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Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Dr. Keesha Ewers is an integrative medicine expert, Doctor of Sexology, Family Practice ARNP, Psychotherapist, herbalist, is board certified in functional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, and is the founder and medical director of the Academy for Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certification Program. Dr. Keesha has been in the medical field... Read More
Debra Poneman is an award-winning speaker, best-selling author, sought-after seminar leader, talk-show host and in-demand media guest. As a speaker, Debra delivers high-energy, content-rich, deeply impactful presentations that stay with audience members long after she leaves the stage. Debra began her speaking career in 1980. While she was working as... Read More
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Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Welcome back to “The Reverse Autoimmune Disease Summit Series” everybody. This is version 5.0, “The Healing, The Energy Body Summit”. I am so delighted to bring you a dear friend and colleague of mine, Debra Poneman. For over 40 years, she as a bestselling author, founder of “Yes to success” seminars and co-founder of the “Ageless: Antiaging for your Brain, Body and Future”, has shared her systems used by hundreds of thousands around the world to live not only success and abundance but deep happiness, profound self love and ageless radiance. Debra’s clients have used her success formulas to become mega successful entrepreneurs, renowned transformational leaders, New York times Bestselling Authors, millionaires, billionaires, even household names, yet Debra feels her greatest accomplishment is that her clients know the truth of who they are and own their power to create a life they love that is abundant in every way and the health, and longevity to enjoy that life. Welcome to this series, Debra.
Debra Poneman
Thank you so much and it’s so good to be here with you as always.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Oh yeah, I mean for those of you that have never met Debra, this is a very dynamic, beautiful person who has a very dynamic, beautiful daughter who I’m also friends with, and so it’s just really lovely to be in orbit with you.
Debra Poneman
Thank you and speaking of dynamic and beautiful daughters, you have two dynamic and beautiful daughters who I just adore.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I do, yeah. So after 40 years of teaching success principles around the world, you’ve now begun teaching people to slow and even reverse the aging of their brain and body, why the shift?
Debra Poneman
Okay, well, you know, I didn’t really decide to make a shift, it kind of just decided me and then I went with the flow because I was happily teaching “Yes to Success” since 1980, and you know, I’ve been a Meditation Teacher since 1972, last May was my 50th anniversary of becoming a Meditation Teacher, started out as a Transcendental Meditation Teacher and now I teach through the art of living. But whenever I would tell people that I was 70, which I turned in January, I’d literally get inundated with emails from people saying, “What is your secret, you know, you have no wrinkles, you have hardly any gray hair, you speak for hours on the stage with no notes”. So instead of continuing to spend my life answering those emails, I’d put together a 90 minute webinar, I called it “Ageless”, with a few tips but people wanted more. So I contacted a dear friend of mine, who I went to college with in the 70s, we went to was Wash-U together and she’s now a Harvard trained, published, multiple time published Mind, Body Researcher, specializing in slowing and reversing the aging of your brain and your body. And in fact, she was part of the team in the 1980s and 90s who did the research at Harvard that appeared on the cover of Newsweek on how meditation reverses the aging process. So I said, “Ronnie, how about you and I put together a course, and teach people how to have radiant health and happiness, and a clear mind and a strong libido at any age”, and now we’ve taught our course to thousands. And you and I both know that the same things that allow us to reverse the aging process are exactly what heals the energy body and strengthens the immune system.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah, yeah. My, you know, my husband turned 70 this year also and also was on the same path as you, and inside the same organization and you know, it’s just people can’t believe his age all the time and he’s still going strong teaching too. There is something to this, I mean, some people age more quickly than others and the formula, you know, meditation is a part of slowing that down so what does the research say about why some people age quicker than others?
Debra Poneman
Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people say, “Oh, people appear to age quicker than others”, I said, “No, no, no, it’s not just, they appear, they are”.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Those telomeres are actually shortening, yes.
Debra Poneman
That’s exactly right. I’m gonna talk in a little while about what we can do to make our telomeres lengthen but you know, it’s a choice. People think it’s genetics but even with Alzheimer’s and dementia, science is now saying that only five to 10% of it is hereditary, and although the genes do confer what’s called, you know, predisposition or genetic susceptibility, but really it’s in our hands to do what we can from our side. And with autoimmune, I mean, an autoimmune disease is a condition which your immune system attacks your body, and the immune system usually guards against bacteria and viruses but in the case of, you know, autoimmune disease it attacks you so the trick is creating a strong immune system. And again, it’s the same thing you do to slow down and even reverse aging, and so it starts with the obvious diet, sleep, exercise, the environment so, well, what is the science?
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And then sleep, we need to have it.
Debra Poneman
You do need.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
There are these very basic pillars and people’s eyes glaze over when we start talking about them, hydration is really important, sleeping, very important, moving your body very important, right? Just, yeah, don’t you have a pill I can take?
Debra Poneman
You know, and most pills age you.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I know.
Debra Poneman
Especially the ones you get at the pharmacy, you know, but people, you know they look at people like you and me or your husband and it it’s like, “Okay, can you give us something that we could do it quickly?” No, it’s you gotta change your lifestyle guys, you know?
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
You do.
Debra Poneman
It’s a great life and a healthy life is not gonna be handed to you on a silver platter. I mean, right now I’m not home, I’m at the Optimum Health Institute, I go here twice a year, I cleanse, I drink grain juice that’s over there on my table, we drink wheatgrass juice, we get colonics, we do things that keep us young because not only do we wanna be young. I mean, let’s face it, chronologically you age, one year you’re 50, the next year you’re 51, surprise, but physiological aging is all about lifestyle choices and you don’t have to take my word, because there is scientific evidence. For example, when you eat certain foods like high glycemic foods or foods that are primarily refined carbohydrates and sugars or processed meats with nitrate, they’re going to generate free radicals, free radicals age our cells. If you don’t know what a free radical is, they’re atoms that are missing an electron and so it’s now called a free radical ’cause they go around stealing electrons from other atoms, and that molecule or that atom oxidizes or ages, it’s like what happens when you cut an apple or an avocado when it turns brown, okay. They’re gonna collect-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
On a rusting car, yeah.
Debra Poneman
Right, exactly, rust on a car so they steal electrons from other atoms and the atom oxidizes, and it’s the same thing that happens when our skin turns brown, we’re oxidizing our skin when we go out in the sun, that’s free radical damage. But the common name is oxidative stress, it weakens our cells and it makes free radicals make you more susceptible to health issues. In fact, free radicals have been implicated in heart disease, cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, so knowing that there are a lot of causes of free radical damage, just don’t do ’em. You know, over exercising, again going out in the sun, air pollution, smoking, alcohol consumption but if you don’t get enough antioxidants to counteract oxidation, you’ll not only have visible signs of aging like your skin aging, but your whole body will age more quickly. So what you wanna do is do things like be wary of sun exposure, get a little bit so you have your vitamin D but eat antioxidant foods, blueberries, cranberries, red kidney beans, pinto beans, most apples, Granny Smith, you know, gala apples, prunes, there are so many foods that are antioxidants. And just a visual example is if you put lemon juice on an apple, it doesn’t turn brown because it’s an antioxidant, so, I mean, that’s just one of the things that you can do to slow down the aging process. But you want me to keep going ’cause I can tell you a gazillion of em.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah, let’s let’s have a gazillion tips.
Debra Poneman
Okay, well I’ll give you the next out of gazillion. Another way we age is when we sit around with our friends who are always talking about the worst aspects of aging, “Oh wait until you get cataracts”, I’m gonna go, “ah”, you know. “The next thing to go is gonna be your knees”, my mother-in-law said that to me, “Just watch your knees, they’re the”, I didn’t even know what she was talking about, I was 40 and she says, “You know, they fall over you”, I’m like, I don’t wanna hear about it ’cause now the images in your mind and we know that your mind creates, “The next thing is your hair is gonna start falling out”. And there is this a wonderful woman who my business partner Ronnie worked with, Dr. Ellen Langer at Harvard and she did this great research project. She took these group of men who were in their 60s and they had the kind of aches and pains that people start getting somewhere in their early 70s, and then she took them to a retreat center and when they opened the doors of the retreat center, it was all set up like the world was in the 50s. You know, yeah, those kinds of TVs and it had a clock radios, we had banners like, you know, I like Ike, you know, ’cause the president at the time, and for one week there were no mirrors, they couldn’t look at the mirrors and they couldn’t ask anybody to do anything for them, carried their luggage, they were not allowed to talk about any aches and pains but only talk about, you know, the White Sox winning the world series. And of course at the end of the week, their memories improved, they had more physical strength, they could do things that they couldn’t do before so again, your thoughts create your reality. So proper diet, exercise, rejuvenating sleep and a mindset that doesn’t believe that you’re gonna fall apart when you’re 50 or 60. I have no belief that I was gonna fall apart when I was 70, I’m now 70, I’m in perfect health.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Debra Poneman
And getting the toxins out of your home and okay, I’ll give you another one, okay?
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
All right.
Debra Poneman
I already mentioned something with diet but I know that you’re totally behind me, well, you’re totally with me on all of these things but we talked about antioxidants, but if you only do one thing in your diet for better health and longevity, I would say stop eating white refined sugar.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Debra Poneman
Because research shows.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Amen.
Debra Poneman
Amen, right girl?
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Oh my gosh.
Debra Poneman
It’s one of the worst offenders when it comes to brain inflammation and inflammation is the main cause of your brain atrophying or aging too fast. Why refined sugar and foods that act the same in your system like refined carbs, white bread, white pasta are causing the inflammation that slows down communication between neurons, and that’s what causes you to feel foggy, dull, have no memory. People are like, you know, “Oh, you know, I don’t even remember what I walked in the room for, I can’t remember my grandchildren’s names”, well get with the program guys, right. “But I can’t go off of sugar”, yeah you can, you know.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
“Oh my gosh, I know that I can’t”, that’s the thing that just, I go what, you mean you won’t, you know, you can and you won’t.
Debra Poneman
And maybe your brain has to deteriorate enough for you to but you know.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I call it the misery to motivation ratio and I always think just how miserable do you need to get before you’re motivated right, to finally say, “Oh, this is rat poison, why am I putting it in my body?”
Debra Poneman
You know and when you get to that point that you can’t remember, you know, your grandkids name, it’s serious.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
It’s serious.
Debra Poneman
Because it means that nerve cells in the brain are already dying. And you know, that plays a significant role in Alzheimer’s and also other degenerative diseases, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis so start using sugar substitutes, like some good organic stevia or monk fruit, make sure it doesn’t have erythritol in it.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Or xylitol, yeah, use the pure monk fruit, pure, yeah.
Debra Poneman
Yeah, which you gotta look on the labels or date sugar, coconut palm sugar. I mean, I remember when I was at your house for Thanksgiving and your daughter made the best pecan pie and the best pumpkin pie, and you made oh, just capers, it was amazing. It was like a feast of deliciousness and not a drop of refined sugar.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
No sugar, yep.
Debra Poneman
Ooh, and don’t be fooled by sugar in the raw, “Oh well I use is brown sugar”, all it is is white sugar with a little bit of molasses that they keep in.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Or maple syrup or honey, they have the same glycemic index as white sugar so yeah.
Debra Poneman
Right.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah and brown rice syrup, same as maple syrup and white sugar, yeah, you can’t do that.
Debra Poneman
Oh and also we must mention, probably most of you know this but no artificial sweeteners, Splenda, NutraSweet, sucralose, they are just as bad, actually they’re worse.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And carcinogenic so.
Debra Poneman
Right.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah, for molasses when you’re doing fall baking which Debra’s just talking about, you can use something called yacon syrup, which is a really lovely substitute for molasses. So there are ways and then ChocZero makes a really yummy maple syrup, that’s got a glycemic index of one and it’s pure monk fruit so.
Debra Poneman
Whoa, I didn’t know that, what’s the name?
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah, it’s called ChocZero. I buy 12 bottles at a time because I make a homemade paleo banana bread every week and I do a bottle of that in there, and then it doesn’t have any sugar so, and it has that maple warmth to it, it’s really yummy.
Debra Poneman
Well, I’m coming over. I’ll see you soon in August and November, and I’m gonna see you a lot so.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah, yeah.
Debra Poneman
I want some paleo bread. You know, the one other thing I wanna say about Alzheimer’s because people say it’s hereditary, and I just wanna reiterate that the study of epigenetics is now showing us that just because your mom and your grandma had it, most diseases does not mean that you have to. They’ve done studies on twins who were separated at birth and grew up in different environments, one with, you know, less air pollution, greater access to healthier lifestyle and diet, in one developed diseases like Alzheimer’s like their mom had, but the other one did not. So again, we have to realize that it’s in our hands, we’re not victims and.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Now this is interesting Debra that you’re talking about the genetics of Alzheimer’s because the one of the SNPs that creates the genetic variability of it is the APOE4 gene, and 10% of the population carries that, which puts them at, you know, if you’re heterozygous versus homozygous, either 50% or a hundred percent higher risk of getting Alzheimer’s, but you can turn that gene off by not drinking alcohol and being a vegetarian. But not everybody should be vegetarian and so this is one of those places where there’s never one diet fits everybody, that really knowing like what your system needs is super important.
Debra Poneman
Yes and I agree, but we do know that alcohol is culprit and people say, “Oh, but alcohol has grape seed extract and it’s an antioxidant.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
No.
Debra Poneman
No.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Then they have like five bottles of wine to have enough resveratrol to do anything in your body. And no, there is no redeeming health benefit to alcohol whatsoever, it’s so inflammatory, yeah.
Debra Poneman
Right, one little grapeseed extract capsule is the same like five gallons of alcohol, right?
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Exactly, exactly.
Debra Poneman
You know, for people who aren’t familiar with how neurons communicate with each other, neurons communicating, maybe this will help you to get it like a graphic picture. The way our brain cells communicate with each other is that these electric charges travel down like these spiny like protrusions that come out of our, you know, that’s part of our neurons.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
The axonals.
Debra Poneman
And they’re called dendritic spines and they emit, they discharge a chemical into the space between the two brain cells, it’s called the synapse. And what happens is that the adjacent brain cell uptakes the synovial fluid, and that’s how our brain cells actually communicate, one with the other, with the other. But what happens is that when we eat inflammatory food, these dendrites actually curl up kids.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Not only that but the microglia come along and carve them away, that’s what Alzheimer, I mean, you know, you’re losing these connections between these dendritic cells, but they also get cut, they get haircuts. I know. I mean, it’s horrifying.
Debra Poneman
And again, we have complete control and also stress. There’s a hormone called CRH, corticotrophin releasing hormone that’s released into areas of your brain, particularly your hippocampus, which is the primary memory in learning center and involved in emotional responses. And corticotrophin releasing hormone, again, causes these dendritic spines to detract so the spaces between our brain cells become so large that the cells can’t communicate so we forget, we can’t remember.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
We drop words, we can’t remember things, we walk into the room and we don’t know why we got there, yeah.
Debra Poneman
Right and.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Why we’re there, yeah.
Debra Poneman
And we just said, one of the first things we said at the beginning when we pointed out that your husband and I were on the same teacher training course when we became meditation teachers, people need to calm down. And because again, it’s stress that releases CRH into our brains and so fortunately that stress dissipates, and the CRH is metabolized out of the brain when the stress goes away, and the spine seem to be able to grow back. So what we wanna do is we wanna do those things, meditate, do breath techniques that calm the stress response. And you know, from 50 years of meditating, I look at the research and I am just thrilled that there are simple meditation techniques I teach through the Art Of Living Foundation, I teach a technique called Sahaj Samadhi, scientifically proven to decrease stress. And also, can you gimme two minutes to teach everybody a breath technique?
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I would love that.
Debra Poneman
Okay because people think, oh, you know, learning breath techniques they’re hard, they’re complicated, no, they’re not. There is an ancient technique, they talk about it in the Vedas okay, the ancient scriptures out of India, and it’s called, well in English, we call it straw breath. And basically all it is is breathing in through the nose, let’s do it together, it’s we breathe in through the nose and when we breathe out through the mouth, we purse our lips like we’re breathing through a straw. And when our lungs feel empty, we breathe them through our nose and out through our pursed lips like we’re making bubbles in our chocolate milk when we were kids, hopefully your mother didn’t give you chocolate milk but my mother did.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
We went through it like it was going outta style.
Debra Poneman
But now we can have cocoa rice milk, in through your nose, out through your pursed lips, in through your nose and one more time out through those purse lips. Now, four straw breaths and I’m sure that everyone already feels more calm, more centered, this has even been showed to bring blood pressure down. My business partner, Ronnie, her mother fell and they brought her to the emergency room and her blood pressure had skyrocketed 200 to like 120 over 120, it was really scary. But because of some medication she was on, they couldn’t give her medication and she said, “Mom, I’m gonna teach you straw breath”, and she taught it to her and her blood pressure went down 30 points within three minutes.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Beautiful.
Debra Poneman
And the nurse came in and was like, “What the H”, she’d never seen anything like it before, and you know what’s great, you could do this anytime, you could do it while you’re driving, keep your eyes open if you’re driving, you could even do it when you’re in a board meeting or a zoom meeting and somebody says something and you’re getting like really tense around it, just do some straw breaths, nobody will see that you’re doing it and it brings you right back to center. You know, people say mindfulness to be in present time, it brings you right back to present time.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Beautiful, thank you so much, Debra.
Debra Poneman
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Debra Poneman
should I-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Dr. Vasant Lad is one of my favorite Ayurvedic teachers and he always says like conscious breathing, pranayama practices of which this is one, you know, they will take the place of supplements, they’ll take the like, if you’ll just do them, this is it, this is all you need.
Debra Poneman
I love Dr. Lad too.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Debra Poneman
And yeah and again, people think it’s so complex, just do straw breath, you do straw breath for three minutes a day, your life will change. There are more complex pranayamas but you know, here’s one, it’s a gift, you’re gonna really be thankful that you have it ’cause it really does calm you down and center you, not just while you’re doing it, but that serenity stays with you after you’re done. Can I talk a second about exercise?
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Please.
Debra Poneman
Okay so we talked about telomeres and I just wanna say that there is compelling research that’s concluded that there are two exercise method that can slow the aging process better than others by preventing cellular aging, and you might be surprised what they are ’cause one is not yoga. One is endurance training also called aerobic exercise, anything that increases your heart rate and breath rate like running or cycling or speed walking and the other is HIT, high intensity interval training. And if you don’t know what it is, it’s high intensity burst of like, you know, like running for 30 seconds and then walking for a minute or two, or bicycling for 30 seconds and then slowly, calm, just easily biking for a minute or two. And there was a study that was published in the European Heart Journal and researchers examine the effects of all different kinds of exercise over a six month period with, I don’t know, a couple hundred participants.
And they were told to perform a whole different, I think there were six different modalities and at the end of the six months, the researchers found that HIT was the best in increasing telomeres and telomeres are those nucleotide sequences found at the end of our chromosomes, and when they shorten, aging occurs and HIT, and number two was endurance training, and they were actually the only two exercise modalities found to increase telomere length thus producing that antiaging effect. And in terms of immunity, not only does exercise get the immune cells moving throughout the body, but it also promotes the presence of these immune cells for up to three hours after exercise is completed. So like here I am at Optimum Health Institute and it’s all about cleansing, but you know, we do lymph exercise, we do lymph brushing, we do all but we exercise here and we briskly walk for 20 minutes. And because what happens is if you exercise again, for three hours after it gives time for the immune cells to identify these unwanted intruders, bacteria, viruses and keeps you from getting sick.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Beautiful, yeah. These are important tips, we are meant to move, we are meant to move. We have legs, we’re not meant to sit all day long. And I mean, I just always laugh about that and say it tongue in cheek but it’s true, I mean, you know, we are not meant to sit, hunched up in front of a computer all day, that’s not how we’re designed so yeah.
Debra Poneman
No, we’re not. And speaking of computers, I do wanna say one thing about sleep and then I have to say something about computers, and the one thing I wanna say about sleep is we all know that getting enough sleep is important, but what people don’t know is that when you sleep is equally or more important than how long you sleep, because during our sleep we produce HGH, human growth hormone which is the anti-aging hormone. And it’s involved in mood, in brain function and immunity.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And hormone regulation.
Debra Poneman
Hormone regulation, it stimulates fat burning, it’s good for the elasticity of the skin, bone density, so many things and it’s abundant in your youth and then it declines with age, so you want to do whatever you can to maximize the production of HGH. The good news is that if you know when to sleep, you can produce, you can increase your HGH production by about fivefold because you know, I always say to people, “Okay, what do you think is better, getting seven hours of sleep between 10 and five or nine hours between midnight and nine”, they go nine hours but that’s not true. Because our circadian rhythms and our bodies are still in tune with the sun going down. So when the sun goes down, our HGA production begins to increase and it becomes substantial around 10, peaks at midnight, and is almost down to zero by two o’clock. So if you’re at night owl and you go to sleep at 12 or one or two, you have completely missed HGH production so if you wanna grab that HGH production when it’s at its peak, I’d recommend going to bed at 10 o’clock.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
You’re not in bed by 10, you’re asleep by 10.
Debra Poneman
Asleep by 10, thank you.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah and no screens, yeah. So there’s a trifecta that you can actually enhance your HGH by doing two other things, in addition to getting to sleep by 10 and that is stop eating at night by 6:00 PM, exercise in the morning and then don’t, you know, so eat between in an eight hour intermittent fasting period, now you have just quadrupled that effect so yeah.
Debra Poneman
We love that and one other thing to get deep sleep, as long as we’re on the subject, eye mask, dark room because for melatonin production, when light hits your eye, people say, “I could sleep with the lights on, daytime”, well, maybe you can but if there’s light coming into your eyeballs, then it is inhibiting melatonin so dark room, gosh, we’re giving people a lot of tips.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I know, it’s good, it’s good stuff everyone, this is good stuff. Right and then what about the computer?
Debra Poneman
Okay, so what a lot of people don’t know, most people don’t know is that one of the most insidious causes of aging of the skin, and damage to the eyes is the blue light that emits from our computer screens. This is in addition to the EMFs that we are swimming in, the electromagnetic fields which is a topic for another day. But that light that comes off of the screens of our devices, it’s called blue light and it’s known to have long term health effects. Even the health letter of the Harvard medical school in July a year ago said, and I could quote it almost exactly, blue light can affect your sleep, your immune system and potentially cause disease including cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. And that’s pretty much a direct quote, in studies also say that continued exposure to blue light over time could lead to damage retinal cells in vision problems like age related, macular degeneration and even blindness. And blue light exposure unfortunately, it’s a particular concern for little ones because their developing eyes absorb more blue light than adults, putting them at greater risk of long term damage to their eyes. In fact, some researchers say that macular degeneration and blindness are going to be the biggest health crisis when our kids who spend hours a day in front of computers exposing their tender little eyes to blue light become adults so what.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Blue light blocking glasses, everyone.
Debra Poneman
Blue light blocking glasses, you can see they reflect blue and also you can get blue light screens, you might not be able to get your kids to wear glasses. I do both, I mean, not for the interview because of course I wanna look so pretty, but it also cause this reflects my light. But I always, I have my blue light blocking screen, my favorite company is EyeJust, I don’t get a kickback, I just love EyeJust screens ’cause it just like fits right on your screen and they also have these, I don’t know if they, but don’t get cheap blue light blocking glasses, get good ones. And by the way, some of the other potential diseases associated with blue light are headaches, why do you think people get headaches after sitting in front of the computer all day, again, suppression of the body’s melatonin so turn off your computer as you said, well before you wanna go to sleep. And here is one thing, if all those things don’t get you to get a blue light screen, blue light has also been shown to age the skin. So believe it or not, if you’re gonna resist putting a screen on your screen then you should wear sunscreen, because if you’re in front of the computer for long stretches of time, the blue light ages your skin. In Bizarre Magazine, Dermatologist, Stephanie Williams, Dr. Stephanie Williams, she said that we’re seeing increasing data on the potential long term harms of blue light on our skin, she said our digital devices are swiftly being labeled the silent agers of our generation.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah, I’m not surprised that I came home from a spiritual retreat that I was on in June and my husband had surprised me with this gigantic monitor that takes over my desk, and there’s so much blue light emitting from it, I was just like, “Thanks, honey”.
Debra Poneman
Oh, that’s so sweet.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Because it’s a new toy, he thought it was the coolest thing, you know, for himself so he thought, “Oh, I’ll get her one too”, and now I’m like, I have to get, I have to do all of that, so thank you for that.
Debra Poneman
That gigantic blue light blocker but you can give him this quote, it’s another quote, I actually wrote it down ’cause I wanted to share it with y’all. It’s from Dr. Murad, you know, Dr. Murad, he has a line of natural cosmetics and skincare. And he said, quote, “Spending four, eight hour work days in front of a computer so four, eight hour workdays, exposes you to the same amount of sun energy as 20 minutes lying in the strong midday sun at the equator”.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Oh wow.
Debra Poneman
I mean, who would in their right mind, lie in the sun for even one minute at the equator, right.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right, right.
Debra Poneman
New day sun on but that’s what happens when you are in front of the computer just for four, eight hour days so.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Oh my gosh. Well, that’s where I am, four, eight hour days in front of the computer, I need to do something about this.
Debra Poneman
Yeah, so but it’s just fabulous that we can put these when last, not last year at holiday time, but the year before at holiday time, every one of my kids, every one of my God kids and I have 17 of them, every one of my bonus kids, you know, I have several bonus kids, they all got blue light blockers for their computer and for their phone for their Christmas, and Hanukkah presents. They’re all that excited, I didn’t care.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
That sounds pretty standard of my family too. Mom will go on a tear about something and then everyone gets one. Yeah, they’re lucky to have us.
Debra Poneman
They must. Letty my daughter, she thinks she’s lucky to have you so.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
So you have a free gift for our audience.
Debra Poneman
Yes I do, well, my gift is, there’s so many more things that I know about anti-aging, where in addition to what I’ve shared today so my business partner, Ronnie Newman, who’s the Harvard Anti-Aging Researcher, she and I wrote an e-book and it’s called “Ancient and Modern Secrets for Lifelong Radiance”. And it’s at least five or six more simple hacks, we talk about hydration, I think we even talk about better sex , and so it’s just five or six more hacks for slowing and reversing the aging of the brain and the body, so that’s my gift for everybody.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Beautiful, thank you. And for those of you that are choosing to purchase the all access pass, where you get all of these amazing experts talks for the rest of your life, when you can go back and digest them slowly and sanely, and really take advantage of all of their bonuses, Debra is offering you a really special course, I’m so excited about this.
Debra Poneman
Yes, well, when you asked me if I had a course that I could offer, I said, “You know, I actually really don’t”, you know, to give to everybody for free and I said, “Well, okay, because it’s you”, I have a course that I created and it’s sold through other media for like anywhere between 2.97 and 4.97, true. And it’s called “Seeds for your Soul: A Life Beyond Happy” and it’s how to create a life where the inner happiness, I mean I talk about love, I talk about contributing to the planet, I talk about so many things that we could do to create a life that’s not just happy, but inner happy so it’s beyond happy and don’t tell anyone, but I’m giving it to y’all.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Those that purchase the all access pass, thank you so much, Debra.
Debra Poneman
You’re welcome.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
All right, well, I appreciate you spending some time sharing, even a fraction of your wisdom with us, it’s always a delight.
Debra Poneman
Well, thank you so much and thank you for everything you’ve done for my family and which is, I could just talk for hours just about that, and everything you do for the planet. You are one of those people who is really making a difference.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Oh, as are you, thank you. All right, everybody until next time, be well.
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