Latest / Truth in Motion with Dr. Jocelyn / He Walked Into a Garden and Came Out With a Machine

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He Walked Into a Garden and Came Out With a Machine · Truth in Motion with Dr. Jocelyn

0:09
SPEAKER_00: Hello again.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: It's good to be together.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked behind the number, and on Friday we brought it all together.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: We met Ignaz Semmelweiss, the doctor in Vienna, who had the right numbers and still went unheard.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: We built a small card of questions to carry into any appointment.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: And we learned that when we talk back to a number, we want to be right and kind.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: This week we turned to the body itself, and today we start with the biggest question of all.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: What do we assume a body is?
0:45
SPEAKER_00: In the early 1600s, just outside Paris, at the Royal Chateau of Saint Germain-en-Laye, there were grottos built into the gardens.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Inside them water ran through hidden pipes, and the water moved statues.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: Figures turned, played instruments, seemed almost alive.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: A young man named Rene Descartes went to see them.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: We met him a few weeks ago sitting alone in a stove-heated room, doubting everything until he reached the famous, quote, I think, therefore I am, unquote.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Those moving statues stayed with him.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: In his treatise on man published in French in 1664 after his death, he described the human body as a machine, and he made the comparison plainly.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: He wrote that one may compare the nerves of the machine he was describing with the pipes in the works of these fountains, its muscles and tendons with the various devices and strings which served to set them in motion, the heart with the source of the water, and the cavities of the brain with the storage tanks.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: He walked into a garden and he came out with a machine.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: That picture, the body as a machine of separate parts, became one of the foundations of modern medicine.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: Most of us were raised inside it, without ever being asked.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: Why does this matter?
2:19
SPEAKER_00: Because the picture we hold of the body decides how we care for it.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: If the body is a machine, then sickness means a broken part.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: And care means finding the part, then fixing it, replacing it, or shutting it off.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: A pain is a warning light, so we silence the light.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: A symptom is a noise, so we quiet the noise.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: Each part gets its own specialist and nobody looks at the hole.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: If the body is a garden, everything changes.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: Sickness means something in the garden needs attention.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: The soil, the water, the light, what's growing too much, and what isn't growing at all.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: And care means tending the conditions so the living thing can do what it was made to do.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Grow.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Every choice we make about our health starts from one of those two pictures.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: Most of us never choose ours.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: Today we get to look at it and then choose.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Here's where I stand.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: I believe your body is not a machine waiting for a mechanic.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: It's a living garden and it was made to grow.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean the machine picture is useless.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: When somebody breaks a leg or has a heart attack or is bleeding after a car accident, I am so grateful for every surgeon and emergency doctor who knows exactly which part needs fixing and fast.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: The machine picture has saved lives, undoubtedly.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: It's a good tool for a crisis.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: But it was never the whole picture.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: And when it becomes the whole whole picture and usually the only picture, we start treating living people like broken equipment.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: We mask symptoms instead of asking why they're there.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: We reach for the strongest, riskiest fix first, and we forget the most important thing about the body.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: It's alive.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at how the machine picture shows up in our lives often without our noticing.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: We hear it in our own words.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: My knee is shot, my thyroid is broken, my back went out, as if a part simply failed the way a part fails in a car.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: We see it in how care is organized.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: One doctor for the heart, another for the stomach, another for the skin, another for our mood.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Each one looks closely at one part, and many of us end up carrying our own body from office to office, trying to be the one person who holds it all together.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: And we feel it in how the symptoms get treated.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: Heartburn, turn off the acid, can't sleep, shut down the brain at night.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: Pain, block the signal.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that relief is exactly what's needed for a while.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: But if all we ever do is quiet the warning, we never ask what it was warning us about.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Today's machines tell us what they need.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: A light comes on and a mechanic reads the code and goes looking for the cause.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Our bodies have been doing that all along.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: The question is whether we read the message or just turn off the light.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Think about a gardener who walks out one morning and sees yellow leaves on a tomato plant.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: A gardener doesn't paint the leaves green.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: That would be silly.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: The yellow leaf isn't the problem, it's a message.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the soil is missing something.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's too much water or not enough.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the roots are crowded.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: The leaf is simply the place where the plant is telling the truth.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Our bodies work the same way.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Heartburn, headaches, poor sleep, a rash that keeps coming back.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: Those are yellow leaves.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: They're the places where the body is telling the truth about what's happening underneath.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: This is why I believe medicine should look for the cause and resolve it, not just cover it up.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: And it's why I start with the gentlest, safest options first, and only move to stronger, riskier ones when the gentler ones aren't enough.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: We don't spray the whole garden because of one yellow leaf.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: We look at the soil first.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Here's a story that shows the difference between the two pictures more clearly than anything I know.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: And it comes straight from mainstream medicine.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: There's an infection called Clostridium diffacyl, often just called C.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: diff.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: It's a bacterium that can cause severe repeated diarrhea.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And one of the biggest risks for getting it is a course of antibiotics.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about the trillions of microbes living in our gut?
7:07
SPEAKER_00: About as many as the cells of our own body?
7:10
SPEAKER_00: That's a garden, a living ecosystem.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: When strong antibiotics sweep through, they don't just kill the bacteria causing the problem.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: They can clear out much of the garden.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: And in that bare ground, C.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: diff can take over, like weeds in a field that's just been sprayed.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: So what does the machine picture say we should do about it?
7:33
SPEAKER_00: Kill it.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: Give another antibiotic.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: And for many people, it comes back.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: And comes back.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: In 2013, a team of doctors in Amsterdam tried something different.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: They tested it in a randomized trial.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: That's the FAIR test we talked about a few weeks ago.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: People with C.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: diff that keep coming back were divided into groups.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: One group got the standard treatment, the antibiotic vancomycin.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: Another group got vancomycin plus a cleansing of the bowel.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: And the third group got a short course of vancomycin, a bowel cleansing, and then something that sounds strange at first.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: An infusion of healthy gut bacteria from a donor's stool.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: In other words, they replanted the garden.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: Here are the numbers.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: With the antibiotic alone, four out of 13 people were cured.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: That's 31%.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: With the antibiotic plus the cleansing, three of 13.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: That's 23%.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: And with the replanted garden, 13 of 16 people with were cured after the first infusion.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: That's 81%.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: The study was stopped early after an interim look at the results.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: It was published in one of the most respected medical journals in the world, the New England Journal of Medicine.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Think about what that means.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: More killing wasn't the answer.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Tending the garden was.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: The doctors didn't fix a broken part, they restored living conditions, and the body did the rest.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: The garden picture isn't new.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's very old.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: In Chinese medicine, one of the oldest medicines still practiced, the body was never described as a machine.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: It was described in the language of nature, seasons, water, wood, earth, growth, and rest.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: The physician's job was to understand the conditions inside the person and help bring them back into balance.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: In the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, the Wang Di Nejing puts it this way: in one translation, the sages did not treat those who were already sick, but those who were not yet sick.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: To administer medicines to diseases that have already developed is like digging a well after one has become thirsty.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: That's a gardener talking.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: A good gardener doesn't wait for the plants to die.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: They watch the soil.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: They notice the first yellow leaf.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: They tend early, gently, and often.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: And for me, the garden picture goes back even further to the very beginning.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: In the book of Genesis, chapter 2, verse 7, we read, The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: The word for man there is Adam, and the word for ground is Adama.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: We were made from the ground itself, the same earth that grows a garden.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Then in verse 8, and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Verse 15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: We were literally made from the soil.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: We were placed in a garden, and our very first job was to tend it.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's an accident.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: I believe we were designed as living, growing beings made from the earth and connected to everything around us, not assembled from parts, formed and breathed into.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: So what changes when we hold the garden picture instead of the machine?
11:35
SPEAKER_00: The questions change.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Instead of what part is broken, we start asking, what does this garden need?
11:43
SPEAKER_00: What's in the soil?
11:44
SPEAKER_00: That's what we eat and drink and what we're exposed to every day.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Is there enough water and light?
11:51
SPEAKER_00: That's sleep, rest, fresh air, time outside, movement.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: What's crowding things out?
11:58
SPEAKER_00: Stress, overwork, relationships that drain us, the things we keep pushing down?
12:04
SPEAKER_00: What's missing that this body was made to have?
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Joy, connection, meaning, prayer, purpose?
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And the role of the practitioner changes too.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: In the machine picture, the doctor is the mechanic and the patient is the car.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: The car just sits there while someone works on it.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: In the garden picture, I'm not the one doing the healing.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: You are the healer.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: I am the facilitator.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: My job is to help the conditions, to clear what's in the way so your body can do what it already knows how to do.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Acupuncture, herbs, gentle body work, all of it works with the living system, not against it.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: Not around it.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: A garden doesn't need to be forced to grow.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: It needs the right conditions and it needs time.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: This week we tend the garden.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Here's today's practice.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Tonight, before bed, take two minutes and walk through your own garden.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: Ask four simple questions.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: How's my soil?
13:11
SPEAKER_00: What did I eat and drink today?
13:14
SPEAKER_00: How's my water and light?
13:16
SPEAKER_00: How did I sleep last night?
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Did I get outside?
13:19
SPEAKER_00: What's crowding me?
13:21
SPEAKER_00: What's taking up too much room right now?
13:24
SPEAKER_00: And four, what's missing?
13:26
SPEAKER_00: What would help me to grow?
13:28
SPEAKER_00: Don't try to fix anything yet.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Just notice.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: A good gardener always looks before they reach for the tools.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Today we looked at the picture of the body most of us were handed.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: We saw Descartes walk through the royal gardens and come out with a machine.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: We saw why that picture matters, because the picture decides the treatment.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: We saw doctors cure a stubborn infection not by killing more, but by replanting the garden.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: And we heard the same picture in the oldest words of Chinese medicine and in the very first chapters of Genesis.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And we saw why it matters.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: When we see our body as a machine, we wait for it to break.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: When we see it as a garden, we tend it and it grows.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow we go deeper into the garden.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: If everything in a garden is connected, what about us?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Body, mind, emotion, and spirit.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Can any of them really work alone?
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow we look at why nothing works alone.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: I'll meet you there with you every step of the way.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: Keep the conversation going.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: Find your next steps in notes from a fellow traveler, my blog.