Why I Call Myself a “Belief System Doctor”

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Every single thing you do in life is based on a set of beliefs.  Some decisions are deep, important, and based on belief systems instilled in you at a young age maybe through parenting, religion, or early schooling.  Some decisions are made on less significant belief systems that often dictate preferences and things formed by direct experience. From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, you make hundreds of decisions a day.  You wake up because you believe it’s important to get up and tend to your morning responsibilities.  Maybe you believe it’s extremely important to be early.  When you decide to eat breakfast, you probably have a belief about whether this is a healthy behavior or necessary.  You also make decisions about what you should eat.  These decisions are based on taste, how the food will make you feel, whether you believe it to be good/bad for you.  This decision making process is fairly subconscious because we would be exhausted if we felt as though every tiny decision needed a huge weighing of the pros and cons.  We have all met people like that, and most likely you were exhausted after an hour!  In order to bypass this, our brain forms belief systems to help that decision-making process effortless and energy efficient.

When it comes to health, nutrition, and food, where did you get your belief system?  It starts pretty early with taste preferences based on what your parents fed you.  If you grew up in another country and only had exposure to ethnic foods, you would likely have preference for those.  If you grew up on processed foods, you likely believe these foods to be what people eat.  This is one reason why I encourage parents to keep whole, nutritious foods in the house.  The more your kids expect to find these foods, the more they believe those foods are what they should eat.

You then get information from other homes based on what other parents feed you, babysitters, school, etc.  In school, we take it one step further and teach you the basics in health class.  Health class will often have some version of the food pyramid available for your viewing pleasure.  This is when you go home telling your mom and dad about all the foods you should be eating on a daily basis.

In later years of school, you have peers that will influence your food decisions just like they influence everything else.  Maybe someone makes fun of the food you eat at lunch and you then believe those foods are weird, not cool, or things no one else eats.  Maybe you share foods at lunch, and develop beliefs about foods based on the people who bring them.

Then you graduate and go off on your own.  Now you are making real decisions about what you will spend hard earned dollars on.  Now there is input from media, commercials, billboards, celebrities, athletes, and so on.  If your prior beliefs prioritized whole foods, you will likely continue to buy them and not think twice.  If your beliefs up to this point were steeped in convenience, marketing, expense as ways to prioritize, you will likely follow the fast food frenzy with a side of packaged treats.

At some point you decide you aren’t invincible and maybe you should try to be healthier because you have gained weight or watched Dr. Oz.  This is where confusion hits the fan because up to this point, you brain had no problem choosing foods it enjoyed, prioritized, and could afford.  But now, you may be trying to force yourself to eat things that you don’t enjoy, think are too expensive, or are completely too much work.  This contradiction in beliefs and behaviors will end in failure every single time.  Most people will revert back to the same old habits because they haven’t changed their belief system.

My job, as a doctor, is to help recreate the belief system that accurately depicts the consequences of food choices, the knowledge around nutrient density, debunk the lies that have been fed to you over the years.  Once someone truly learns what certain foods do to their body, what health consequences they see as a result, the truths revealed about why certain foods are so cheap and convenient, they no longer have the same belief system.  They now believe eating packaged foods is going to result in sickness, possibly weight gain, toxicity in the body for generations to come, and is slowly hindering the functioning of every cell in the body. They understand where real nutrients come from, how important those nutrients are for healthy bodily functions, and how every penny spent on prevention saves hundreds in treatment.  If you can change someone’s belief system, then you change their behavior by default.  This is why every patient leaves appointments with me with HOMEWORK.  The real work happens with the belief system.

One of my favorite questions to ask is “What is your favorite food?  What if I were to serve you that food but I placed arsenic in it?  They look at you like you’re crazy and say they would never eat it if you put arsenic in it.  But let me ask you why because arsenic has no flavor, no texture, no smell.  It won’t change the experience or enjoyment of eating your favorite food.  All I did was change the perception of what that food would do to you.  Boom.  Instant change in belief system and you just said “No way, Jose “to your favorite food.  I didn’t change that food. I didn’t take that food away or say you can’t have it.  But I did change your belief system.  Now you have a different perception from which you decide to make that choice.  If you have tried to eat better, exercise more, and make healthier decisions in general and found yourself reverting right back to your old ways, it is because you didn’t change the belief system.  You were working on willpower and that will only last for so long.  Knowledge is power because it develops belief systems.

Autoimmunity and Exercise (Part VII)

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At this point in the autoimmune series, you can understand why I was reluctant to write an article in the first place! It is so complex, complicated, and multifaceted. So, if I were going to touch on another lifestyle change someone can easily implement, it would be exercise. Unfortunately, exercise is one category where you can have too much of a good thing, especially if you suffer from autoimmunity. There is a point where movement is healthy, beneficial, and will IMPROVE your immune system. On the flip side, if someone’s system is under extreme demand, their adrenals are shot, and they are often stressed, you can easily overdo it. Then the question becomes, what types of exercise are best, and how much.
Exercise is very closely related to your adrenals and the production of cortisol. Cortisol is a steroidal hormone that helps you keep up with stress and is important in the fight or flight response. These spikes in cortisol production should be short-lived and not chronic by any means. However, many of us live stressful, hectic lives and some add tons of exercise on top of it. This is a recipe for adrenal fatigue, and if you want to read more on that, click here.  The more intense you exercise, the more cortisol you release.  This disrupts something we call the HPA axis, which is important in regulating hormones and the immune system.   The types of exercise that stimulate the HPA Axis disruption the most are chronic cardio and and high intensity exercise.  That means that if you have an autoimmune disease, you may be doing more damage than good if you try to run marathons (or any long distance) or Crossfit.  It doesn’t mean you can’t participate in these workouts, but it does mean you need to be smart about it!  Resistance training does not have the same effect on cortisol if it is practiced alone.  This means that weight lifting or body weight movements at lower intensities may be a great option for those with autoimmunity or adrenal fatigue! If you decide to participate in physical activity that is too strenuous for your body to keep up with the cortisol production, guess what, you can CAUSE LEAKY GUT.  We talked about how leaky gut is how this whole thing got started in the first place!  It’s a classic case of too much of a good thing.  Balance is key and more doesn’t always mean better.

As far as how exercise affects the immune system, it can cause a huge inflammatory response.  Any exercise someone does at more intensity that usual for longer than usual, is mobilizing neutrophils and natural killer cells.  This type of exercise also stimulates phagocytosis and increases the production of inflammatory compounds.  In studies, we see that following acute exercise,  the number of T and B cells (immune cells) drop below the levels they were BEFORE every working out.  This quickly recovers if someone has adequate recovery time.  However, if there isn’t sufficient days between these types of workouts, then it is common for athletes to get sick!

Now we understand that we may need to back off the intensity, how often should we be working out if we have an autoimmune condition?  I like to say High Intensity work should not be done more than 2 times a week.  That would include intervals, Crossfit, intense cardio.  You should leave at least 2 days between those sessions for proper cellular repair and recovery.  In between, yoga, walking, leisurely biking are all amazing, repairing options.  You can also add some resistance training  like weight lifting or body weight movements like squats, push ups, pull ups, etc to the mix.  The key here is to keep your heart rate down when you are avoiding high intensity.  This may mean doing less initially which seems counter-intuitive because we all want to look good naked. However, chronic cardio and too much high intensity activity are driving your adrenals into the ground.  Once that happens, your body will begin taking building blocks from hormone production in order to try to keep up with cortisol production.  It doesn’t care how fertile you are, heavy your periods are, or how horny you are if it is trying to survive a flight or flight experience! As far as our genetics are concerned, stressful situations are life and death.  That is why de-stressing is so important.

If you have cut out gluten, upped your fat soluble vitamins, addressed you stomach acid, and quit taking miscellaneous medications, this could be your next step in the equation.  Exercise should be a positive challenge to the body.  If overdone, it most definitely acts in the opposite direction.  Choose something FUN.  I like group classes because community makes every second fun for me.  I really enjoy sports. Join a sports club.  Take family walks.  Movement does not have to be a dreaded to-do on the endless list.  It should and could be something you ENJOY and LOOK FORWARD TO!  If you haven’t found that type of movement yet, then keep searching.  Different strokes for different folks.  The more you can do outside, the better, too.

What does your trash say about YOU?

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I just got back from walking my dogs, and I started thinking to myself as we were on our way to the park. We walked past house after house of recycling bins. My first thought is how great it is that people are taking the initiative to recycle, but then I start to notice the product containers INSIDE the bins! Yikes! Many were full of pop cans, pizza boxes, cracker boxes, alcohol containers, and plastic condiment containers. I have no idea what the health status is of those individuals, but I can imagine many are probably battling weight issues, heart problems, digestive complaints, and glucose tolerance issues. So, I was thinking about a hypothetical scenario (I do this all the time by the way!): let’s say you were to leave your children with a family for the next year and all you could use to make the selection was a sneak peek at their trash. Would you choose to leave your kids at the house that had tons of pop cans, cookie boxes, and alcohol containers or the house that had jars from almond butter, cans from coconut milk, and plastic egg containers? I do not know what the answer would be, but I do know that I would personally leave mine with those that I perceived to be healthy! I would choose the trash with things that would assure me that my children were growing up healthy and active. Does your trash reflect the home that you would choose for your children? Just a thought…..

I’d like to take a side note and say that many of the healthiest options don’t have packaging at all! Therefore, many of the healthiest homes would have the least amount of trash, too. Positive for health and the Earth!