Mind-Body Medicine: How Trauma Physically Affects the Body and Brain

Geny Moreno Salamat

2019, Yeah.

Cheng Ruan, MD

And all of a sudden we were seeing transformations like we’ve never seen before in the practice because we we started talking about this thing called mind body medicine, which is a really foreign concept to me at that time, but now is the foundation of our practice here at Texas center for the lifestyle medicine and and we start I started really digging into what made people hell. Is it a specific diet? Is veganism, paleo, is it a combination, Is, what is it, Right? Is it a specific supplements of B vitamins, is it ash, Uganda or some fancy herbs or is it CBD like what is it? So we just take a look at all the data across the board, especially the ones that we could collect at 

Texas tech center, lifestyle medicine. The biggest factor people healing was the recognition of experience and that experience come from trauma. So we have in our lives and by the way every person has trauma, it’s not like I haven’t had trauma, we are, we’re actually built upon trauma, trauma is actually not necessarily a bad thing, it could be a good thing. And so when people started recognizing that there’s a lot of things that we realized that we’ve never dealt with in our lives because we’re taught to just keep going, go, go, go, go go and then have blinders on, you know, and that’s exactly, that’s exactly my story really in the healthcare industry, just like blinded, just go, you know, and then, and then you just kind of poop out after a while. So we looked at that data in 2019, we noticed that the biggest factors for people improving or worsening in their health, it’s not food and it’s not lifestyle, it’s events, a marriage or a divorce or death of a film member write something that was really outside of our clinic control. 

And then we’re seeing like miraculous thing happened even though it came from quote unquote bad event, maybe someone passing away all of a sudden there was healing on top of that. Right? So something allowed the person to change from a fundamental existence and the identity of a person actually changed. So someone was taking care of their parents, for example, their identity as the caregivers can start going away, they can finally start focusing themselves. And then all of a sudden you see we see these labs start improving cholesterol, start coming down autoimmune antibodies starts coming down, thyroid medicines are no longer needed. And I’m not saying these are the typical cases, but I’m saying that these are really common factors in disease states that moved the most within our organization. 

And so when we switch the order around of addressing trauma first, that’s where things starts healing. And it doesn’t matter if someone has, you know, chronic sinus issues or dental infections or or anything like that. Because whenever we treat with antibiotics and medications, there’s still long term effects. But the way that we actually heal through our immune system, our immune system is controlled by our mind. Our mind is controlled by our belief systems, our belief systems are controlled by our subconscious state and then when I tie all that together it becomes something beautiful. So this is the reason I have genuine here. And I’m excited to talk to you jenny and we talk pretty much every day but we’re excited to talk to you and really share with the public on our discoveries and as well as the world on what he Lincoln really mean. Ready Geny?

Geny Moreno Salamat

Yes, I am so excited to talk about this with you too. Doctor, thank you.

Cheng Ruan, MD

So I wanted you to talk about your background for a second. Like Now you didn’t, you didn’t start doing my body in medicine, you did something really different and really cool in my view. So let’s talk about what you did before and how you transition into my own body medicine.

Geny Moreno Salamat

So my original profession, I was an aerospace engineer. I was working for NASA for 14 years. That in itself right there. I’ve seen so much in this world when I was there for 14 years which really is the catalyst for why I became an FDN Practitioner. You know, I started going into nutrition but that world shaped my thinking. I saw a lot of my colleagues get taken by metabolic metabolic disease states like cancer, diabetes pretty common in my industry, you know, lots of fighter flight. So for 14 years I was basically a software engineer and I used that tool and that skill and understanding The brain and the human anatomy and all of the neurochemical connections that we have. Okay. 

And I have my own story that led me to eventually go into functional nutrition because I have my own health conditions to Dr. Ron, you know, I grew up in the Philippines, I my onset of autoimmune condition known as vitiligo started when I was 13, 14. I was in the Philippines and it’s all about fight or flight in my country and I know where sister countries and I know you understand and we talk about this a lot, it’s all about fight or flight. Survivability in my country and my family is all about alert, being alert, okay. And part of my experience back home is, you know, seeing things in my environment that scared me, that put a lot of fear and not being able to talk to somebody about that and how to regulate back and how do I return to a state of, you know, calm and peace. You know, I remember seeing someone got shot in the head and I just, it’s not just me, the whole family saw that and we didn’t talk about it. 

Nobody addressed that situation and I recall that affected my sleep. I had nightmares for two weeks and one of my symptoms as well is digestive. I was not able to use the bathroom for two weeks. So this, incorporating all of these experiences that I have growing up lead me into really my love and fascination for helping people heal from suffering. You know, heal from their trauma, because that is a huge chunk of my story today. How did I heal trauma? Right, Because I became a functional nutrition after I decided in 2014 that I’m gonna go ahead and leave engineering and become a health coach, a functional diagnostic nutrition coaching, which is mainly just hitting on diet and exercise, which is great. We still need that very important component in healing, right? But I have noticed too, as soon as I got into that world of health coaching, I started getting clients and their healing to some point their healing to a degree that something is missing, there’s a block and I couldn’t understand where that block is, right. 

I start with me being an engineer, I got to geek out on that, I got to know more. I got to figure out more well, well, so the universe started putting me in this path. I had my own trauma when I came here. How I got into my body medicine is because of my own marital trauma, you know, I was in that situation divorce separation and I recall not being able to adjust and adapt to that situation. I did not, I felt stuck, which is what a lot of our patients feel, you know, and I really, it scared the heck out of me because I did not know how to cope. And so that in 2016 led me to study mind body medicine. This is where there’s enough, you know, intelligence inside of me that told me you need to stop going to the gym, I was going to the gym about six or seven days out of the week, I was pumping some iron, lifting heavy, but I wasn’t happy doctor on, you know, I was, I was actually having a lot of pain, but at the same time, also with my minimal thinking about health, at that time, I didn’t know enough, but really makes a person healthy. 

My sleep was lacking, I was only sleeping 2 to 3 hours each night because of my situation at home. It was highly volatile. There’s a lot of abuse and physical and mental abuse that’s going on in my home life at that time. So it was, it was affecting my health, it was affecting my brain because I can’t sleep. I was worried awake at night, so my circadian rhythm is off was off at that time, and when I’m not able to sleep, I found it very hard to focus, you know, so I decided that, okay, I’m gonna take away my membership, my gym membership, I stopped that and I started looking for some mind body medicine tools. I just happened to be looking online on how to really get some peace. My whole body was just, you know, hard. I was carrying a lot of tension in the body. And so I decided.. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

By this point, you already studied functional nutrition, right? You’ve done that already, right? That’s right, you’ve done the nutrition part already and now you’re just like what the hell was missing, right? And going back to your original story about how you know, received some trauma in the Philippines, watching someone pass away or get shot in the head, Is that what it was like?

Geny Moreno Salamat

Somebody got shot in the head, yeah. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

So, you know, there’s no sense of safety there. So you developed, basically not being able to move your bowels for two weeks, that’s what you said right now, this is important because a lot of people have that memory and they suppress it and some people don’t remember and then they come past like chronic constipation and then they get diagnosed with all sorts of things, They get diagnosed with SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, they get diagnosed with fungal overgrowth of candida and they’ve got and they’re told that all you gotta do is go on an elimination diet and then get some exercise, get some hydration, do some detox is and you’ll be good, but in reality that’s that’s that you’ll never get to the 100% if you don’t understand like what caused the situation in the first place, A lot of people have it locked away in the subconscious and so how now, how did let’s talk about how the brain actually stopped your battles. And this is interesting and we’re gonna get into this political theory. So just real quick and I’ll let you finish your story and then we can dive into the next next chapter. 

But real simple where people who are listening, the brain is so powerful, it creates symptoms, it creates symptoms very easily. And I’ll tell you how, so you perceive a trauma, your sense of safety and security is completely ripped away from you. Your conscious mind will actually block that event. Okay? And then your subconscious mind will come, will basically create tension in your neck, breathe a lot shallower. The blood flow to your brain literally decreases the blood brain barrier starts being more permeable. We call this leaky brain phenomenon. That’s another part of the summit with dr titus to function, neurologist. And then what happens is that our muscles here gets so tense. We’re always like this and then our next really moved, our breathing is less or oxygenation is less. So what happens in the body naturally adapts because the body thinks, hey, you’re in fight or flight and therefore we must create systems that are in fight or flight. 

Your stress hormone goes up and the blood flow goes away from your organs of healing like your gut and your liver and it gets pumped towards system to allow fight or flight, like your adrenal plants and then your your your brain stem all these things that are necessary there and it gets pumped away from other parts of the brain that retain memory that retain attention because you don’t need that as a fight or flight. And like forget long term memory right? Forget even short term memory. All you need to know is that you either pick somebody or need to run away. That’s sort of that fight or flight. And so the gut doesn’t get enough blood flow. And so even if you clean up your diet and if you have conscious or subconscious trauma that that’s there which most of us do then it’s impossible for the gut to heal. Now a lot of people go to doctors say hey you know what I was diagnosed with bacterial overgrowth but what’s the bacteria overgrowth is a pathologic sort of not really bacteria overgrowth is the bacteria is trying to protect you. There’s bacteria that come is getting recruited into the small bowel that’s not supposed to be there and that your body uses it to stun so these bacteria can produce gasses such as methane and this job is to stun your gut to keep it in freeze mode and hibernation mode. So all the blood flow can divert away to your to your persistent fight or flight right? And when that happens of course we’re gonna be constipated and we call constipation something that pathologic but in reality it’s a manifestation what’s going on? So that traumatic event has a huge physiologic effect on the body right? Sometimes and sometimes that causes nighttime urination. You can actually urinate the bed. Kids urinate the bed after traumatic events right? Because your body is trying to like give it a fluids and you can fight right? And so that really occurs as well. And so all these different things that we’re talking about in my body Madison we can’t consider it psychological or versus physical it’s all one system. 

Geny Moreno Salamat

Yes.

Cheng Ruan, MD

So I’ll have you kind of continue your story after that and where you left off it was really discovered. Well so you did your FDN Which is a functional diagnostic nutritionist,

Geny Moreno Salamat

Functional diagnostic nutrition. Yes. And I graduated in 2015. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

You graduated you were super smart. You know all the whole elimination diet. I tell people to do it like the back of your hand, something was still missing right? So now you just scratched the surface of mind body medicine. So what did you do after that?

Geny Moreno Salamat

So after that like I said I went through my own traumatic experience upon coming to the U. S. You know relationships and I encountered some more trauma from that. And this is when I decided you know I’m gonna jump into my body medicine. I didn’t even know it was called that I was just for something that will help me relax doctor on. So I tried to look for those classes in Houston, and one of them is also breathing, breathing is necessary in order to move the body and very important in tai chi and qi gong, in fact, that is one of the pillars in tai chi and mind body exercises so little by little, I geeked out on this, this is what I did every single day while I was going through that traumatic event and the effects of that trauma, even after I extracted myself from the situation. So the separation and eventually the, my divorce, so I’m being vulnerable here. But thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. So, it’s my pleasure and when I, when this was all happening in my life, I made a commitment that year and that is, I’m going to reflect back to that I’m committed to basically reaching every single person that needed help, who are probably suffering in the same way that I was, you know, one way or another, I don’t know how to do that, but that’s what I intended to do. And so, in order for me to refocus my attention to that, that is my big mission in life, that’s my vision, this is, this is my purpose. I had to have a purpose, I wanted to have meaning in my life, I need to be able to train myself to refocus because a lot of my unhealthy patterns from childhood was coming up, all of that was challenged, you know, in trauma state Dr. Ruan, when something like that happens, divorce or whatnot, separation loss or death of a loved one. It challenges and it shatters our belief systems, it challenges our identity. It challenged our construct of what we know and what we believe in. That’s what I was challenged. I was challenged that year. 

Everything that I was hanging onto about who I am, right, it’s shattered in front of me. So now I have to assume now a different identity who was Geny now without her former husband, right? I was living my life through him. But what does Geny want now? So I had to assume a new identity and in order for me to do that, I had to constantly train my brain to refocus, how did I do that through tai chi and qi gong meditation basically. Mind, body medicine tools that will help me regulate my body down, meaning, relax the body come out of fight or flight, help my body feel safe and secure again. And that’s a consistent thing that I’ve got to do because my mind is there, My mind keeps talking to me. You’re not good enough Geny, How are you gonna do this on your own without your ex husband? Right? All of these things, you’re being challenged by your mind, but we have a brilliant mind. We do. 

We have this incredible mind, but we cannot, we cannot believe everything that our mind tells us, right? Because that emotion is going to be triggered when we believe and we interpret things of an event that impacted us. Okay, so I have to consciously take an interruption. I have to consciously be aware of where my mind is going. And the only way to do that is to slow down. So how do we slow down right now? That we understand our anatomy? Our physiology, the breathing becomes fast when we go into fight or flight, it becomes short and rapid. Right? And you may also notice that you’re thinking goes along with that thinking fast, right? We’re very impulsive and reactive, that’s the sympathetic state. You know, fighter flight. So I’ve got to be able to slow and train my nervous system to slow down why? Because I need to be able to communicate better. I need to refocus I need to go back on my path. I need to make sure that I’m in alignment with my vision and my goals at that time, no matter what the situation was, resiliency is basically what I’m talking about.

Cheng Ruan, MD

You know, this reminds me of the book Atomic habits, One of the best books I’ve ever read. I always go back to the book and really read books more than twice. But this one is always goes back and I utilize a lot of these, especially medical practice and the most impactful thing that James Clear, whose the author of Atomic habits, wrote and demonstrated his book, is basically we have three elements to us. So you imagine us like a sphere in the inner core. We have our identity and right outside of that we have our processes and right outside of that we have our outcomes. Now. Most people, even doctors, they start with the outcomes. Get your cholesterol down, get your blood sugar’s down. You can detox your liver. You can go on an elimination diet and clear the candida whatever it is. Right? So these are these are outcomes. So the outcomes could be feeling better sort of or it could be a number or it could be some objective outcome that’s there. 

Now the real medicine is not an outcomes but go deeper. So just because just below your outcomes, you have the processes, right? So you know, one of my favorite questions to ask people to know their process is and to know them is what are the first three things you do when you out of bed and let me say, okay, I brush my teeth. I go downstairs and I check my emails and internet stuff like that and maybe I play on the phone for a couple minutes. Okay, what are the last three things you do before you go to sleep? We’ll watch some tv. I eat some food, might get a snack here and there, drink some water and go to bed now? This is someone’s process right there process of brushing their teeth. Like why would someone brush their teeth? Because not everyone brush their teeth. 

And why would someone, where did they learn that behavior? Right. Why would someone, why would someone watch tv? Because that’s not genetics. We didn’t have tv generations ago, right? These are sort of learned behaviors and they learned to value. So for example, some people stay and make sure all the doors are locked. All my windows locked before I go to bed. I was like, oh, okay, that’s a process. No, I don’t do that. Why would you do that? Did something happen when you were younger? I was like, no, well maybe I just saw my parents do it. Okay, let’s talk about that, right? And so all the different things that processes and these are they and what happens, they seem so benign. But they actually show us a lot about our values and what we do. So this person who locks the doors and windows to make sure everything’s safe. Safety is like the number one thing before bed because perhaps they don’t feel they didn’t feel safe at that time. 

Somewhere before. Right? And so and another person maybe like, you know what at Sunday, I like I make sure that all my, all the things I wear throughout the week are nice and nice and hung up. So I could be like really quick and just just leave it? Just get out the door, Right, what did you learn that from? A lot of these processes are the construct of what we do, but the processes aren’t enough to know, we have to know the very inner circle which is the identity. So another, another set of processing may be like, oh, you know, I’m vegan or paleo and this is what I eat, you know, I’ve seen, I’ve seen, you know, read books that this is, this is great for me and so okay, well that’s your process. But what about your identity? Like, like what about that? Makes you go towards that direction? Like what books did you read? You know, it’s all I read x, y and z book and this person seems to know what they’re talking about and I’m gonna adhere to this specific set of structures. Okay. And so the part of the identity is the value of someone with the structure would perhaps have some sort of solution, right? But that solution may not necessarily be the best for the person at the time. It’s really asking practitioners to figure out, but the identity is the person who’s always looking for something. 

And one of the things that I ask people is what is the one question you ask yourself every day for me is how can I make this better, you know, for some other people is how can I be loved Actually, that’s for a lot of people, right? For some people is like, how do I, how do I deserve today? Most people ask that question, How do I deserve today? And that question is part of their identity. And what happens is this, this lets us know very fully into that identity, turned into processes that created a disease state, whether that be Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or cancer or autoimmune disorders or leaky gut or whatever it is, right? And so, and so this is where all the diagnosed diagnostic states kind of go out the window and kind of go deeper into the mind body medicine. And so this practicing this type of medicine has allowed us to get through the patients as you know, because we see the same patients every day to get to a place where I never thought they could really, really get to before. But now I realize everyone has unlimited potential once you honor the mind body portion of their disease.

Geny Moreno Salamat

And honoring those life experiences, and one of the things that I actually encourage our patients at the clinic to ask a question after they get up in the morning after actually, after they wake up from their restful state Dr. Ruan is what is one kind thing you can do to take care of yourself today is a very good intention because a lot of them are caregivers, a lot of our patients or caregivers. and they’re tied to someone else’s schedule. They’re giving a lot of their energy on other people except for themselves. And again, this goes back to their belief system. You know, they have been probably, it’s mostly female patients, A lot of our female patients taught to be altruistic, you know, sacrificial, giving all of their, all of their all for other people in the name of love, you know, but they’re not taught, we’re not praying to actually say I’m gonna love myself enough that I gotta fill my cup as well, you see that’s not part of our language, right? It’s not part of our communication growing up, you know, so this is me slowing down. And even though it takes time sometimes, whenever I get into a session with someone for the first time, this is where I really spend a lot of time talking about and having conversation with our patients, you know, where’s your mind go, intentions of your day? What is your belief about this?

Cheng Ruan, MD

And a lot of the male patients were taught just like myself never to speak up about emotions because it’s a sign of weakness, but reality is it’s a sign of strength, right? But , but you know, I come from the Chinese cultures, so it’s definitely a sign of weakness and there’s nothing wrong with that thought process during wartime, right? And so, you know, my family, my one generation of my parents came from the generation of the Cultural revolution where there’s a lot of discrimination against higher educated people like my grandfather. And a lot of like tar and feathering was going on and torture was going on with my within like a family. So the stoicism there and then the execution and then you know, don’t do anything because we will not survive if we speak up, we have to keep our head low and get through. That’s what my parents experienced. You know, and that’s where a lot of refugees experience in Southeast Asia. That’s where the holocaust survivors and right now we have Ukraine and Russia right? And send Argentina, right? And Somalia and we have all these different places. And the idea is that these feelings are so sequestered because if you show your feelings like someone will end your life, right? But that no longer serves non war time when you’re at peace. But the thing is like we’re the because we’re raised by people going through these promise they want us to survive too. And there they have a belief that we show emotions, we don’t survive. But in modern day that’s not necessarily the case anymore. The world has changed quite a bit right? 

Geny Moreno Salamat

Yeah. I have worked at some point because in the Philippines we went through some war in World War Two, the Bataan death March. This is mostly men that were taken away from our families and the women were left behind. And so the men were taught, you know, do not show emotions when you’re in this March, you know, that’s absolutely necessary for your survival so that you can go back home to your family and this is generational trauma. If we actually take a look at it, right? Generational trauma, it’s those belief systems and habits that have traveled down from one generation to the next and it has affected us and I’m a descendant of that. You know, I had a great, great, great grandfather who was lost in the war during World War Two and this has affected my mom’s side of the family as well as my dad’s side of the family as well, you know, so we’re not here to place judgment on the people who raised us, but we’re here to really gain a better understanding of what happened to us so that we can do something about it today. Right. And like you said, Doctor Ruan change those things. We don’t have to, you know, be in that survival mode anymore because the world has changed and if we really look around, we’re safe and this is a constant thing that I encourage all of our patients to do because we’re often, you know, being in that head, right, a lot of our patients live in the brain and when I was going through my own trauma, I was in my head a lot. I was living in my brain a lot because I was trying to fix things, I was worried a lot. I was ruminating on a lot of thoughts that rumination of thoughts. Right? So I tell everyone, you know activate your senses of the body. 

This is part of my body medicine. Come back home, move from bait from brain to body and feel where your attention and your stresses in the body have that connection. Just by simply actually standing up gently with your shoulders away from your ears and gently rotating your shoulders back and having the hands down on the side and then your chin is leveled up like this when you create a T. Okay. And then just breathing slowly in through the nose for a count of four and then breathing out for eight is basically bringing the body to a state of safety, you know, and then activating your senses of the body. This is where we need to be conscious of those things. This is one way we can tell the brain, hey, I’m safe, calm down. It actually deactivates the amygdala. Okay, The amygdala is part of the fight or flight state that basically it’s a pre-detection system. It’s constantly looking and scanning your environment for potential trauma and it has no sense of time. It did not know that you’re not a child anymore. 

That got hurt from a long time ago. It has no sense of location. It just knows that there’s this feedback loop happening in your brain? Okay. And so the simply by doing that activation and being grounded is what I call a pattern interrupt that interrupts your disrupting that cycle. That vicious cycle, right? We have the power to do that. But you have to be consciously aware that you’re doing it in the first place because those reactions and impulses or default assumptions coming from our subconscious is happening fast. Okay, so these are some of the different techniques and being present just simply by being present in our bodies in this, in this space and time is going to allow you to really calm and soothe that nervous system and then you’re releasing different hormones. Now we have seen data where inflammatory side kinds go down and then we’re stimulating the prefrontal cortex. Again, just by simply slowing your breathing down and then stimulating the vagus nerve, right? You’re releasing some feel good hormones. Oxytocin serotonin is resumed again. Now you’re really interrupting that pattern of trauma trauma cycle. Yeah.

Cheng Ruan, MD

And you know, most people don’t necessarily have an identifiable trauma and they’re like, oh, you know, I had a great childhood. I you know, we weren’t poor or we didn’t really have any have any struggles and on the outside everything seemed great, right? So what’s missing in those people because I have family members that are those people. So what do you think are missing in those people. 

Geny Moreno Salamat

Yeah. So what’s missing is mind body connection often in that go go, go, go go Because they’ve been taught that And we normalize going with worthy and production mm working endlessly means that you have worth. So this again is going back to what you heard growing up, right? We have patients like this actually, you know that we’re taught to always be productive, always be working for your family. You know? And that puts you in that fight or flight state you just didn’t realize. So how do we determine that? Right? It’s in the way their body is moving. A lot of them are inflexible. You can even see in the facial muscles, smiling a lot when they come on zoom. You know, often stoic like you were talking about earlier. Oh and also the shoulders are kind of up, There’s a lot of tension. They can’t rejoin a lot. Okay. So this is how I know that something has happened. But they’re not identifying with it. 

And so we can start asking self checking questions. This is where I have everybody identifying a lot of their core beliefs, how they’re relating to food, how they’re relating to stress. How did you see your parents deal with stress or did they communicate? So this is all part of my group visits in my body medicine. Well, I encourage everybody to identify a lot of those core beliefs. What did they hear and what did they see growing up? You know? Because a lot of it is showing up in the trauma is showing up in your decision making, your food choices. It’s showing up in your relationships with yourself and it’s showing up in your relationships with your significant other, your friends and family, your Children. It’s showing up at work, Right? And so this is how we know that there’s a missing piece. We’ve got to look at those different aspects because their expressions that still activating the nervous system. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

Right? And that ultimately turns into disease states as well. And we see this so much and caregivers of people going to bring health disorders. So, we know, statistically speaking, those people who are primary caregivers of those people with dementia has a much higher likely to develop dementia early earlier on as well. So we know that, right? And those people who are actually healthcare provider professions like doctors and nurses tend to have developed a lot more bad effects when it comes to mental health as well as brain health. Right? And all of a sudden these things really start manifesting in a time where we really have to question the things that that were were doing. You know, when we look at the data and as you said earlier, that we know that chronic stress increases blood sugar is significant, increase the chance of Type two diabetes, right, worsens autoimmune disease, like Hashimoto’s disease worsens lupus, right? And it worsens chronic allergies and histamine intolerance. The people who are chronically stressed tend to create more food intolerances and allergies and environmental allergies as well cause maso activation and in our body does this really well. And so the trauma doesn’t necessarily have to come from, you know, something that’s super dramatic. Like a major trauma, it can come from little trauma. 

You know, the big T vs little T. We call it the big T. Is like huge dramatic events like seeing some shot in the head. But most people just have little tease and that little tease maybe, you know, growing up with caregivers that made you feel like you’re conditional love and that you had to be there for them. Maybe you have to grow up too much as an adult when you’re younger, be there for your caregivers and your parents didn’t have enough time to go to the child play stage, right? And because people were saying, oh, you’re so grown for your age and you’re still mature for your age, that’s actually pretty traumatic, you know? And so, you know, in Chinese we have this expression which means like why technically means obedience. And so, so it’s used as the phrase to, to label good kids, you know, and that’s the Chinese term, right? So, but what’s messed up about it is that the value of, of someone there is very fast forwarded to hey you are behaving like a grown up, you’re so mature for your age, you’re taking leadership on. 

But that creates a lot of internal struggles because if you ever feel like you can’t do that, you don’t know how to express, you don’t know how to express this. This let go. Right, You don’t know how to press the pause and that can create issues as well. So earlier we talked about how that connects to like chronic constipation and gut, it connects to diarrhea as well. Now in America we call this irritable bowel syndrome. Right, estimated one and two humans have irritable bowel syndrome. Well bowels that’s irritated, it’s the brain that’s irritated and the Bowser’s reacting. It’s doing the best it can given the blood flow and the hormones that it’s got right. And so what about the diseases? Well, migraines? Migraines are very similar. The path of physiology of starting a migraine and having continued debilitating rests upon the flow of the emphatic and your fashion which is the outer covering of muscle and stuff like that. Fibromyalgia. Right? Well fibromyalgia diagnostic criteria is different tender points along these areas where these areas are also in Chinese medicine there, the anchor points or trigger points right? Where the fashion actually connects because someone’s always up here, right? That’s why this huge association with fibromyalgia and PTSD and the and then you can develop other disorders such as Hashimoto’s thyroid disorder right? Or poor sleep and traumatic experiences decreases the lymphatic shunting away from the thyroid, decreases blood flow. So our body starts making antibodies towards it. Why to do you a favor? Your body’s like, hey you’re in the spider flight, your thyroid determines your metabolism, but because I want to preserve your life, I’m gonna make antibodies towards your thyroid because I want to preserve your life. I want to make antibodies against your joints. That’s why we start making antibodies against our own D. N. A. Entire DNA antibodies or against our own nucleus of cells, antinuclear antibodies. 

So we know that the biggest factor for reducing autoimmune destruction and calming the immune system is through the channel of mind body medicine. You know, and this is the biggest takeaway here is that the expression of our genes that were given right is determined by not just our past, but what happened in Utero? Did our parents have stressful time in utero right? But also determined by multiple generations of this is where generational trauma can really be a huge thing. So knowing all this and knowing the physiology be behind this really made the way. I really looked at medicine quite differently. And from a much, not, not just holistically, I’ve always been holistic but true, holistic healing, you know, starts with a thought process, you know? And this thought that hey this this phrase that it’s all in your head. I’m like, yeah, thank God it’s in my head because there’s something I can do about it. 

So it doesn’t matter what the disease states are. So all these sort of miraculous healing and of different disease states and going from stage four cancer to stage zero and remission. We see that in practice this is no longer a miraculous to us because it all depends on who is the first to accept that there’s a mind, body component to the disease state, Right? Because it is very much rooted in science. My body medicine is very much rooted in science. We know exactly how things connect with thought. Yeah, yeah. So we have an immune system. We have our air balance being oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. The three gas exchange, right? We have the nervous system like the vagus nerve as well as other nerves and moderates it. We have the lymphatic system. We have a brand new system called the extra cellular matrix which is basically the out of protein of cells that is the foundation of actually Chinese acupuncture. This system was found 5000 years ago, but it’s not really talked about in Western literature until publication in 2012. And then we have now another new word called the lymphatic system which is basically the immune system of the brain are channels and aqueducts within the brain that detox our brain, that’s, that gets decreased, that gets messed up whenever we hold our tension in our chest and we don’t breathe as much, right? And then and and it doesn’t flow when there’s sleep. So all these things are very much rooted in medicine and we really have to honor that, you know?

Geny Moreno Salamat

Yeah. And also honoring that the patient needs to participate. There’s an active participation in mind body medicine, right? It starts with their thoughts, whether they thinking how the mindset, how they’re approaching their health, you know, if it also stems from what they believe, what they can they heal, Can they believe that they’re healing from the inside out? Right? So all of this is really triggered first by our thoughts. It really starts there, our healing starts from our thoughts and then it transfers through our behaviors. So mind body medicine is really engaging the person to be aware of all of these aspects of his or her life, you know, and really living in the present, living in the body as opposed to just staying in the brain. You know, you can read so many self help books, right? But until you can actually embody those knowledge and apply them into your life, you know, then the nervous system is gonna stretch because you’re you’re you’re applying those tools. So this is something that I encourage everybody to do at our clinic, you know, every patient that I have met with and are working with me currently. It’s all about being present in your body. There are so many mind body medicine tools that I actually would like to share really quickly. Dr. Ruan, soft belly breathing is one of them. It’s central to all of the mind, body medicine techniques, even meditation.

Cheng Ruan, MD

You define soft belly breathing, not everyone’s familiar with that term

Geny Moreno Salamat

Soft belly breathing is really known as diaphragmatic breathing or deep belly breathing, meaning that we’re breathing in through the nose and really sending that breath all the way down to the deeper parts of your lungs and expanding the belly. So when the belly is soft, you know that your diaphragm is moving and oftentimes the diaphragm gets stuck when we go through trauma, when we hold our breath right? And so by resuming soft belly breathing again, letting the, letting the belly soften the rest of the body, the rest of the muscles will follow. Okay, so this deep belly breathing is necessary. That’s what we call soft belly breathing when you’re allowing that breath to go down into the belly and expanding the belly, inflating it and then deflating. Okay, another one is shaking and dancing. 

I love this particular technique because I know it may look foolish at first and we did, we did this during my training. They turned down the lights over that we’re not all shy to one another, but you’re basically doing 10 minutes of shaking the body that releases tension. We know that tension sits in our muscles and in ourselves. A lot of our emotions also get suppressed and repressed, especially when we’re not encouraged to speak about them and express them. Right? So this is a great way to basically release that tension in that, that fatigue. And then it actually balances the nervous system and relaxes the muscles of the body. The same thing with dancing. Dancing is is is, I mean if you dance, you’re literally you’re letting go of all of your sadness and and and and fear when you’re dancing and there’s also self expression. This is another thing that needs to happen. We need to be able to express our truth and our authentic self. 

And these techniques is basically encouraging all of these things. You need to express yourself very, very important in healing from our trauma. Meditation. Of course that is key. That is very central to mind body medicine. All forms of meditation, dynamic meditation. Eyes open meditation for those who have extreme trauma and they feel unsafe, Closing their eyes. There are so many ways where we can transition them so that they feel okay, but they’re still meditating with their eyes open. What are those tools tai chi and qi gong is a moving meditation when your eyes are open. It’s a great way to transition into sitting down and actually closing your eyes and to meditate yoga is also one of those mind body exercises right, Pilates one, love Pilates, drawings sometimes war torn countries where a lot of Children were affected, some of these kids were not able to talk about it and they become muted, right? And so in order to release that, that trauma drawing is a technique to allow them to express all of those emotions. 

And also a lot of journal writing and we have data supporting that all of these techniques is actually improving quality of life. You know, as long as there is a a space that’s holding that non judgmental space for all of those people who were affected by trauma to be able to express these things. So this brings me to my last aspect in my body medicine and that is community, Community is very important. You know, we’re all relational beings we are wired to connect with other people and funny enough that the quality of our relationship with others is what really improves our mental health, our health in general health and wellness. So there is an importance in having community, but making sure that the community or the tribe is supportive of your healing, allowing you to express your right and being able to rely on them in times of need. So all of these things are part of my body medicine, and I’m glad that we’re actually doing this Texas center, Dr. Ruan.

Cheng Ruan, MD

So yeah, it’s truly important and we’re when we’re doing this in the community that really needs and right and we’re super excited to even take medical insurance, Medicare and all that so that people who don’t normally have access to more holistic strategies can within within our center. But you know through it all and through everything that we just talked about for the last hour. I think the lesson is that we don’t know everything. Doctors don’t know everything. You don’t know everything, no one knows everything. And as long as there’s a pursuit to improve health, we don’t have to know everything because we can start utilizing the tools that we do know that make the biggest impact. And most of those tools are in mind body medicine because usually free breathing is free, soft belly breathing is free. Posturing relaxation is free, right? Doesn’t take a whole lot. 

But all these tools are so much more powerful than buying something than buying a machine or device or supplement stuff like that because we need to start as a foundation supplements are supplemental, very supplemental devices are supplemental. We talk a lot about the devices on on the brain health summit, but a lot of these are just easy buttons to get to a place and there’s nothing wrong with that I have devices that are actually right next to me that I actually use as many buttons but my fundamentals are they’re routed through through mind body medicine. You know, I was recently, I talked to a bunch of other functional medicine doctors who’ve been doing this for years, right. And we all agree that my body medicine is the missing piece and integrative health that we all need to talk more freely about because it’s really the root of what can improve proof of loss and what’s great. And this is by the way, and this is very different than psychotherapy. Talk therapy and Kant available therapies. So let’s end it there. Let’s talk about the difference between psychiatry and therapy versus mind body medicine because there’s a massive difference. I’ll have you go into that.

Geny Moreno Salamat

Let’s chat about talk therapy, which is often what’s done in sessions. Right. And so talk therapy may help to a degree if your co regulating with the patients. Yes, validation. Yes. It’s encouraging of that space, but you’re not gonna heal from trauma. From talking about the event over and over and over and we’ve seen this in our own patients, a lot of them are under the supervision of psychiatry or psychotherapist for 30 years. Right? Since they were toddlers, what is missing, What is not changing? And a lot of this really is again, we cannot conceptualize trauma, we cannot heal from trauma from talking about it. We can interpret, right? The brain likes to interpret the events over and over and over. We need to change that loop. We need to interrupt that pattern. So how do we do that? We have to teach the person to come back home to the body because the emotional experience of the past is happening in the body. Okay, so we then need to rely on the wisdom of the body through these techniques, tai chi and accepting and understanding that something happened and we’re gonna breathe through that and and this is a chance to repair it yourself because when the event happened in the first place, you did not have the tools for how to cope with it. But now you do. So this is a golden opportunity to be able to, you know, use some tools to be able to regulate your nervous system once again, see, and then now we can see healing is taking place because you’re changing the emotional experience regarding the event. We’re associating different states of being, are associating different emotional experience to the traumatic event. 

Okay, what are those emotional experience? Joy peace. And just by simply actually smiling, you know, allowing yourself to just grin, give yourself a smile. I know these are simple things and I think that’s what sucking up with our minds. I’m sorry for saying that, that is so simple, but we make things complicated. So just by simply smiling, it changes that shift, it changes the nervous system to react a certain way. Right now we’re responding to the event. So being the emotional experience is what’s really healing us from our trauma and no, this is not gonna be an overnight thing, right? Instant gratification is not part of mind body medicine, I have to say we have to practice patience, you know, this is not the same, it’s not it’s not like a pill that’s just gonna do it for us. However, the long term effects of these tools is far greater than any pill that you can take because you get to discover who you really are, you have a new identity and you become much more resilient mentally and emotionally. 

So, so talk therapy to me can only work to some degree, but we have to allow the body to change our demeanor. You know the way we’re standing up and the way we’re showing up to the world, all of these things are part of that healing process, relaxation techniques, breathing, meditation, tai chi and qi gong played by the way play is also necessary for stimulating the prefrontal cortex, right? This is where you’re really relying on the wisdom of the body and bring that in training that nervous system to go back to what we call social re engagement system or ventral vehicle state. So what I’m talking about is when we go back to that the body is feeling much more connected. We’re curious about life, right? And even if there’s a lot of chaos that’s happening outside of us, you know that you’re gonna be able to adapt and that you’re going to be able to adjust and you have tools so that you can cope and leverage from the stress. So that’s my take on talk therapy. You know, there’s you, I’m gonna add a few things there.

Cheng Ruan, MD

So you know, with talking and stuff like that allows you to be comfortable within your own identity, right? My body medicine allows you to engineer your own identity. They’re, they’re actually two very different things. And so a lot of times we behave like we behave in a certain way, which is called the process because of our inner core was the identity and that leads to outcomes on the outside. So people are basically looking at outcomes in their health that they didn’t expect to occur. And instead of saying, hey, what can I do to affect my process, which is maybe my identity, What most people do is what medicine can I take your stuff, I’m gonna take, what diet can I be on. And there’s nothing wrong with that. As long as we dedicate a lot of our time into understanding what the identity is and the identity that we once were may no longer serve us. And that’s what I found over and over and over again, there’s this is really cool book called effective neuroscience. 

The foundations of human and animal emotions. This is really cool. And we talked about that emotions are illusionary concepts outside of the realm of scientific inquiry, that’s what most people think. But in reality it’s not it’s actually within about our bar biochemistry. So we know that that topic right there, that emotions are just things such illusions, right, is no longer true. Based on the last hour of what we talked about, we know the human physiology response to emotion. So let’s say if someone has attention deficit disorder, right? And this goes against social norm, you’re supposed to be this attentive, but you’re over here what they’re doing, what they’re doing is the brain is trying to escape the current thought because there’s a lack of sense of security, right? And that could be because of upbringing and that could be because of like inflammatory foods or msg or sugars and stuff like that, high fructose, corn syrup, It could be that. 

But to its but to to figure out the whole thing, it’s not, it’s never just one thing if someone has Alzheimer’s for example, and this is my favorite story about Alzheimer’s is I love talking to patients with Alzheimer’s disease because I get to figure out what in the past are they stuck on. So if I talk to these people and I realize they’re stuck in 1971. And the people that are in the room haven’t been born yet. They’re not gonna know who they are. But when I go there with them, what year are you and what years? And right now? And what are you doing? Like what are you wearing? What’s around you? You know, someone who has moderate to severe Alzheimer’s, they’ll start talking, they start making a lot of sense. In my brain I’m gonna go to 1971 with them and through there I can see exactly what they’re seeing. And then, because I’m existing in 1971, I’m changing their history a little bit and offering their piece, right? If they experience something and the Alzheimer’s patients are always existing at a point right before. 

Some trauma happened always right before. Right? And after that the memory is not there and this is such an interesting human construct. So, if I’m able to talk to a patient with Alzheimer’s and make them feel safe, pull them into 1972. And in 1973 and 1974 back to 2022, right? I’m pulling them in that direction. They start recognizing the people that are around them. And this only takes a few minutes, you know, and I, the first time I ever did that, it was a complete accident was my friend’s grandfather when I was in middle school and then I volunteered at sheltering Arms, which is a memory care facility here in Houston and I start playing around with that, it really intrigued me, but now I have an understanding of why is that the brain will regret to the time pre trauma right? Is to protect itself. And a lot of times we work with patients with they got a good diet, they get on some great supplements, they have, they have they have my body medicine, they do a lot of breathing exercises and then they get more depressed because now they remember their own trauma. 

But at that time it’s where we say, hey you know what, we really have to give you the tools to go forward. But unfortunately a lot of that time the family members start seeing them depressed and like oh my gosh, you know he’s regressing into nationality. If we look at the MRI look at these things we collapse actually improving but they’re more con isn’t of their abilities and therefore they feel lonelier. So your job is to play with them, right? Like you said play earlier, your job is to play with them, make sure that you bring joy to their life and play brings value. It’s no longer doing stuff that brings value, is not taking care of the kids is not cooking, driving the car, play brings value and this is where generations afterwards can improve generations up and the geriatric population in the United States is really being shunned upon, you know? And there’s even expressions for some of these people like Gomer and all these different things. 

Right? So so there’s within medicine because with the medicine, you know, Gomer stands for get out of my ER that’s what we that’s sort of a joke that we actually have there in training because these elderly people, they’re like manifesting symptoms but we don’t know what to do with them because they’re clinically stable. So called boomers. And this came from a book. But it was a pretty bad description and then we have and then we have this term called boomers now which I think is actually very detrimental term because labeling right of devaluing any generation is not cool. It doesn’t matter how what generation it is. It’s not cool. I actually don’t even like uncomfortable word millennials, I’m comfortable with the word gen Z. Because it used to be just a collection of different generations now. It’s used as targeting, right? Especially on social media. So that creates even more.

Geny Moreno Salamat

Yeah. Yeah. Millennials.

Cheng Ruan, MD

And what we see now, especially the pandemic loneliness has increased the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease by 60%. Holy crap increases the diagnosis of autism, ADHD, Increases diagnosis of schizophrenia, like what’s happening with the depression of course. Right? So a lot of the loneliness and isolation has created this thing that’s there, a lot of people going through a lot of chronic disorders, chronic health issues already feel isolated and this is why the community is required for that healing element. That’s why the community is exist to propel each other up. And so I can’t stress, you know, how important your work is, jenny and what you create the value to the world, but it doesn’t really have to and most people think, you know, I can’t heal the brain unless I buy really expensive things and supplements and beyond this crazy particular diet. Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, you know, it doesn’t have to start there and that’s the message you want to get out from this particular session.

Geny Moreno Salamat

Yes, yes, all of these are internal resources, It’s just underutilized breathing is underutilized, you know, these are all free and that’s why I love them. They helped me with my own healing my own trauma healing from my own journey and it’s these mind body techniques that I used and at that time doctor and I didn’t have insurance, you know, I was just gonna, you know, say that. And so I found myself really grateful and I feel blessed that I have these techniques and I still use them today and part of my identity and and I think this is this is really a blessing because this is how I can connect with our patients and this is this is what I’m sharing at our clinic and it’s a joy to share them. 

Cheng Ruan, MD

Amazing. Well, we’ve covered a lot on this topic. I really thank you for taking the time or this with the public and we do this quite a bit with our patients, but exploring with the public is this truly wonderful thing to engage upon. So how do people find you on social media, how do they interact with you, Where can they learn?

Geny Moreno Salamat

So you can find me on instagram at healthluminary and also genymorenofdncoach. Those are two instagrams that I have. And also my Facebook page is health luminary for now those are. That’s how you can contact me, but you can also email me at [email protected] I got some stuff coming up in the near future.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Right, so Geny is G E N Y?

Geny Moreno Salamat

Yes, yes.

Cheng Ruan, MD

Just to be to be to be sure. And Geny is also the mastermind behind our online training, which is mind sculpting Master workshop. We actually go through all this stuff and that’s at tclmuniversity.com. Yes, yes, with all sorts of other things as well. So we really want to take, we want to thank you for talking about this and what we’re gonna do is make sure that the world hears about mind body medicine because I think it’s a crucial missing step to medicine in general. Thank you very much.

Geny Moreno Salamat

Thank you. Thank you Dr. Ruan. I appreciate it. Bye bye.