Ayurvedic Medicine’s Role In Parkinson’s Care

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Welcome to the Parkinson's Solutions Summit. I'm Dr. Ken Sharlin I have a very special guest with me today, a fellow neurologist I've known for several years and really excited to have her speak and teach us about topics you may not know nothing about. That's what's so exciting about doing this solution summit. Her name is Dr. Trupti Gokani, and she is from the Chicago area. She is a neurologist, but she is also a health and mindset coach, a trained practitioner in neuro linguistic programing. But what I really want to focus on here especially is and I may be pronouncing it wrong, so she's going to correct me.

I see. Ayurvedic medicine? A Y U R V E D I C unless you're writing in Sanskrit, folks. But that's how are you going to look it up. And we're going to learn about some powerful tools and new ways to think about Parkinson's disease. Dr. Gokani, welcome to the Parkinson's Solutions Summit. Thank you for so much for having me in that beautiful introduction. I'm so excited to be here. Well, before we dive into ayurvedic medicine, tell me a little bit about your journey becoming a neurologist. I know you have some passions, including Ayurvedic And you know what?

Because, you know, if you're like me, I went to Emory. I studied at Vanderbilt, very traditional, spent years, you know, prescribing the pills. And there's that's a very valuable tool in our toolbox, of course. But there is so much more. Tell me what yours has been like. So, you know, the journey even into neurology was a journey for me because I actually started in the family practice kind of primary care world, moved my way into psychiatry and then eventually made my way into neurology. I was fascinated with how the whole system worked as a whole, and I'm very curious about the mind and the effect of the mind on the body.

And I found that neurology was this beautiful blend because very much the nervous system affects the entire body and the mind and the brain operates so much of who we are. And this idea of being able to delve into that was kind of what drew me into neurology. And I loved that it was somewhat practical and yet kind of esoteric at the same time, you know, and then eventually got into the Eastern medicine after I did Neurology. Well, there you go. You know, I had someone say to me one time that schizophrenia was the ultimate neurological disease, you know,

Ayurveda and the Mind-Body Connection 2:54

and it is sort of a shame that two often we think things that have to do with the mind are somehow different than the things that have to do with the brain. And that even, you know, kind of gets us a little bit into what we talk about often in functional medicine, like saying things that have to do with the guy, you know, have are often related to the brain, but they really are one in the same or they they are. And that was, I think, one of the most profound revelations that I had is and you know, in training, I myself, when I was studying psychiatry and then shifted over to neurology, I, you know, my younger years were really thought those are two different disciplines that have their own place and their own kind of space.

And then as I started to see more patients in the traditional neurology clinic and I focused a little bit more on migraine early on, I found that, you know, wow, there's this kind of interplay between the mind and the body. And I'm happy to share how I first found out you've had that because it was actually when I was in medical school. Well, tell me about that. Yeah, because it kind of ties into after my started practicing, I went back to argue about that. So my initial initial entry into argue about a first year medical student, you know, stressed and busy and going nonstop and I started to develop sleep problems and happened pretty early.

Within my first month, I was having bombs falling asleep and then it was promptly on and staying asleep. And then I wasn't sleeping at all and got very desperate and tried some different things and was prescribed Ambien, a medication to help sleep. And unfortunately, I'd gotten into a car accident and that was not a good direction for me. And I thought, okay, I've got to figure out why I can't sleep. And at that time, as a young 27 year old, I went to see a therapist and she asked me was I actually feeling stressed?

And so I said I was stressed, but can I tell you, when I was in my twenties, I didn't really think that that stress was the cause of this. You know, like, this is a you know, everyone everyone's running around and this is just what life is. Yeah. So then, you know, and so walked over to then down the hall to the psychiatry office and said, let's make an appointment here. And it's actually a good friend of my father's was a physician and I was like, I'm going to get get to the root of this problem, you know, And I go see the psychiatrist and figure this out.

And in about 10 minutes, you know, ask the questions. Actually, the questions are still probably to this day, used to diagnose depression on your phone, said, do you have insomnia? Do you have any guilt, low energy, low concentration, anhedonia? I would say yes to a lot of these questions because I hadn't been sleeping well. And that led to me not concentrating well or having low energy or having a long mood. And at the end of that, you know, very quick visit, you know, and this is he's a very kind, sweet gentleman.

And he said to me, you have major depressive disorder. And here are some Prozac. And I was in my first year, you know, and I thought to myself, here I am. This is interesting. I'm actually playing the patient right now, you know, and the patient isn't agreeing with the doctor. And I and the doctor is a good friend of my father's, you know, So there are a lot of things that were going on in my mind at that point right. I thought that I don't think this is right. And the beauty is I think you and I can both appreciate the gut, the voice of the gut, and that intuitive voice, that intuitive gut signal was telling me, don't take it, don't take it.

This isn't what you're going to do. And I had no idea what the next step was. What I did know, it wasn't to go down that path. Yeah. And I was a first year student. I did not even know what lies ahead of me. Even though I'm of Indian origin. I did not. I wasn't raised learning and understanding Ayurvedic medicine, which does come from India. I'm very American, grew up in the States. I was actually born in Africa, brought over here when I was young, so I didn't have the, you know, the knowledge of Ayurveda So I went to my car, ripped up that prescription and went to a bookstore, and I started reading books and all these books on mind body spiritual health.

And I came across Deepak Chopra and his work, Perfect Health was a book that I read the very first book. And I did my quiz and I found out my type in our each other, the specific type. We can go for that. And I was like, Wow, this actually makes sense. Like, you know, what the other doctor said to me Didn't make sense, but this makes sense now. What did you see? What what actually resonated there? What resonated as we were chatting about earlier is the emotional component to the physical ailment, meaning that there was an interplay between my thinking and my thoughts and my physiology and I didn't quite buy into that before reading that work.

I thought there was a very different. The mind does not affect the body either. The mind and body were separate. MM And Ayurveda very clearly explains that the emotions are very much into playing with the physical and the emotions actually drive the physical and if we do not tap into the emotions and the thoughts, we won't then fully understand what's going at the physical level. And the gut is the origin of most of disease. And that was something that was talked about in Ayurvedic medicine and talked about my abductees and many others, you know, brilliant thinkers.

All this begins in the gut. And so I was really just fascinated with my gut, my digestive system, what's not to do with how I sleep, that I can't have anything with my sleep. And, you know, there the journey began and I followed some principles. And honestly, I was sleeping within a month, fast asleep, sleeping great. I'm 52 now. I've been sleeping well, no pills. I'm just so thrilled that that came to me at that time because I think I would have taken the other path had it not been open to reading some other, you know, points of view.

So what are the principles of Ayurvedic medicine now? So it's so incredibly rich and deep and yet so simple at the same time. So the meaning of Ayurveda that we kind of break it down AYUR, A Y U R, actually means life. VEDA, Sure. Ayur means life, A Y U R, Veda.

Doshas, Imbalance, and Parkinson's Symptoms 9:00

V E D A is wisdom. So if you've heard of the Vedic civilization that travel the earth thousands of years ago that Vedic civilization in Southeast Asia made its way north and actually created traditional Chinese medicine as a system of healing. Homeopathy was created and then traveled south to India and created Ayurveda These are all sister sciences. They're actually all coming from the same base of this wisdom, this Vedic wisdom. Yeah. And so it's so interesting. So there's this ancient wisdom packaged in a way based on where you are into these different kind of, you know, principles and so on.

Ayurvedic, you know, wisdom? The thought is that we're all made up of five elements, a little different than the Chinese elements. These are, you know, these are the five supported by the air space, fire, earth and water create every living being. And at birth. This is the part that's really interesting. At birth, each and every one of us has a dominant nature dictated by our elements, meaning that at birth I could be dominated by the air and space element. Vata vata the vata types or my dominance could be in the fire and water nature, which is the Pitta types or the earth and water element kind of nature, which is the kaffir cape, a type vata pitta kaffir that's known as your dosha de osha dosha.

So the idea is that at birth you're, you're kind of born into a type. And that's where as different as we all are, we all have kind of something in common with these five elements. But then it gets even more interesting because you can look around a room and say, Which one is like me? Who has that more Pitta dominance to them? Who has maybe a more cough, who has a more cough up? And when you start to understand your nature, you can actually start to understand how you become imbalanced and how the system gets pulled out of alignment, because that's what happens in life, is we get we don't stay in alignment with nature, fortunately.

Well, it's that's so interesting because, you know, and I'm sure you've observed this too, as sort of a student of the holistic medicine and sciences that we often encounter experts who have developed sort of a framework or a principle, and then they write about it, they speak about it, and there's a lot of wisdom there. And at the same time, sometimes they think, well, really that's the same as, you know, X is the same as Y. They're just sort of reframing it in a different way. So for example, as you were explaining this, I'm thinking about and I know you have a background in coaching and mindset, so what it coaches mindset coaches often do, they start with talking about personality strengths and things like that.

What you know, yes, various. You can do an online quiz and find out your your type, you know? Right. And it kind of sounds like that because these are really, to use your words, I suppose, ancient wisdom. Yeah. And they just get translated almost like Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, There are just a handful of great stories that define all of humanity and folks, if you have not watched or really you could read Joseph Campbell, but the great interview that was done in the mid 1980s, shortly before his death, is in the most profound media footage ever captured.

And I highly recommend it's called The Power of Myth. But he talks about the monomyth, of course, because there is this idea that all of human history, all of human civilization, civilizations that have never even, you know, for for that centuries, like between the Chinese and, you know, that part of the world and then the European Western was part of the world before, you know, the days of trade and things like that, that we still had the same stories, you know, And they really defined us. And they didn't they helped us understand the world around us.

But, you know, these stories are so hard wired into our own biology as well. I mean, I love my own patients. I agree with you so much. And I've thought about even, you know, I need to learn more psychiatry, because as you know, humans, neurologists have a board certified and about a third of our examination is psychiatry. And it's flipped for the psychiatrist. But, you know, the more I learn about root cause medicine and things like that, it takes me to the limbic system and the stress response system of the body and studying CLIA and studying Walter Cannon and all the other important people.

And what is homeostasis says. So here's another like, how is that? You know, the Indian culture has been saying this for thousands of years. This is, again, the ancient wisdom. And then you have Walter Cannon go, Oh, this is homeostasis, right? I mean, who is he going to I mean, this is one of the pioneers was right now really modern neuropsychology. But, you know, this is where it really came from. This distinction was. Beautiful. And the idea is just that it's it's these stories that are told with different lenses on, you know, the stories that are kind of the perspectives from the space that we're in and where we're coming from and how the stories have the same base, but then can kind of be translated right in different ways.

And the beauty is, are you whether in traditional Chinese medicine, these ancient wisdom sciences, is that the base is all about alignment, it's about homeostasis, about coming back into your self, coming back into who you are, and figuring out who that is because when disease sets in, that's because you have not been living as your self for a very long time. And I'm here to try to stop people from going down that path, you know, like sputtering. And it's magical because if we can do that, we can truly prevent disease.

We can truly be ahead of it. We don't I mean, you and I, as physicians, we can right? The pills. We could do that. Yeah. You know, I've tried to do that and I'm willing to at some level, but at some hope I have to my patients, they're going to want to know why and look at that, look at that misalignment and try to figure out how they can bring themselves back into alignment. So are you That is just one of those science that helps you figure it out and it allows you to kind of get a sense of if I'm having symptoms, what can I do?

Like, what exactly can I do in terms of what can I eat, how can I sleep differently? Who can I spend time with? Then maybe there's someone in my life that isn't helping my nature. Maybe it's my job. Maybe there's something at work you actually can really figure out so many things about your life. And it becomes super interesting because you become your own detective, right? You're like, Oh, I started getting that symptom. I know it comes from an imbalance here. What can I change to bring myself into alignment?

And you actually, as you learn the science, you kind of become your own healer. Yeah, that. That. That's awesome. This is so empowering for folks. Yeah. So being that this is the Parkinson's Solution summit, how can we relate this then? I'm, I'm really excited because again, I, I, we've been speaking to a lot of folks recording these interviews and there are some emerging themes and I've learned so much. So I'm really excited to hear from your perspective and wondering if, again, this is going to be kind of the recurring theme of the summit that has sort of come up organically from the ground, if you will.

Yes, that is how to do Parkinson's. You know, such an important area of study and research because it is so disabling. And I have a couple of family members that were diagnosed in the last few years. And when you start to look at the even the Western data and the research, which I know you know a lot better than I do, but the two things that kind of have come up in the literature have caught my eyes. Number one, constipation starting, you know, a couple of decades before the first symptom of Parkinson's and the second one is anxiety being higher and those with Parkinson's.

And so how do we tangles together and are you better Let's kind of bring you bring it back to talk about that. So when you look at our other five elements, we talked about volatile Dosha Pitta, Dosha Cappadocia. When I had my sleep, I chose to make a practical, I promise, falling asleep, initially falling asleep. If you look at our robotic medicine, that's the wind energy. When you're Vata personality, you're somebody who likes to move and go and do always busy, always taking things on very like fun to be around because that's I love to talk.

They're very creative. They tend to be very artistic and spiritual and very music musical. So they're fun to have like at a party. You know, if you're with Avatar, you're like, they're fun. They're like always engaging and talking the voters. You give them something to do. I'm sure I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. But the problem with too much water, they don't get it done because they're in that wind energy state. It can distract them. So balance the power back to the person. That person has had water imbalance.

It's creative, is artistic, is musical, is very good at speaking to different people, loves to try different things. That's the power powerful one, the one that becomes disempowered, the one that with a bottle of states goes out of alignment is when the Vata energy is too high. They're moving and going at such a pace that they kind of forget to eat, they forget to go to bed on time. They're skipping meals or skipping situations. They may forget a phone call, they may forget to respond to an email.

So Vata in that energy becomes looks like ADHD and anxiety fear. So when that energy picks up, what happens is it can lead to a mind that's spinning, which leads to mind that doesn't fall asleep at night. Hmm. So right away, when I started doing that kind of the quizzes on myself, I was like, Oh gosh, I am so wind. Like I'm carrying so much vodka energy. And then if you're staying asleep, that's actually too much fire. That's the pitter patter and balance driven. They're very determined. They can see what needs to get it done and get it done like, you know, very determined, great at running a group or running a meeting, kind of competitive, great among sports, level one on the side, great at speaking, put them on a stage.

They'll get their message across to everybody in the room, fire individuals and balance amazing out of alignment. Think of hot headed. What happens to fire out of alignment. Hotheaded, irritable, angry, the wind out of alignment, air headed. It was just doing what was as you're saying. So when you think of what's I think of air headed, I think of pit, I think of hot headed in terms of misaligned state emotionally or get to the digestion of that. So you start to get more irritable and edgy and you start to feel short tempered.

And that's kind of the fire that's gone a little bit to in that energy state. You feel hot physically in your body. And so it's a very interesting thing to kind of observe and see how many people have that. That's a very classic from migraine or classic inflammatory autoimmune diseases, any kind of inflammatory skin when there's a lot of skin rashes and any kind of disease that involves the inflammatory system to go on to high alert.

Integrative Approach to Parkinson's Care 20:30

You're thinking of that. So back to back to the sleep in back to Parkinson's. Also a couple real quick and then I'll go back to Parkinson's, kind of get more into that, the confidence to conclude the whole story. Composite alignment. Great. Nice solid frame. You know, not heavy weight, just kind of a bigger frame, solid, you know, Kalfus, very introspective. They're not going to be talking a lot of the party probably like quiet looking around, curious when they speak. They've got something pretty interesting to say because they've been observing.

You know, Kafka's a very deeply intellectual, kind of like to think about things and bind on to information, hold on to it. And they really have a great tendency with compassion and love. They love to hug and they're connected. And so in balance, that's a great stayed out of alignment too heavy. Yes, we can come on congestion, heavy, depressed and so so each state has a superpower state and then they go into out of alignment state back to Parkinson's. When you think about Parkinson's, you think about the volatile wind and you think about my early issues with palms falling asleep and then I bombs falling and staying asleep, wind picked up and wind like your campfire wind can go on the fire.

The water can push the piazza, which is why I had those two kind of things going on after Parkinson's. When you start to see that anxiety at a young stage of disease way before the first, maybe an asthma and motor function, you see what happens there is that the wind energy is too much in their lives, meaning that they may be excessively moving, going, doing, saying, yes, maybe, please, your personalities. We want to find out what is the personality behind that, what's the behavior? Because the wind energy brings on anxiety.

And the anxiety oftentimes is generated by being in that state of disconnect with the circadian rhythm moving, going, doing too much, violating, kind of just the eating patterns, even something as simple as, hey, if you're anxious, eat three meals at the same time every day can actually bring anxiety down. You know, because it creates a sense of regularity. You see, brain doesn't like uncertainty, you know, doesn't like to be spun all over the place. I still just know I'm going to get up and have breakfast at seven noon as lunchtime Hunger signal.

Hypothalamus signals the gut makes them digestive enzymes. Let's eat. You know, we get circadian rhythms intact. We feel calmer cortisol and better alignment. We know, right? So but when we're kind of off task, we go into a state. What's fascinating, ready for the mind, mind body? Part of this is where it gets cool is when you look at the physiology of too much wind, too much wind physiology, what happens is you go into a freeze state. What does Parkinson's look like? Yeah, I mean, it's exactly freezing.

We use that word in in the gut constipation that that goes into small spasm. So that's why constipation happens and anxiety happens before the motor because in river that's all energetic before it's really that physical and the gut is always involved. Years before you and I both know anything gets really severe, isn't it? Not so interesting. Yes, it is. So I hope a lot of the folks watch this are going like, That's me, that's me, that's me. Yeah. And the beauty is that at any stage I've had coaching clients and patients that have been diagnosed with Parkinson's at any stage.

I want people to feel you can't improve your state, you can improve your energy body just because the first symptoms have occurred and just because you've had constipation for 20 years or anxiety for doesn't mean you can't improve it. Now, I've had to just I just finish the coach and client who has Parkinson's and we just did six months of work together and it was beautiful because there's so much that he had worked on to help reduce. So then what we're hoping for, right, Ken, is that we hope that he reduces the disease progression and we hope that the manifestation of the symptoms don't come as quickly because that's what we can do.

We can give hope for that. And maybe the medication actually during that time was working on his he started to produce his medications, which is kind of nice. So it's nice to see that. I wouldn't say that works for everybody. That was one case and one situation and one individual that was willing to put a lot of time and energy into this. But I will say that there is hope that we can use these ancient principles. So it just starts by just being aware and making some simple changes. But don't take it so fancy.

Nothing has to be that difficult and complicated, you know? No, no, I, I hundred percent agree with you. And I think, you know, we love the work that we do. And as much as we sometimes see our own colleagues occasionally, and, you know, in the conventional world who are perhaps not taking the time to listen or, you know, are not, you know, considering options outside of, hey, quick script, here we go. See in six months kind of thing. On the other side of the spectrum, unfortunately, I see a lot of sort of big unrealistic claims.

But what we can say, I think very confidently is that by integrating these principles that very often we see a very a different trajectory for those individuals. They're living their best life every day. And the overall trajectory trajectory is so much better than it otherwise would be if they had not adopted these principles and changes in their lives. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that's what we're here for, is to empower individuals and give them faith and hope that there are things they could do.

There are things that they could do. It's just allowing yourself to believe that at any stage, wherever you are, you can still use these tools, right? And whatever tool works for you. I mean, everyone's unique and it's just about exposing yourself and being aware that there's just different options. And, you know, to some degree it's it's just kind of looking at that Western model and some at some degree saying, well, why if a medication is given or medication is increased or something is breaking through, why is that happening and what can we do over here?

So then maybe the medication can even be more effective. Maybe, you know, the side effects will be lessened because, you know, I see this all the time or a migraine medication started and someone has digestive issues and they stop the medication. And I said, well, you know what? You've got chronic, severe daily migraines. We've got to I would love everybody to fix it, but we kind of know that there's only certain limits that these things can do. And I say, well, we're going to recommend a medication.

How about we also work on your digestive system? How about we also work on your mind and your stress? There's no reason why you can't blend. And why aren't we everybody doing that? Every single person should be doing that baffles me. That doesn't happen, you know. Well, you know, the reasons for it, of course, are probably multiple. But we also have to recognize that the success that comes with this sort of approach first and probably foremost, requires an openness to the ideas, right. That's very strong.

So when we come to this, you know, how often do you hear, well, I have this because my mother or father or family, you know, had this and this, you know, and I don't want to stereotype anyone. And I know I'm just going to mention the things that are associated with obesity, because as there is so much morbidity. Yes. But I don't want to blame someone for being obese. But, you know, I had a patient not too long ago and she was, you know, probably well over £300. And she told me that she was diabetic and hypertensive because everyone in her family had that.

And I thought, well, you know, that often imply what you're really telling me is it's sort of genetic. But what I often think when I hear that is that families teach us thoughts. Families teach us how we express our feelings or we're experience feelings. Families, you know, eat together. Families do many things together, right? Share your life. Your family is also your culture. And so there's much, much more than just a gene, you know, involved when those things happen. So but if we're not ready to step out of that mindset, then we're not ready for these ideas either.

Yeah, it takes being open and ready on both sides. Right? So, you know, I just because we even though I'm not an Army medic, doctor, I think in the end that we probably have a fairly similar approach, maybe translate into word or hear there slightly differently. But I'd love to hear from you kind of if I came to you and maybe I don't even have the diagnosis yet, but I've been having some falling. I've noticed my maybe my left arm feels a little stiff. People say that I'm I'm not moving my arm when I walk, shuffling my gait, I kind of have that blank facial expression.

They say, look at these pictures from five years ago. You are smiling. There is a lot of light in your face now. It's blank. And of course, probably from across the room, you're already kind of formulating your diagnosis because that's how we are as neurologists. Parkinson's is a very visual diagnosis for the most part. But tell me beyond that, our as a as a integrative, holistic neurologist, what's going to happen if I come and see what are the steps look like? Yeah. And so generally it's a lot of conversation with what the individual I'm working with wants to work on.

And so I kind of broke it down. I kind of have this three brain approach and I just did this sort of simplicity when I'm speaking with others and I say Three brain in this concept of, you know, when we're as neurologists, we're trained, we're kind of focusing on the central nervous system. The spinal cord is kind of a main operating system for the body and I've kind of embodied that within that first brain. Part of the conversation is, you know, the brain, structural brain. And then also that you're kind of getting into that thinking brain.

What are your thought patterns? What are your programs that maybe are not really working for you? And to the person I'm working with, do you want to work on that part? How open are you to exploring that? And that's the NLP hat that I wear that kind of goes a little bit more into that. Maybe someone's like, You know what? Yeah,

Books, Quiz, and Closing Remarks 31:00

I have certain ways of speaking thinking I am not really wanting to go there. Maybe I'm a sort of second brain. Second brain is the enteric nervous system. I think we just didn't spend enough time with in residency and training as that beautiful kind of, you know, a very complex neuronal system, 206 million neurons in the gut that are really operating that, you know, neurotransmitter production, helping with the microbiome, with manufacturing, you know, different metabolic byproducts and just kind of connecting back up to the brain, to the vagus nerve and signaling what's going on down there, you know, and that enteric nervous system very often I find is affected with our emotional baggage for holding on to things that we may not want to maybe connect with.

But if we do, we can start to clear some early thoughts and traumas and feelings around things that we're holding on to. So second brain work is more What are you holding on to emotionally? And, you know, do you want to kind of go into that? There's breath techniques or some argue that a kind of herbals there's even like yoga poses that can help with that. And if that's not something someone's open to the microbiome, let's kind of work at like looking at your third brain, the microbiome, then what can we alter changed?

And the easiest thing to do is start looking at your diet and what you're eating when you're eating, you know, are you having lunch every day at the same time? Are you having three meals a day? What kind of food are you eating and are you about? It's like a six tastes. Are you getting sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, astringent in your meals? Maybe we need to work on diverse diversifying your diet so then we can diversify those bacteria. Because you look at the studies, most neurodegenerative diseases, there's a problem with the microbiota and oftentimes it's lack of diversity, right?

That we're finding and then other pathogens and things that we're looking for. But, you know, kind of what can we do with the gut, you know, So I kind of take it where someone's at and oftentimes will layer it based on where they are. I have some patients that will come in or coaching clients. I'll say they'll just I just want to work on gut function. So some of them like that one that's starting to have symptoms, starting to have the, you know, actual true clinical presentation. I'd encourage working on a couple of areas.

You know, could we work on your diet a little bit? And are you feeling some thoughts that are coming up and maybe I can do both techniques that will give you something to reframe every time that comes up and maybe try a little hypnotic technique I used when I was a mental patients like just to kind of help and it's just, you know, kind of figuring out and it's all this is an art, right? So it's all, all of us have different tools and different ways of, you know, painting that picture. It's just how are we going to approach this and what do you want from me and what can I offer you?

That is part of my toolkit. And at least we're then finding novel ways. And oftentimes when I do have those clients come to me because the Western meds have stopped working or they're not working or they don't want to take them. So I'm kind of in this space where I'm trying to either get them to be responsive to the meds or less side effects from medications or maybe see what can do to stabilize things, you know, knowing that this is a neurodegenerative disease. But we do know that alpha synuclein involves data showing it's coming from the gut.

Right. And it's moving the vagus nerve into the basal ganglia. So as we stabilize that imbalanced inflammatory gut, you know, my goodness, I know you have a lot of tools for that, but that's to me is is really important, though I often say if I'm thinking a negative side, my gut is going to react. And unfortunately, I can create more pathogens because of my side. There's an interesting study I found that like pre surgical stress, if I'm thinking stressful thoughts before I do surgery, I'm higher likelihood to have pseudomonas increase in growth after surgery and it'll be a little bit more challenging for me to recover because of my thoughts.

You know, it's amazing how the thought effects it's like a top down, bottom up. It's like there's a loop of I don't know if you've ever seen this. There's a I've mentioned this in the summit before, but it's a great little movie. You can watch it for free on Netflix. It's called I Am and I love this movie that I think Deepak might be in it, but it's it's really a it was a movie that was made by a Hollywood director who did a lot of very funny slapstick sort of comedy movies, made millions of dollars and thought, you know, I've made it.

I've I've, you know, kind of top of my game, you know, movies with Jim Carrey and all this stuff in. And then he has a mountain biking accident and he has a traumatic brain injury. And in the end, he can't do the things that he wanted to do. He spends a year recovering using holistic. That's not so much part of the movie. But then he says, you know, I got to do something serious now, so I'm going to talk to some of the great thought leaders of the world and ask them what's wrong with the world and what can you do about it?

And in the end, it shifts from that sort of negative like, what's wrong with the world? You know, to this positive, joyous feeling of ultimately the most important thing that we need to be doing is connecting. And in the end, he ends up in the HeartMath lab in California, and they do this little experiment where they like EEG wires from their head into a beaker that's full of yogurt. yogurt, has lots of live cultures. And then he they do this thing where he shifts his thinking and it shifts the electromagnetic fields coming from the bacteria in the yogurt, which is the coolest thing.

I got to say that it's like this experiment demonstrates exactly what exactly. And so it's empowering to know you can go whatever direction you want, just move in some direction. This encouragement. Right? Well, you have written a couple of books. Well, one book and then I understand another one is coming out sits The Mysterious Mind. And that sounds thrilling. I'm going to definitely pick up my own copy of that that came out in 2015. And I understand you have a new book you're working on. Tell me about that story.

I mean, the first book was really just practical written because I was in patient care mode, busy with my practice and trying to explain, Ayurvedic that every single person I met grabbed time and I said, Let me write a book, maybe a little kind of short one for my patients end up becoming The mysterious Mind, which is really an understanding of how you can use. Ayurveda use this kind of knowledge to just understand pain, specifically migraine based, but I think anyone can really benefit from it, but is a little bit more focused on headaches.

But it's a journey of my daughter. Even I have a chapter gut brain and early testing with her when she had headaches when she was 5 to 21. Now no headaches. And it's just nice to kind of see the journey of not only the stories of my family, what happened with me using these tools at that early stage of my career, yet how I implement Ayurveda and how you can implement Ayurveda on your life. Right. So that was book number one. Well, two was kind of missing. What's missing in book one was the mind deep dive into the mind.

It was after I did the NLP training and got a little bit more comfortable with discussing kind of how our emotions, our thoughts affect our physical nature. So it goes more into that. And the working title is The Stress Rx: A Neurologist Prescription to Happiness and Health So we'll see if that's where it stays. Yeah, it's kind of being edited right now, so I'm hoping for early spring of next year for that. Wow. And then if people want a little taste of that, I understand they can go to your website and take a little quiz.

Is that correct? Yeah, the quiz is just it's like that little extra piece to just go in words, because my encouragement for everyone is just to start a journey with them. And if this is the first time you're hearing Ayurveda or you've heard it many times before, take a moment and assess where your Ayurvedic nature is now. How imbalanced are you some your your kind of birth state we talked about? And in that quiz, it's a quick little quiz. It kind of gives you an assessment of if you're Windy Fire or Earthy and it's on my website, truptigokanimd.com And the quiz is really there just to provide a little extra.

You know, let me look at my self. Let's go into my own being and assess where I am and then whatever tools you use that Ayurvedic, non-Ayurvedic, it doesn't matter. But just try to get a sense of where you are because that can be the first step of the journey of getting. To know where you are. Yeah, spell that for folks, because I know they're going to want to write it down. T R U P T I G O K A N I M D like medical doctor dot com. (truptigokanimd.com) So I want you to go there, take the stress quiz.

You're going to learn something very insightful and then can they work with you if they want to. Is that something that you. Yeah. Yeah, I have. I have coaching clients. I work with my one thing I tend to share my work with others. So for example, if someone is seeking medical care, I often tell them that the medical doctor is good to have on board if they want more of a deeper dive functional medicine approach, someone like yourself would be great to partner with because my coaching is a little bit more looking at the Ayurvedic model, looking at how we can affect the mind and emotional body and yes, I go into the microbiome, yet there's a lot of pieces that I know in functional medicine I do not address in my program simply because there's only so much time and so much work we can do.

So I tend to work in that fashion. I find that we get great results and we're all working together in that way. That's super. Well, I, for one am going to take the stress quiz not only because I admit that last couple nights were not good sleep, but last night was better. So I'm so I'm a little caught up. I'm a little caught up. So I am feeling much, much better today. The smiles are back back again. God bless you are doing fabulous work and just thank you so much. Thank you so much for all you're doing.

Well, thank you, Dr. Trupti Gokani a neurologist and Ayurvedic expert, an expert in neuro linguistic programing, a health and mindset coach, a true expert and gift. Thank you so much for participating in the Parkinson's Solutions Summit. And for having me be. Be well everyone.