?
• 34:40
  It's kind of like rather than, you know, in that direction.
• 34:45
  It doesn't make sense, you know, whatsoever.
• 34:49
  And someone that's willing to kind of blend.
• 34:51
  Now, UCI, UCI is another health system that's near me.
• 34:56
  They have a very large integrative building.
• 35:00
  And it's the Susan Samueli program.
• 35:04
  And it's mentioned a little bit.
• 35:07
  there's a book called like on healing or how to heal or something along those
• 35:11
  lines. I wish I had it just ready right there.
• 35:14
  We'll blame the mold for that one. But it is where it is.
• 35:19
  It's not just a little room off to the side.
• 35:21
  It's its own building and everything built in that building,
• 35:25
  which is brand new is designed for that healing modality and healing purpose.
• 35:31
  So the Susan Samueli program,
• 35:34
  program, integrative program through UCI would probably be one of the closest versions of what
• 35:39
  you're looking for. Yeah, that's amazing. And I'm a huge fan of UCI. I actually spent time at UCI as
• 35:48
  well. So I knew one of the regions at the time, but yeah, great, great place, amazing medical
• 35:57
  school as well as other things. But I think in the medicine, it's a pretty good place to be.
• 36:06
  And I don't think it's accidental, too, that it's there. And I say that because anyone that knows
• 36:14
  Irvine very well understands that it's a very diverse place in terms of ethnicity. Primarily,
• 36:21
  it's going to be Persian and Asian. And both of those cultures are going to also be heavily
• 36:27
  influenced by, you know, natural uses of, you know, different supplements, spices, herbs,
• 36:34
  and things of that nature as well. And so just that mindset, the idea of, no, no, no, you can
• 36:41
  start with acupuncture because in Western medicine, it's always like, I don't know,
• 36:46
  see the shrink and try some acupuncture. You know, it's the last ditch, whatever,
• 36:50
  versus actually being able to start with acupuncture, being able to understand
• 36:56
  acupuncture and the dietician.
• 36:59
  Let's start there.
• 37:00
  You're not feeling so well, that would be a really good place to start.
• 37:05
  Yeah, for sure.
• 37:07
  So when you're mentoring, you're coaching stuff,
• 37:09
  I have to imagine there's first an immense amount of satisfaction
• 37:15
  that comes from helping people through times that you've already been through.
• 37:20
  Um, and maybe that's not the case, but I would imagine.
• 37:24
  And then, but I also wonder like how, how does that play on your, you know, empathetic
• 37:31
  and sympathetic systems taking that in while you're also dealing with the same on your
• 37:38
  own?
• 37:38
  It's the only thing that I'm good at.
• 37:42
  Literally, I'm just built for it.
• 37:44
  Um, and it is something that is just my nature.
• 37:49
  I see people who are proctologists or surgeons who are eye doctors.
• 37:55
  I couldn't do that.
• 37:57
  They're accountants.
• 37:58
  I couldn't do that.
• 38:00
  If a bunch of people want to talk to me about difficult times living with chronic illness, that's my sweet spot.
• 38:09
  That's like Barry Bonds having a pitcher that actually wants to pitch to him.
• 38:13
  It's kind of like, hey, let's go.
• 38:16
  This is what I'm good at.
• 38:17
  And so it doesn't burn me out. I can burn myself out. I can be burnt out. Absolutely.
• 38:26
  You know, paperwork can burn me out. And and just my own brain, my own thought process,
• 38:33
  the little internal monologue, the little internal demon that can burn me out.
• 38:38
  Other people and their problems. That's that's my safe spot.
• 38:42
  You know, that's where I feel most useful because I've always liked Ram Dass' quote,
• 38:48
  we're all just walking each other home.
• 38:50
  We're all just walking.
• 38:51
  And here is my opportunity to do something where I feel like I giving back So what is it that I enjoy I think there was a Japanese saying forgotten but what is it that you enjoy that you good at that helps other people And it like you put those three
• 39:12
  things together. It's kind of like, that's what you should do. And so, Hey, you know what? That
• 39:19
  summarizes where it is for me. And there are people that say, Oh, I must be so sad to listen
• 39:26
  the sad stories all the time. Isn't it a downer? It's like, no, absolutely not. Because I know that
• 39:32
  the stories will change. The stories will improve. Now, I don't cure anybody. I don't have the magic
• 39:39
  cure. I don't have the magic beans. I'm not, you know, like, here's my program. Oh, you know,
• 39:45
  you need to bump it up to this tier. No, I just do hourly, you know, rates. I don't buy, do packages.
• 39:51
  I don't sell, you know, unrealistic dreams.
• 39:55
  You know, it's like ultimately I can be as straightforward.
• 39:58
  It's like I'm a storyteller.
• 39:59
  And I was, we're all stories.
• 40:01
  It's kind of like, you know, look around the books around your house.
• 40:04
  You know, the story of this country, the story of this, the story of that, the religions.
• 40:09
  You know, it's like we have these different stories and we get into a place through illness where the story changes.
• 40:16
  and you're in this almost like liminal state, the bardo,
• 40:21
  this in-between place as you're going through this dark night of the soul
• 40:25
  and you've lost your compass and you don't know, you know,
• 40:30
  where's my freedom, where's my purpose, where's my meaning,
• 40:33
  where's my identity?
• 40:34
  You have this identity collapse and you're just trying to find yourself.
• 40:40
  That's awesome.
• 40:42
  And so, yeah, I have...
• 40:46
  So it almost seems like you are really kind of an empath, but also one that has been able to deal with taking on, and not necessarily take, maybe not an empath, but similar in nature, right?
• 41:02
  Because you're taking on other people's things and you're trying to help them make sense of them, trying to help them find a way to be okay with what's going on.
• 41:12
  Yes.
• 41:13
  To, you know, further their lives.
• 41:16
  Right. And I think that probably has a huge impact on their overall health in general. Right. Because if you can kind of get your brain, your, your, you know, psyche to, to be more in line with you and your thinking.
• 41:30
  Where it's aligned. Yes, absolutely. You're not fighting yourself. You're not at war with yourself. And a lot of times, you know, and I've seen it throughout, you know, the decades where I've treated people. There are people that can, you can have experiences of mental illness. And then it's absolutely as clear as day when, okay, this person's experiencing some clinically significant mental illness moment.
• 41:55
  but most of the time, vast majority of time, there's no mental illness. It's human experiences
• 42:03
  and the person is human and they're just lost. They're confused. They're a little scared. They're
• 42:09
  lost in the forest and they're dealing with this uncertainty. And so, um, and that's, that's what
• 42:15
  I think is the emphasis. You're not mentally ill. You know, it's just like you're not aligned with
• 42:21
  the story that's making sense to your experience, to what your physical capacity really is.
• 42:27
  And once you can align the story and it's kind of like life can make a lot more sense to you.
• 42:34
  But you have to be willing to let go of certain things, grieve certain things.
• 42:39
  But there are opportunities to expand other areas.
• 42:43
  and that's
• 42:46
  so you said books
• 42:49
  and I've done
• 42:50
  all kinds of silly books
• 42:52
  I've done poetry books, no one read the poetry
• 42:54
  it's terrible, the poetry was just
• 42:56
  for me
• 42:57
  it's absolutely god awful poetry
• 43:00
  but I needed to
• 43:02
  express, but it was only after
• 43:04
  my illness did I start
• 43:07
  creating poems
• 43:08
  and then just journals
• 43:10
  and then got silly with it
• 43:12
  made some three different coloring books, you know, just for like, can I do this? It was just
• 43:17
  this curiosity because when you are lost, like I'll just lost in the forest. It's kind of like,
• 43:24
  because, and why the forest? Because if you've ever been lost in the forest and there's no damn
• 43:28
  trail around, it's kind of a little scary and you don't have your bearings to you. If you don't,
• 43:34
  can't read the sun crossing in it and you don't know where the flow of water is and whatnot,
• 43:39
  it can be very, very disorienting. You don't know in what direction to go. And so the whole creation
• 43:47
  of these books never came out of a good day. It was always a bad day. And it was almost like
• 43:53
  sending out like a signal flare to others to kind of say, hey, come over here. Let's talk about
• 44:01
  things. There's a book about this, a poem about this, a coloring book about this. Come and we can
• 44:07
  talk about these stories that you're living in that you're struggling with because you've lost
• 44:14
  the sense of who you are because life has changed dramatically for you.
• 44:22
  My wife and I, we both kind of deal with chronic illness for a while. We've made huge diet changes
• 44:30
  in our lives. And I know that's made a significant difference. Have you experienced anything with
• 44:35
  With diet change for yourself personally or for any of your clients?
• 44:38
  Absolutely, personally, 100%.
• 44:39
  Having all kinds of symptoms.
• 44:42
  And my immunologist had delayed allergy testing done on me where you would kind of tape these little pucks, almost like those air, I guess those little Apple air finder little buttons.
• 44:57
  And tape a series of those on my body and then tape a few more.
• 45:02
  And I was able to figure out like no dairy, no eggs, no barley, no corn derived, no coconut derived, which is a whole lot of stuff.
• 45:15
  Wow.
• 45:15
  Yeah, that is a lot of stuff.
• 45:17
  Yeah, the corn is a big one.
• 45:19
  And I could really, you know, my hair was falling out and my scalp was itchy.
• 45:24
  It was strange.
• 45:25
  Like the crown of my head was extremely itchy.
• 45:29
  And if I really, you know, amped it up, my heart would start racing and I could have tingling sensation kind of throughout.
• 45:36
  And that's just what I could see.
• 45:39
  I'm sure, you know, again, there was other things that my body was experiencing that I wasn't.
• 45:45
  And so I've gone to a much more simplified diet and I just and I just stick to this very, very simple diet.
• 45:53
  And I can eat the same thing every single day.
• 45:56
  Me too.
• 45:57
  And so that's people say, oh, I just ate that the other day.
• 46:01
  I can't possibly eat that again.
• 46:03
  And I'm just like, I've had peanut butter and banana every single day for like the past like five years for breakfast.
• 46:11
  And it's like I'm looking forward to tomorrow because I like my peanut butter and banana.
• 46:17
  And so it's and rice, broccoli and maybe salmon or chicken.
• 46:23
  And a lot of times I don't even eat lunch.
• 46:26
  lunch. And so I try to keep it very, very, very simple. But I have noticed, yes, the dietary
• 46:35
  aspect. I mean, this is the same thing where we put the pills. The pills go here, but the pill
• 46:42
  could just be broccoli sprouts too. It can be the right protein. It can be the right thing.
• 46:48
  And usually it's, you know, and I'm not the, you know, again, I'm not the dietician, but I've found that it's just amazing when you just say, you know, the whole middle part of the grocery store.
• 47:01
  Yeah, just don't go there.
• 47:04
  We've talked about that several times on this program.
• 47:07
  We just shop the periphery of the store.
• 47:09
  We just, the vegetables, the meat, and that's pretty much it.
• 47:14
  All the junk in the boxes.
• 47:16
  Forget it.
• 47:16
  If you can find a farm stand instead of a store, do that.
• 47:21
  Do that.
• 47:22
  Yes.
• 47:22
  No, absolutely.
• 47:23
  Absolutely.
• 47:24
  If it's viable or if you can find a butcher, you know, you know, it's kind of like that
• 47:31
  you can kind of work with those kinds of different things.
• 47:34
  And so, but by all means, I just try to keep it as simple as possible.
• 47:40
  You know, I, I don't even put a lot of times dressing on if I have a salad, say no dressing,
• 47:46
  But I'll mix it up with my protein and whatever vegetable, and it's just more vegetables.
• 47:52
  And it's just, you know, more greens coming my way.
• 47:56
  But it's amazing.
• 47:58
  The middle part, I always think that's what they decided to sell us in the 1950s.
• 48:04
  You know, it's kind of like the 1950s, they decided we can just, it's basically, you know, different forms of spam, basically.
• 48:13
  It's like non-meat spam.
• 48:15
  You know, that's what exists in the middle of the grocery store.
• 48:20
  So when in the food pyramid, I mean, that thing's horrible.
• 48:24
  Yeah.
• 48:25
  If you follow that advice.
• 48:28
  Yeah.
• 48:28
  I, you know, I'm bad at following advice.
• 48:30
  And the easiest thing to do is to be your own doctor is to like, you know, eat something and pay, but pay attention, pay attention to how it makes you feel.
• 48:39
  Because humans are so, so habitual.
• 48:44
  so we have roughly about 70,000 thoughts a day and about 80% of that's recycled from yesterday
• 48:50
  so we get into like the poison and we just recycle what's familiar well like why are you drinking
• 48:56
  diet coke because I always drink diet coke you know it's kind of like I mean you know okay so
• 49:02
  let's not do that and we can you know try something else or whatever it is and I don't
• 49:07
  give dietary advice you know in terms of that respect but we get but that's where we do get
• 49:13
  into what I do do, which is we get caught into these ruts of a story and we keep on telling this
• 49:20
  very familiar story. And it seems so convincing, not because it's true, but because it's familiar.
• 49:28
  And so that's where, you know, I'm here as the human form of ayahuasca to break some patterns.
• 49:38
  Yeah. I like to describe some of that process as the porcupine theory.
• 49:41
  you know it's like you're bear hugging a porcupine and stabbing you and you're bleeding and it sucks
• 49:47
  but it's your porcupine if you let it go someone else might get it you know it's my porcupine i
• 49:53
  have to hold on to it yes yes and so there's always a lot of letting go yeah and and that's
• 50:02
  one of the things that i've definitely have seen through getting ill for myself is i've i've become
• 50:09
  So I was not horribly materialistic before, but letting go and really being able to see how much culture is trying to sell us, how much society and culture is trying to get us to be a certain way.
• 50:25
  You know, I still believe in razor blades, unlike you two, you know, but, you know, and the whole, you know, you're going to make me the drummer.
• 50:35
  It's easy to talk, you know, but on the end, the sexy factor.
• 50:39
  you know i mean there there's an easy way man i always thought it was funny that the drummer
• 50:44
  in zz top his last name was beard yeah that's hilarious is it really i didn't know that his
• 50:49
  name's frank beard yeah he's the only one without one so technically he has one it's just the
• 50:55
  invisible kind that's right so if you had any like if you had any advice if you were say talking to
• 51:04
  someone who is dealing with this right now but hasn't gotten to the point where they've talked
• 51:08
  to someone like you, they're in the churn, right? What would be like a few of the top things you
• 51:15
  would, you would tell them? So I would tell them, I would tell them to do expressive writing,
• 51:21
  which is kind of a cousin to journaling, but it's a little bit more raw. So you get a pen
• 51:27
  and paper, set a timer, five minutes, 10 minutes, and you start writing whatever's on your top of
• 51:33
  mind, whatever you're thinking about kind of in that moment. So you're not talking about like,
• 51:37
  oh, I went to the market and this happened and I talked to somebody, you're thinking,
• 51:41
  I don't know what to write. So you write down, I don't know what to write. And then you're
• 51:45
  thinking, this is stupid. So you write down, this is stupid. And like, just keep on writing just like
• 51:49
  that. No grammar, no punctuation, no nothing. Just don't stop the pen. And because so much of
• 51:57
  our mind just will just loop in this rumination kind of state and a great way of being able to
• 52:02
  break that rumination, a great way to have that.
• 52:04
  catharsis and be able to see your own thoughts is this expressive writing where you just write
• 52:11
  just nonstop, five minutes, 10 minutes. It doesn't really cost you much. It's ink in a pen or ink
• 52:18
  into paper. Now, what's important though, is at the end you rip up the paper. You have to destroy
• 52:25
  it because here's the thing. You're going to be so much more honest with yourself and you're not
• 52:30
  going to think like, because you may get a little dark and there may be some things that you maybe
• 52:34
  you not want to share with other people or you wouldn't want other people to come across.
• 52:38
  So if you know that you're going to tear up that paper, it's going to be so much more
• 52:43
  of an authentic experience for you.
• 52:47
  So by far, that is the easiest way to kind of like, if you just did that, it's one of
• 52:53
  those things.
• 52:54
  I tell everyone to do that.
• 52:56
  No one never does it.
• 52:57
  And then lo and behold, someone actually does it.
• 53:00
  And you're like, they're like, this is amazing.
• 53:02
  This is the best thing ever.
• 53:03
  and you know it's kind of like it's it's mind-blowing to them um but it's kind of like
• 53:09
  ah it's too much effort you know it's like people nowadays just want to swipe and they just want to
• 53:15
  hit a button rather than because a lot of times you know people have a tough time you know like
• 53:22
  doing meditation you know my favorite version of meditation is like watching the waves you know it's
• 53:29
  mindfulness, but, uh, or really my favorite one is just watching the leaves blow in a tree. I can
• 53:36
  just sit there for like, you know, forever and just watch the patterns and just watch the leaves
• 53:41
  flow and, and, and to create a little bit more stillness. We need a little bit more Thoreau's
• 53:48
  Walden pond. We need more stillness in our life. Too much of us, we're driving with two accelerators
• 53:55
  and we're forgetting about the break.
• 53:57
  So we need to find different ways
• 53:59
  to kind of slow things down.
• 54:02
  I think that's awesome.
• 54:03
  I think that's great advice for everybody.
• 54:05
  I'm going to try the expressive writing.
• 54:09
  Yeah, I'm going to try that.
• 54:10
  Yeah, look it up.
• 54:11
  I didn't make it up.
• 54:12
  It's not mine.
• 54:13
  I'm just sharing it along.
• 54:15
  It's just the passage of wisdom, so to speak.
• 54:18
  But there isn't this,
• 54:21
  because people will always think,
• 54:22
  like, I don't know what to say.
• 54:24
  Like, I don't know what to write if they're just told to journal.
• 54:28
  But if you just, no, no, no, just whatever's in your mind in that moment.
• 54:31
  And it's just kind of like so much easier.
• 54:35
  And it's raw.
• 54:37
  And it's almost like when you get a knot in your shoe and it's like too tight and you have to like pick at it, pick at it, pick at it.
• 54:47
  And eventually you start pulling on threads that actually start moving and it can resolve.
• 54:52
  Most of the time when we get into this plate of the metaphorical human knot here, what do we want to do?
• 55:00
  We just distract ourselves.
• 55:01
  And we have a world where we have no stillness.
• 55:04
  We have no more boredom.
• 55:05
  You know, like that doesn't exist anymore.
• 55:07
  We can constantly distract ourselves.
• 55:09
  We can constantly bet on every single thing that's happening in our world in terms of, you know, is that politician going to use that word in the next speech?
• 55:17
  Or, you know, how many points or how many this or how many that?
• 55:21
  It's like we have no stillness.
• 55:25
  We have no presence with who we are within ourselves.
• 55:29
  I think the missing key is throwing it away afterward.
• 55:32
  I've kept journals before and I still have them for whatever reason.
• 55:37
  I never look at them again.
• 55:38
  I need to let it go.
• 55:39
  Because the real value is the expression.
• 55:43
  It's the teapot whistling.
• 55:45
  It's blowing off that steam.
• 55:47
  and I think knowing that it's going to be destroyed allows you to be a little bit more raw,
• 55:53
  a little bit more untamed, a little bit more just like, and for the most part, you know,
• 55:57
  the parts that we would probably want to not share with everyone, it's kind of like those
• 56:02
  little shadow parts of usually it's the darkness, it's the sadness, it's the anger, it's those
• 56:07
  different things. You could be angry with somebody or you could have, you know, super dark thoughts
• 56:12
  about yourself and it's better to express them than to keep them just locked away inside your
• 56:18
  head i just have to fight against my uh semi-hoarder tendencies which i'm pretty sure is hereditary
• 56:25
  that i get from my my parents but we won't true true true but it's kind of like it's a piece of
• 56:31
  paper so it's kind of like hopefully it's easier but you know um i'll definitely try it for sure
• 56:39
  Yeah. Or if you want to be a hoarder about it, shred it, but keep the shreddings.
• 56:43
  You know, I can compromise.
• 56:47
  Yeah.
• 56:47
  Put it in the compost pile.
• 56:49
  Yeah, absolutely. You don't have to get rid of it. It's just make it so it's not legible.
• 56:55
  There you go.
• 56:56
  Yeah. I actually just went through this with someone as well, going through some grief and anger.
• 57:02
  And I told them centered around a specific person in their life.
• 57:07
  And I told them just get out a pad of paper and start writing, write everything you want to say to this person.
• 57:15
  It doesn't matter.
• 57:16
  Don't, don't, you know, no grammar, no nothing.
• 57:18
  Don't, it doesn't have to make sense to anyone.
• 57:21
  Just put it on the paper.
• 57:22
  Are you stealing my ideas?
• 57:23
  Fold it up.
• 57:25
  Well, no, I actually took psych classes for, for a while.
• 57:29
  I was actually in the drug and alcohol canceling field for a while.
• 57:32
  and, you know, fold it up, put it in an envelope, address it to them.
• 57:38
  You don't have to put the address and all that junk.
• 57:40
  Just address it to them and then go build a fire in your grill and throw it in there.
• 57:46
  Absolutely, 100%.
• 57:47
  Just be done with it.
• 57:49
  But, you know, it's always met with, well, that's goofy.
• 57:52
  I don't really want to take the time to do that.
• 57:54
  It's uncomfortable.
• 57:55
  It's, you know, but, you know, hopefully it'll take.
• 57:59
  And people don't want to sit with the discomfort of it.
• 58:01
  And it's kind of like, and as human beings, it's like we can keep ourselves at like 72 degrees all the time, you know, in the bedroom, in the car, in the office.
• 58:14
  It's like we don't have to have discomfort.
• 58:16
  It's kind of like we can play that video game.
• 58:18
  We can scroll reels.
• 58:20
  We can do whatever.
• 58:21
  And so when someone says, hey, man, that thing that really hurts, let's really look at that and let's really examine that.
• 58:28
  That you know that what I do with some people obviously And you have done with many people because it is just having slowing it down having that space and having that permission for the other person Like
• 58:45
  this is why we're here to do this thing. And, you know, and people can then kind of go there with it.
• 58:53
  Um, you know, and so it's like being able just to create that space and that space where we're
• 59:00
  just focus on that one thing and we're focused on pain because the easiest way to get through grief
• 59:06
  is to grieve it's kind of like you have to grieve that's how we get through grief you know we don't
• 59:14
  distract our way through we allow ourselves to have the feelings we allow ourselves to go through
• 59:19
  the briar patch you know what hurts what's gonna feel like it's scraping us up and it's kind of
• 59:25
  like oh this hurts and we back away it's like yeah that hurts keep on going keep on going
• 59:30
  it will, it's, it's a safe pain. It's a valid pain. It's a real pain, but it's through the pain
• 59:38
  is where is where the payoff is. That's why people don't grow. They don't self-actualize.
• 59:45
  They don't find themselves because they're kind of constantly in a state of avoidance and they,
• 59:50
  they don't realize that everything that they want is usually on the other side of pain.
• 59:56
  yeah i had a friend and mentor uh he's passed away since but he it's funny you were talking
• 1:00:06
  about the mindfulness right and i remember coming out to him one time and he was just staring up at
• 1:00:11
  a tree eucalyptus tree i'm like what are you doing he goes i'm just watching it and swaying
• 1:00:18
  in the wind and leaves are going and you know and he went into a whole thing about mindfulness and
• 1:00:23
  how, you know, if it didn't bend, it would break. So being flexible with that wind. And he used to
• 1:00:29
  have a saying that I, I, it literally, it took me years to, to, and I'm probably still modifying
• 1:00:36
  this in my own brain, but he used to say, uh, pain is good. Extreme pain, extremely good. And I would
• 1:00:44
  never cheat you out of the pain that you so richly deserve. Yes. And hearing that at the time, it was
• 1:00:52
  kind of like, what a butthead, you know what I mean? But he wasn't, he wasn't meaning it like
• 1:00:57
  that. What he was saying is, you know, this pain is what leads to growth. This is how you get
• 1:01:03
  beyond where you are and to the next place, right? Every great man is broken.
• 1:01:09
  Exactly. And so it was, it was an interesting thing for me and it's really neat to hear you
• 1:01:14
  say some of that as well. Yeah. It's, you know, I've been, uh, I steal like an artist,
• 1:01:22
  you know, it's, uh, I don't, I don't recreate, you know, I, there isn't anything that is
• 1:01:29
  terribly original other than the delivery. Um, but it's kind of like from, you know,
• 1:01:35
  the addiction world, uh, through just, you know, counseling psychology, but counseling psychology,
• 1:01:42
  it's kind of like, it's like, oh, you know, it's like, that sounds like it's a thing. It's like,
• 1:01:46
  well, it's a repackaging of philosophy. You know, it's, it's, that's the other thing, you know,
• 1:01:51
  stoicism is cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, acceptance commitment therapy, you know,
• 1:01:57
  is ultimately, you know, an Eastern tradition of, you know, meditation. It's like, we will repackage
• 1:02:04
  things and go like, look what I came up with. It's kind of like, you didn't come up with that.
• 1:02:08
  you repackaged that, you know, the cabbage going bad is now cabbage stew, you know,
• 1:02:15
  there you go. There you go. That's pretty awesome. Um, yeah, I, I, this has been a really,
• 1:02:24
  really great conversation so far. I really appreciate you giving us some time and, uh,
• 1:02:29
  Oh, I enjoy it. I mean, you know, talking to two men here, having a conversation and,
• 1:02:34
  And, you know, I don't think it's one of the things that more people should be doing more often is having conversations and interacting with one another because we are we're tribal animals.
• 1:02:48
  And even though we're just looking at each other on a screen, there is, you know, which is the less perfect, but it's a lot better than us, you know, just distracting ourselves with video games and not actually interacting with humans at all.
• 1:03:03
  And we're tribal. We need tribes. We need communication. We need this. It's so fundamental to our existence. One of the biggest things is that our nervous system is completely not built for this, for modernity, basically. I love the book. There's a book called Civilized to Death. And we're not built for this at all whatsoever.
• 1:03:28
  But they've figured out how to take the units of value out of us and extract things ultimately from us.
• 1:03:36
  But this is not how we were built.
• 1:03:39
  This is not what we were designed for.
• 1:03:41
  Not at all.
• 1:03:42
  No.
• 1:03:42
  And you can see it in a lot of societal issues as well.
• 1:03:47
  Yes.
• 1:03:48
  But that's a different podcast.
• 1:03:51
  You can hardly get people to make a phone call these days.
• 1:03:54
  Oh, no.
• 1:03:55
  Absolutely.
• 1:03:55
  They don't want to deal with you if it's not a text.
• 1:03:58
  Yes, yes, absolutely.
• 1:04:00
  And we should be living in bands of people, you know, with 60, 50, 60 people.
• 1:04:05
  It's kind of like working together.
• 1:04:07
  No one has careers or ideas.
• 1:04:09
  Everyone, it's communal.
• 1:04:11
  It's like where it's this shared kind of thing that's kind of going on.
• 1:04:15
  And then it's kind of like, and then we feel like, okay, we got caught up in this dystopian wave.
• 1:04:20
  And you're just like, ah, the Amish kind of have it right some other way.
• 1:04:24
  They're like, I'm not going Amish, but it's kind of like, I will give them tip of the hat.
• 1:04:28
  Like they've got some of that down, you know, and, you know, we were, they foresaw something that we didn't and living more true to, you know, how humans really are.
• 1:04:43
  We've talked about that several times.
• 1:04:44
  Like the Amish do have some, some things, right.
• 1:04:48
  Some things I don't agree with.
• 1:04:49
  I mean, it is a high control group.
• 1:04:51
  Yes.
• 1:04:51
  I don't agree with some of those things, but
• 1:04:53
  there's always that fine line
• 1:04:56
  when you get people together
• 1:04:57
  like an intentional community
• 1:04:59
  and a cult, I don't know.
• 1:05:01
  Yeah I not hurting my feelings I not Amish How you keep it from going over the lines I just lived in Ohio for a little bit So you know I was just dodging little carts you know so But if you look at it across society name one societal you know group that isn that
• 1:05:21
  Name one.
• 1:05:22
  You know, we say, okay, they have that high degree of control.
• 1:05:28
  Now to some degree.
• 1:05:30
  Yeah.
• 1:05:30
  Well, no, to a massive degree.
• 1:05:32
  I would argue that they have probably no more control to their lives in their communities than we do in ours.
• 1:05:39
  It's probably different because control state and your federal government.
• 1:05:44
  You've got your your your whoever is employing you.
• 1:05:48
  You've got all of this stuff that's imposing control on you.
• 1:05:51
  Right.
• 1:05:52
  We don't see it that way.
• 1:05:53
  We see it as, oh, well, these are beneficial for this reason or that reason or whatever.
• 1:05:58
  But some people do.
• 1:05:59
  but the fact is is that control is still there right they'll tell you well you can't have a
• 1:06:05
  hydrogen automobile well why not because we kind of made that not the winner you can have an ev
• 1:06:12
  instead you can't do this you can't use that type of energy we can't have thorium reactors because
• 1:06:19
  we won't license anyone to actually test and develop these things until very recently so
• 1:06:26
  you know, the control is there. We just, it's not, you know, our lives are a lot more complex
• 1:06:33
  and intertwined and it's a much larger society. So we tend not to see it as that overt control
• 1:06:40
  that a small community with a church leader having that control exerts on that community.
• 1:06:46
  Right. Does that make sense? It makes sense. It's a difference between when the county says
• 1:06:52
  you have to pay your taxes versus elder, you know, Jacob, you know, says like, you know,
• 1:06:59
  you can't do X, Y, and Z. And so, um, you know, it's like, I understand where you're coming from,
• 1:07:07
  that there's lots of control and, you know, in, in different ways. Um, and, but, you know,
• 1:07:14
  but the control comes off differently. And, um, obviously within, uh, a religious setting or,
• 1:07:21
  or cult setting where you,
• 1:07:25
  you really lock down probably a lot of behaviors because I,
• 1:07:29
  I may not be able to have that reactor,
• 1:07:31
  but I can flip everyone off and,
• 1:07:33
  you know,
• 1:07:33
  go move to Idaho and,
• 1:07:35
  and,
• 1:07:36
  and do my little thing there.
• 1:07:38
  So I have a little bit more individual freedom,
• 1:07:40
  maybe in that respect.
• 1:07:42
  But at the same time,
• 1:07:43
  it's kind of like I can't necessarily put a chicken coop in my backyard and I
• 1:07:49
  can't do X,
• 1:07:50
  Y,
• 1:07:50
  and Z.
• 1:07:50
  and I can't have the hydrogen car.
• 1:07:52
  So there's going to be pluses and minuses kind of throughout.
• 1:07:57
  And that's oddly enough, it's kind of like,
• 1:07:58
  that's what I talk about with my clients.
• 1:08:00
  It's kind of like, where's your agency
• 1:08:02
  and where are the things that you have to let go?
• 1:08:06
  You know, we have to do that on societal basis
• 1:08:09
  in terms of, you know, where we want to live
• 1:08:11
  and how we want to live of whatever.
• 1:08:14
  North Carolina doesn't have the same rules as Florida.
• 1:08:17
  You know, it's like there's a lot of similarities,
• 1:08:19
  but their site differences depend on what you want to own and how much do you make.
• 1:08:23
  And, and it kind of bends a little bit and versus kind of California and, and which is,
• 1:08:30
  you know, highly different than those. And there's kind of pluses and minuses to it all.
• 1:08:35
  And at the end of the day, there's, there's no perfect path. And that's one of the things that
• 1:08:40
  I always like is that in the journey of life, but in where the journey of my clients,
• 1:08:46
  there's no yellow brick road there's nothing that's so obvious like this is the way you know
• 1:08:52
  it's like no no no it's like part of it is you're lost in the forest but it's kind of like
• 1:08:58
  it's like we don't need a path completely in the forest but we need to start going somewhere
• 1:09:04
  you know let's start moving and let's start moving towards something that you want to be
• 1:09:09
  you know that you want to kind of i wouldn't say manifest as if you're just kind of creating but
• 1:09:14
  what are your intentions and that you're moving intentionally through this world? Because lo and
• 1:09:22
  behold, if you move through this world with intentions, you may actually smack into a few
• 1:09:28
  of those intentions. That's good to have goals. Yeah. Yeah. What would you say would be some of
• 1:09:36
  the biggest realizations that you took away from this particular portion of your life that
• 1:09:42
  weren't necessarily there for you previously?
• 1:09:47
  That I don't need so many different things and distractions. And there's so much that I don't
• 1:09:58
  need. I don't kind of play. I used to play more video games. I don't play video games at all.
• 1:10:05
  And it's really the shedding of a lot of things to then come to a place of, because I've been the caretaker of other people's stories that I realized I need, I'm 51.
• 1:10:20
  And, and it's like, I need my story.
• 1:10:24
  It's like, I need, and that's why I wrote different things.
• 1:10:29
  And really the podcast.
• 1:10:31
  It's like, I need to find a way to kind of tell my story.
• 1:10:36
  That's why I like coming on, you know, other people's podcasts and being able to talk, being able to chat, to be able to kind of, because, you know, I'm not doing it.
• 1:10:46
  So I'm like entertaining you, although it's like, that's a plus.
• 1:10:50
  But my main focus is through conversation.
• 1:10:54
  I'm paying attention to my own thoughts and my own, my own voice, my own story.
• 1:11:00
  who the heck am I?
• 1:11:03
  Who am I?
• 1:11:04
  Why am I here?
• 1:11:06
  And then what can I do with that?
• 1:11:10
  It's all a part of just trying to uncover the story of who is Jeff.
• 1:11:17
  Yeah.
• 1:11:18
  That's awesome.
• 1:11:20
  Existential questions.
• 1:11:21
  Yes.
• 1:11:21
  Just the little ones though.
• 1:11:23
  Just the little ones.
• 1:11:24
  Nothing big.
• 1:11:25
  Just why am I here and who am I?
• 1:11:28
  Yeah.
• 1:11:29
  I mean, those are, you know, the age old, like go back to the earliest of the philosophers.
• 1:11:34
  And that one of the primary questions or some of the you know two of the primary questions I would say Who and that who am I what am I supposed to do What the meaning of life And other than
• 1:11:46
  being 42, it's kind of like, you know, like it, which is, which is, you know, the answer truly,
• 1:11:53
  it's kind of like whatever it is that you believe in and, and what, however that package, you know,
• 1:12:00
  may come to you. We live briefly in the window of time of, you know, the universe. We have a brief
• 1:12:09
  little, we see the butterfly's life as so ephemeral, you know, but the mountains are looking at us as,
• 1:12:17
  you know, ephemeral little ants with our brief little lifespans and our little neurotic worries
• 1:12:24
  and concerns. And so it's kind of like, what do we do with this thing? I have this little
• 1:12:30
  consciousness. I have this human-based, carbon-based, you know, vessel that I'm in. It's kind of like,
• 1:12:35
  what can I do that could be potentially useful in this world? And for me, like I said,
• 1:12:44
  the only thing that I'm good at is talking to people who are lost in the forest, you know,
• 1:12:50
  with heavily it's chronic illness, but, you know, I see a lot of,
• 1:12:56
  I see people who may be lost with various reasons.
• 1:13:00
  My main tentpole would be chronic illness, but, you know,
• 1:13:06
  people get lost for different reasons and they need a little bit of help with
• 1:13:10
  their story. Again, not mentally ill, you know,
• 1:13:13
  not this DSM kind of diagnosis. It's just lost with their story.
• 1:13:20
  All right. I think that's a great place to wrap up personally. I think that was wonderful. I'm like, wow, okay. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time. We always like to ask our guests to give a little bit back and give a shout out to a person that was influential to us in a big way. It could be an author, a historical figure, sixth grade science teacher, mom.
• 1:13:47
  Oh, well, you just stole it. I was thinking from the very beginning, it's kind of like it would be mom. And mom does not have the best health. And she's in a memory care unit and a reminder of the fleetingness of life. And it kind of goes back to the stoicism of memento more and all things remember death.
• 1:14:14
  and this is, we're all fragile.
• 1:14:17
  I don't think that you always had a great beard,
• 1:14:21
  but my mom was there for me
• 1:14:24
  and she raised me and she did her best.
• 1:14:27
  I have no tragedy of a childhood whatsoever to speak of.
• 1:14:32
  I had plenty of opportunities
• 1:14:34
  and I was thought of, cared for and loved.
• 1:14:38
  And she was a wonderful woman, Patricia.
• 1:14:42
  and so unfortunately she's in a place that is less than ideal for any one of us but it is a reminder
• 1:14:54
  that you know the the love that we can give you know if you're thinking about it give it you know
• 1:15:02
  because you won't always be able to give it you know because one reason or another things change
• 1:15:08
  well being being in some way shape or form a reflection of our parents she sounds like she
• 1:15:14
  was a wonderful human being and a wonderful uh parent or she is a wonderful human being and a
• 1:15:20
  wonderful parent and uh yeah that's an amazing shout out i love that all right okay so let's
• 1:15:29
  plug you where can people find you what are you working on what's coming up next i i i'm working
• 1:15:34
  on people. I'm working on stories. I think I will continue to dabble with my solo podcasts
• 1:15:42
  and find interesting ways of saying things. I've done over 50 episodes and I'm trying to find and
• 1:15:51
  adapt to finding different ways of being able to talk about similar topics so I'm not completely
• 1:15:58
  boring myself or the audience. And, um, and I'm just looking for someone to, uh, to reach out and
• 1:16:07
  to, uh, to talk. I, uh, nothing fascinates me more. I just, I don't need a new watch, a new car or
• 1:16:14
  whatever, but a new story of it, where I am humbled when someone says, you know, I will let
• 1:16:21
  you into my inner sanctum and world and pain because I need some assistance with this.
• 1:16:28
  Um, I I'm always honored by that tremendously.
• 1:16:31
  And so hopefully that's what I'll be working on.
• 1:16:36
  What's the name of your podcast?
• 1:16:37
  Where can we find it?
• 1:16:38
  Uh, to the bone conversations, uh, regarding pain, illness, and meaning.
• 1:16:44
  You can find it on Spotify, Apple, YouTube.
• 1:16:46
  And if you want to find me, it's drbone.live, D-R-B-O-N-E.live.
• 1:16:52
  It's the easiest way to get ahold of me.
• 1:16:55
  Wonderful.
• 1:16:56
  Well, once again, thank you so much for giving us some of your time.
• 1:17:00
  Time is one of our most precious commodities, and you've agreed to give us some, and that's a wonderful thing.
• 1:17:07
  I enjoy talking to you very much.
• 1:17:10
  Both of you.
• 1:17:10
  The feeling is mutual.
• 1:17:12
  Absolutely mutual.
• 1:17:13
  It's been a wonderful session.
• 1:17:15
  All right.
• 1:17:16
  Everybody, you know where you can find us.
• 1:17:17
  We're everywhere.
• 1:17:18
  We are now hosted off Fountain.fm.
• 1:17:20
  You've heard the spiel.
• 1:17:22
  Go look us up.
• 1:17:23
  Find us.
• 1:17:23
  Leave a thumbs up.
• 1:17:24
  Leave a thumbs down if you didn't like us.
• 1:17:26
  Tell us we suck.
• 1:17:27
  We'll respond in a kind way.
• 1:17:29
  It'll be interesting.
• 1:17:30
  If you have an idea for a topic or a guest on the show, leave a comment.
• 1:17:35
  We'll see what we can do about getting that person on the show.
• 1:17:39
  And remember, wherever you are, whenever you're watching this, have an amazing day.
• 1:17:47
  Thanks for coming by, Jeff.
• 1:17:48
  See you, everybody.
• 1:17:49
  Thank you.
• 1:17:56
  We'll see you next time.