- During the break, I was looking on
the New York Times,
the hallmark, the high point of journalism,
some people say, in the world.
I love it, I think it's great.
It's not quite The Guardian, I know, but it's authoritative.
So here it says, "Oh, I was just diagnosed
with irritable bowel syndrome.
Am I destined to deal with its symptoms forever
or is there a cure?"
Today's New York Times.
And so this person said, "Well, I interviewed
all the best gastroenterologists in the country.
And what did they say?
Just as there is no cure
for other chronic conditions like diabetes
or high blood pressure, there is no cure
for irritable bowel syndrome."
So that's the message that we're giving to people.
I think it's completely wrong.
It's a different category.
Diabetes is a metabolic disorder.
Yes, you can control it.
You can cope with it.
High blood pressure, maybe, you know, maybe it's changeable.
But for most people living with high blood pressure,
they're not gonna get rid of it.
And they'll manage it and cope with it
and take medication or whatever.
But for irritable bowel, yes,
we have other methods for that.
And then they say, "The reason irritable bowel can be
so challenging is we don't know exactly what causes it."
Yes we do, in my humble opinion, but they don't.
But these are the experts,
these are the best experts in the country
or the world or whatever.
And then it says,
"Well, the best you can do is cope with it."
Combination, dietary, behavioural, medication.
And then they list all the different things you can do.
"You can start changing your diet,
start avoiding more foods.
Avoid, avoid, avoid, live more in fear, fear, fear.
Stop eating the things you love."
That's not good.
Suzanne wanted to, I want to ask if you have any questions,
but Suzanne wanted me to
talk about inflammation for a second.
And it's something I always wanna talk about.
I can't remember if I brought it up before or not,
but to me it's a very important topic.
And as usual about most topics,
I have strong feelings about it.
And again, well, what can I say?
I'm a little bit at odds with the rest of the world a lot,
and I accept that.
But I really feel strongly that my,
what I'm saying is based on science
and everyone has inflammation.
Everyone.
There's micro inflammation in our bodies.
In our gums, there's inflammation, there's bacteria.
We live with bacteria in our bodies.
We coexist with our biome and everything.
And stress and trauma causes increased inflammation.
That's true.
There's no doubt about,
and a lot of people with stress and trauma
and a lot of people with Fybromialgia or or irritable bowel
or other disorders have micro inflammation
and there's markers for it.
There's blood tests for it.
ESR, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, can be elevated.
Normally it's up to 20, it can be 30 or 40 or 80.
I saw a woman the other day, she had over a hundred,
but she didn't have any symptoms.
She didn't have any pain.
CRP, C-reactive protein,
it is another marker for inflammation in the body.
Systemic inflammation in the body that can be high
and it can go up with stress and trauma and pain
and other markers, cytokines, et cetera.
They've documented inflammation in the brain
in people with depression.
But my view is this level of inflammation is systemic,
generalised micro inflammation.
It's there, and over time, if it gets worse,
foods, my wife says, "Don't eat so much."
What's it called?
Salami, sausage, things I love.
"Don't eat that stuff, it's bad for you.
It causes inflammation.
Don't eat saturated fats, don't eat processed foods,
don't eat things that are high radicals," you know?
"Eat antioxidant diet," right?
"That'll lower your inflammation."
And I think that's true.
I'm not saying that's not true.
And if you do that, my daughter's a vegetarian,
is she gonna live longer than me?
Of course she will.
Or most likely, who knows.
But when you build up low level
and systemic chronic inflammation over time, yes,
you may be more likely to have an autoimmune disease.
You may be more likely to get cancer, you may be more likely
to have a heart attack.
I think that's true.
But that's different than macro inflammation.
Macro inflammation is a strep throat with pus
and redness and soreness.
It's gout, it's rheumatoid arthritis
where the joint is hot and swollen and tender.
That's macro inflammation.
Macro inflammation can definitely cause pain.
But I don't believe that micro inflammation,
this chronic, systemic,
low level inflammation is a cause of pain.
And the reason I say that is because inflammation
and everyone knows this, this is a fact.
Inflammation doesn't turn on and off like that.
It can't.
Inflammation is something that kind of grows and over time
and it builds up and it can get better and it get worse.
But not over seconds, not over minutes.
Neural circuit disorders can turn on and off like that.
Neural circuitry can turn on and off like that.
Neural circuitry is a different mechanism
and that's what causes these chronic painful conditions
that I'm talking about.
So I think that the worry
and fear about micro inflammation
and just like with the irritable bowel, it's like,
"Change your diet, avoid these foods, avoid these foods,
they're not good for you," is living in fear
and it maybe it'll make you live longer.
I accept that, but it's not how I would view
this kind of mind-body treatment for chronic pain
and these other mind-body conditions.
So that's my view on inflammation.
And a lot of people in my field,
a lot of mind-body doctors disagree with me on this.
And they think you have to treat the inflammation as well.
But I think again, to me it puts
more focus on the body, more focus on fixing the body,
the body's broken, I need to change my diet or or whatever.
You can feel free to disagree with me.
A lot of people do, but that's just my view.
So we're at the end of the day,
we just did a little exercise,
we didn't get any feedback on it.
If anybody has any questions or comments,
we can take a minute or two or not.
Has anything come up that somebody wanted to ask about
or had questions about
or something that happened that they found was interesting
or fun or good or bad or confusing or something?
- Well, it was amusing actually
because we, the person with I worked
with had pain in her sitting bones when she was sitting.
And it was not even the object of our research,
but it became actually what we were working on.
Painful in on the sitting bones.
And after a while this pain went away, but then I got it.
(laughing)
- Great, thank you very much.
- And did you tell her to take it back?
- She took it back, I got it back.
It was, no, it was interesting because it went on and off.
We were laughing a lot.
- That's like Qigong.
Like Qigong is here.
Okay, here.
That's amazing, isn't it?
I mean, that's the fun, that's the beauty
of doing this work to play and see what happens.
And to look at that with a smile like you're like a child.
Like a child is put their hand in the cookie jar
and you go, "Bad, bad."
You go, "I caught you, ha ha, interesting.
I see now, I understand.
And that's where Dr. Sarno started.
He said, "If you understand,
if you really understand what's going on,
then you can take away the fear and the worry
and you can change the neuro circuit."
That's really interesting.
Thank you for bringing, who has it now?
(chuckling)
It's gone now.
Send it away.
In my family, we have an expression.
You either give ulcers or you get them.
It's interesting, we have a rough family.