How Your Mindset Plays A Critical Role In Healing

Introduction and guest background 0:00

Welcome to the conquering Chronic Inflammation Summit. I'm your host, Dr. David Jockers. And today, I'm honored to interview Dr. Josh Axe. We're going to talk all about mindset as medicine. Dr. Josh Axe is the founder of draxe.com one of the leading natural health websites. He's a co-founder and chief visionary officer of Ancient Nutrition, and he's a founder of leaders.com. He's got several bestselling books, Eat Dirt, Ancient Remedies, so some great health books. And he also has his newest book, Think This, Not That, where he talks about all about mindset as medicine.

In this interview, we're going to talk about how he had a serious infection, spinal infection that, caused him significant health issues. And, he was told he couldn't even walk. He would never walk again. And he's a young man. And what he did to overcome that and how he used mindset as medicine. We're going to talk about some of the biggest limiting beliefs that hold people back from healing. We're also going to talk about correlations between certain types of mindsets and fears that people have, and different health conditions like cancer, autoimmune disease.

we're going to talk about key mental strategy, different strategies people can take right now to take back control of their mindset and their health. So you guys are in for a treat. He also, Dr. Axe has a new book out. It's called Think This, Not That. So definitely check out that book and you can find it at Joshaxe.com. And without further ado, let's go into the interview. Well Dr. Josh Axe always great to connect. I mean, we go way back. I've known you for, gosh, almost 20 years now. And, yeah.

So we've really learned natural health, natural medicine together. you know, and it's been a great journey. Now over the last year, year or two, you've obviously, had to dive even deeper into it because you had your own health challenge.

Josh Axe's spinal infection and recovery journey 2:00

And I want to learn more about that as our first time talking sense, you know, hearing about your health issues. And so I'm really just curious on what happened. And, you know, what you've learned through this process. Yeah. Well, yeah, I want to share all that. I do want to say. Yeah, I appreciate your text message I got during that process just because it was, you know, obviously it was a crazy challenge, but I am glad we're finally getting to talk like this. I so, so a lot of people don't realize this.

Obviously, I've been in the natural health space for for a long time, teaching people very similar to you how to use food as medicine, how to regenerate our bodies, how to reverse disease. And I am always trying to do everything I can in order to, be my best in terms of my health. Well, several years ago, actually, about eight years ago, I injured my back lifting weights and I bulged and herniated disc in my back. And and I was doing eating really healthy and exercising and doing all the things to help rehab it.

And it's still a couple years later. It didn't feel like it was back to 100%. So I decided to go and get stem cell therapy in my disc, and it worked incredibly well. I probably got 50%. I mean, I was already 50% better, but I got closer to 80 to 90% after that and thought, okay, wow, this is great. Well, I won again about a year and a half ago. and I thought, okay, if I better if I get it done one more time, I'll be back to 100%. And so this is where they take your body's own bone marrow. They take the stem cells and re inject those in in the disc.

And so I got that done. but sometime this time it kind of felt a little bit different. By the way, my wife and I and our daughter, when we had moved to Puerto Rico, we were living there. We still live between Puerto Rico and Nashville, so we still live in Nashville some. But but I had got my disc injected and after a few days it kept getting worse and worse and worse. And finally I just thought, well, maybe I just, you know, I bothered it somehow and, and just irritated it. And this is part of the healing process. So it's okay.

What about three months of dealing with this? I finally I woke up one morning, and I just I couldn't walk at all. And, and by the way, I had went from even even after my back injury, I got I, like I said, it was 90% better, I was deadlifting, I was squatting, I was swimming, I was running all of it. And so I went from not being able to walk. And finally I need to get an MRI. And so had I had to have an ambulance come pick me up, bring me to get an MRI, I got an MRI and they came on and said, you know, we think you have a spinal infection.

And so I ended up then taking in a, a, a medical, flight to Florida and then meeting with an infectious disease doctor there who wanted to then run another test. And they said, hey, yeah, we do think it's an infection. And, and and he said, but but he said, I'm not totally sure. So then I got another test put off. But in the meantime, I'm going to try and do everything I can to heal, which I had been, but I thought, I'm going to go and get IVs and get in a hyperbaric chamber. So I got in a hyperbaric chamber for two hours a day for a few weeks, got four hours of IVs a day.

I mean, pretty much that's all I did all day and still and it it it started. I thought, well, maybe it's getting a little bit better, but it just wasn't fully breaking through. So I thought, you know what he, he recommended I get on IV antibiotics. And to be honest, Dave, you know, for people like you and me, like this was something I did not want to do because I had not taken a medication since high school and I was in my 40s now. Okay. So, so but I thought, you know what? Like, I can't let this infection spread.

It's very hard to get the nutrients there in the disc because there's a little blood supply. So I ended up getting on an IV antibiotics. But at the same time I read a study that if I also do these other things, I could cut down the time because some doctors, they recommend you are on antibiotics for 12 weeks. So three months straight with this, with this condition I had, well, I'd read a study on if you do hyperbaric chamber it can reduce it down dramatically. So I was able to during this time I got an antibiotics for for four weeks.

and by the way, after about a week, I noticed, okay, it's starting to feel better. And I started noticing. I started feeling better and better and better, but during that time, because the disc heal so slowly, it actually took me another, I mean, many months from that point. So like, I did not walk for for ten months at least, and I was on a walk for a couple months. It was almost a full year of me not walking at all. All I could do was crawl. I couldn't sit in a wheelchair too, just because the pressure in my disc was so bad.

And, and so and so I just started walking. It hadn't even been a year ago. Yeah, a year ago I wasn't walking, so I just started walking again in May. So all that being said, you know, I really dug in during this time and started studying regenerative medicine. And how do I regenerate my tissues? How do I heal? Because one of the things I started realizing was as I read the literature is, is that, you know, your liver can regenerate in 150 days. I mean, really every year your liver is completely new.

Our red blood cells are new every 3 to 4 months are our gut lining is is new every 4 to 14 days. Our thyroid, our other organs, they're constantly regenerating. But why aren't they fully healing? And so I started really digging into this and and started studying and practicing on myself. How do I fully heal these issues? And one thing I really did try and harness was, helping my body create more stem cells. And so my diet was meat and vegetables, literally the only thing I ate for an entire year, pretty much.

I'd have some berries or a few other things, but that was about it. And then I got in a hyperbaric chamber almost every you know, at least three days a week. But the first, during that time I got in every day for about a month, started doing hot, hot tub, cold plunge back and forth, infrared light. I mean, you know, peptides like BPC 157, all the things. But one of the things I want to tell you, Dave, during this time, one of the things I realized, even with me doing all the nutritional stuff, I realized that the most important thing for my healing was not using food as medicine.

It was mindset medicine because there are emotions that I had never experienced before, that I experienced in that time. Because when I went to go see the infectious disease doctor. Yeah, I can only imagine. I mean, here you are, an athlete, right? A natural health leader, and then all of a sudden you can't walk and you've got an infection. Must have been so humbling to to have to be on antibiotics, right. When you're, you know, with, with your history of teaching everybody natural health. And then to have to do that for four weeks is so humbling.

It it was it was incredibly humbling. And and so I here was my, my, my. And you can imagine this because you've worked with so many patients. But I mean, I'm talking to the infectious disease specialist in Sarasota, Florida. And I say, I say, hey, what's the prognosis with, with this issue from what you're seeing on MRI and and here's what he told me. He said, best case scenario, every time, whether it comes through, you'll be the first to feel it. And you're going to have, you know, you're going to live with pain the rest of your life.

And he said, worst case scenario, you're permanently disabled. And,

Mindset as medicine and the power of belief 9:00

and, and so I said, hey, I appreciate you sharing your opinion, you know, and I realized at that time and I had to go through it, you know, and then I had to go home and I had 24 hours of, like, just, you know, despair and hopelessness. Now, again, I was fighting it and I knew better. But at the same time, it's very difficult when when, you know, like I had a two year old and three months before I was throwing her up in the air and I couldn't, you know, play with her. I was in chronic pain. I literally couldn't even roll in my side. The pain was so bad.

So I literally couldn't move. Hardly. And so I went from being that to where I started. I started going down the rabbit hole of, if you have a spinal infection, searching online and reading about how bad it can be. And and I started having these feelings of like hopelessness and despair. And then after 24 hours of that, I'm like, wake up, Josh, wake up. You know, you can't live in this state anymore. It's not it's not going to optimize your healing potential. And when I started reading the medical literature, a lot of it I already knew.

But there were some new things, and it started instilling within me the power of belief. I mean, you know as well as anybody, Dr. Dave, the power of the placebo effect or the nocebo effect. I mean, there is a case study where somebody was told they had liver cancer and they were going to die in three months, and they died. They went did not topsy had a small benign tumor that that shouldn't have affected his health really at all. They could have just removed and he could have lived another 30 years in. The placebo effect is the opposite.

We hear of these athletes that are told by doctors, you'll never walk again, you'll be paralyzed and they end up walking. Well, how does that happen? It's really the power of mindset. And when we are able to, there's a really a three step process to this. But one thing is your body can start recreating neural pathways in order to help your body better heal and help your body function at a higher level. And so it's really important that we tap into the power of mindset in order to heal our bodies.

Because you know, as I read one study, it basically showed this is that one, you need to be able to visualize yourself in the future and that process of your eyes and your vision, seeing things in the future, creating a picture actually is the most powerful way of your body. Start creating these neural pathways because your eyes are part of your nervous system and brain. And so it's really connected to vision. The second step was tying up emotion into that really, really creating emotion. So for instance, I started visualizing myself throwing my two year old daughter, who's now three, you know, in the pool again and playing with her and experiencing the emotion of joy and excitement and happiness and gratitude.

And the third step is creating a strategy in order to tell your brain, this can happen by me doing these things. And so this is why one of the things that's so important, Doctor Dave, about what you do and what I've done in my career, but going back to you is, is that educating people? Because when your body starts to believe it can heal, your chance of healing goes up dramatically. I mean, think about this. If I were to tell somebody that like that was in my position, you have a spinal infection, you may never walk again.

But if you if you believe you won't walk again, you have a 5050 chance of walking again. But if you believe you will versus not believe if you believe, you will. and you, you visualize and you create the plan and you tie up some emotions there, you have an 80% chance, right? What do you think somebody is going to choose to do? I'm going to take 80%, over 50%. But that's the reality that people deal with. If somebody has a thyroid issue right now, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, let's say, and they believe you know what? I can't ever heal.

I have to live with this the rest of my life. Well, you almost have a 0% chance because your body's just not going to do anything to repair itself. But if you believe in, you know, I'm going to heal. And then you create a plan and follow, for instance, your tips doctor Dave, there's closer to an 80% chance you're going to heal. So I mean, so I started realizing as I went through this process of healing that food is medicine and lifestyle medicine and all these things we teach are really important.

But I really think mindset and our spiritual and emotional health and our mental health is just as important or more important than our healing. And so and while I was in this state, I decided to start writing a book. So I wrote a book all about what I believe are the most important mindsets to allow us to live our best life. Everything from tapping into your identity. Who are you that actually is critically important to healing? You're finding your purpose in life. you know, building up a sort of this level of resilience and in positivity.

And so I really I wrote a book on this, How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs during this time. Now, now, now, I'm on this other side of this. And let me say this I don't have chronic pain every day now. Do I still have some pain because I'm still only six months out from this happening? Or maybe 7 or 8? I guess I'm eight months now. from from when I from walking from when I was able to start walking again. so I'm not at 100%, but I am probably back 70%. And I think by the end of this year I will be at 100%.

So all that being said, and when the weather comes through, I don't have pain in my back. He's like, that's the best case scenario. I don't have that. So all that being said, I've seen incredible progress. I'm continuing to progress. but that's again, just some lessons and sort of what happened from, from, from about a year and a half ago. Yeah. It's an inspiring story. And it's, you know, it's it's who I know you to be, like, here you are. You know, you're you're given a hopeless situation, basically.

And you turn it around in your mindset. You're writing a book now, there's no guarantee that you were going to be able to be pain free or walk at the time you start writing a book, but you're like, hey, best thing I can do is process these emotions, all the different beliefs. if I'm struggling with this, I know lots of people are struggling with this. I'm going to write this book. It's going to help me in a sense. It's like a probably like a counseling session. Like. Yeah, like you're getting, like, free counseling.

You know, you're doing research on this. You're writing this book and believing that you're going to heal and that your story is going to be inspirational for many other people. And then you're obviously filling it full of really practical tools that people can, can use to identify limiting beliefs they have. And then how to create new neuroplasticity, changes in their brain to rewire their brain and, overcome those challenges and live, you know, a healthier, stronger, just better life in general.

Exactly. You know, and and I had somebody, and I think you might know I don't want to say who it is, but he, he had, come up to me when I was going through this and he said, hey, what are you doing with your time? And I told him, I actually, I went back, I was I was taking online classes at Johns Hopkins. I got a master's there. I wanted to learn more about leadership and growth and and then I wrote this book, and then I was running some companies and spending time with my, you know, doing everything I could.

And he goes, gosh, if that were me, I would probably just be eating Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew. And I said, you know what? For me, like I won. I believe in the healing power of God. You know, I know, and I know you're the same guy. By the way, I love following your social posts and and hearing your podcast and hearing how you speak, because I know we're both people of faith and we really believe in the power of prayer and healing. But you know, when I was going through this, I really felt like I thought, why am I not doing that?

Because that's what a lot of people would do. And I thought, it is because I, I got a big purpose. You know, I was reading a study and in this study, they found only 25% of people said that they know what their purpose is. And purpose is so important to us. Living our best lives to us being are us feeling our optimal level of happiness. And really, it was purpose that drove me. So one of the big things I get in the book is how to overcome limiting beliefs. But also here's how to know your purpose and here's how to live it out.

Here's what it actually is. And I just think that's a really big deal because, you know, here's an example too. There's another study I read years ago that said, when somebody retires from work, their chance of death for many of them goes up dramatically because their work often was part of their purpose. And so, you know, having a purpose actually fuels I really say there's three main components of healing. I'm going to write another book here in the future on regenerative medicine. But the way that I like to explain this is if you want to regenerate and heal, you need to number one, have cellular energy.

Purpose, identity, and overcoming limiting beliefs 17:00

If you don't have energy, if your body doesn't have any battery, it can't do these other two things I'm about to mention, but you really have to have. You got to be plugged in, you got to you got to have proper cellular energy. The next thing you have to have is you need to get rid of toxicity. So imagine your body is a home and you've got builders which are the stem cells or your body's energy. And then you've got toxicity. And so imagine those are sort of termites have eaten away at the walls of your home.

Well, well you got to tear those down. The other thing you need is nutrients, the building blocks to go and put up these new and healthy walls, those new things that your body is going to create, these new, cells from mitochondria and everything else it needs to rebuild itself. And so those are really the three of the main components people need in order to regenerate and heal. But what a lot of people don't realize is, is that I mentioned certain things here, like cellular energy toxicity deficiency.

But it's not just food, right? There are toxic foods there are building blocks you need for, for for food. There's certain types of energy. But also these things are related to mindset and other intangibles such as cellular energy is purpose. knowing what your purpose is in life fuels your entire body. I mean, when somebody is full of life and bright eyed, they tend to be like, I know what I'm called to do. And, like, I mean, it really is. I mean, it's what causes me like, I get out of bed in the morning and I have energy because I'm excited about the day, because I have purpose.

So that's an important part of cellular energy. We know to a toxicity you have there are toxic, you know, toxins that are whatever everything from from, you know, round up to, heavy metals, all these other things. But also there's toxic thoughts, right? And then there's positive thoughts on the other end to sort of rebuild and help you recreate your cells and tissues and everything else. So it really led me down this path of realizing in terms of health is so holistic, right? You and I both love talking about nutrition, but another major component that I love talking about, I know you've covered two, is this idea around the mind, in the spirit and the importance of those for, for for helping us heal.

Yeah. So critical. And I love how you talk about the importance of purpose. Purpose is so key. And I think for most of us, we just kind of grew up in throughout our lives. Right. And the idea of purpose was always kind of esoteric and distant from us. Right. And, you know, there's something that, like my wife and I speak over our kids, like all of our kids have life verses. And every night I'm telling them really throughout the day, God has a special plan and purpose for you, right? And like my son David, like we tell him, you know, what's your purpose?

He'll say to fear no evil, right? To what? you know, my God is with me to fear no evil. Right from Psalm 23. Right? My daughter? Joyful, she'll tell you to bring joy to the world. Right? So, you know, we name them specifically off of something we thought was an empowering purpose so that, you know, as they're growing, they know that their life purpose and it's something that brings life to them. And obviously, adds value to the world. Right. And makes the world a better place. Well, one thing I want to mention so powerful about what you just shared, that, Dave, is that really it's your identity that tends to feed your purpose.

And that's what I get to in the book I teach you, here's exactly how to build a rock solid identity. That's more powerful than anything you can imagine. And so identity fields, purpose what you've done for your kids, not some. Some parents are very thoughtful about this. Others aren't. But it's like when you name your kid, it means something. I mean, when we read the Bible or historically. And by the way, it's not just the Bible. It's almost all civilizations. When they name their child something, it meant something specific and they tended to, people also knew more what the name meant, during those times.

And so anyways, it's really it's really, really an empowering thing. And a lot of people need to go back and rework their identity. And it's important for, for the entire healing process. So anyways, I love you sharing that story because I think it's, it's, critically important. Yeah, absolutely. So key. And so let's talk about some limiting beliefs that you've seen, you know, that perhaps you dealt with and then also that you've seen with clients that you've worked with in the past. Yeah, that perhaps contributed to their health issue and work contributing to them, perhaps not healing as quickly as somebody else.

Yeah. I'll give you an example. This I had a mom who, was struggling with autoimmune disease, and I went back and talked to her. After the first meeting. I said, hey, hey, what's what's going on? I know I it just seems like you're just struggling. You're down all the time. Just talk to me. And she said, you know, I, and she, she was talking with fibromyalgia and an autoimmune disease. and, and she said to me, she said, you know, my daughter moved away to college several years ago, and we used to be best friends, and I was there to nurture her.

I was there to care for her. But I just feel like since she's been gone, I, I don't really have as much of a purpose. And she said, also, I've just I think I've kind of beat myself up a little bit and I just, I don't, I don't. And she said, I've just been really missing my daughter. I feel like we had this connection that we don't anymore, and we talked about this. But one of the things I realized as I've studied the Bible and also Chinese medicine is, is that emotions affect our organ systems. And so and I want to get to the limiting beliefs here as well.

And I'm going to jump back to this. But I just I wanted to touch on the health component here. and and so when I was talking to her, I, you know, we talked through this, I said, hey, you know, do you think your purpose was as a mom, but you have other purposes, you have other callings, you have other identities. So one identity as a mom, another might be a wife, another might be something else. I said, you really it's important for you to reestablish your identity. You're still a mom, but you're also in a different phase of life as a mom.

And what you're going to add value as and and let's go. And I want you to write down some things you're passionate about, some giftings you have your strengths. And let's go and find what your new purpose and identity, you know, and some new identities, some things you can really, really hold on to. And she did it. It was really empowering. Can I tell you we were able to completely reverse her autoimmune disease, completely reverse that her fibromyalgia symptoms went away and she was like a new person.

She lost like 30 pounds over the next three months. It was amazing. And I got to tell you, Doctor Dave, if it wasn't for us having that conversation, I don't know that she would have broke free and so saw those results because you could see there was a lot of emotional turmoil. And I saw this with so many patients. And over the years is that you know, there tends to be an emotional component tied to this. Now, I want to get to this with her. You know, she had a limiting belief or a belief around that, that like if she wasn't being a mom, she wasn't adding value.

Like she felt like if I wasn't constantly caring and tending to the needs of kids or other people that that her self-worth was gone. It affected her identity dramatically. And so I need to risk telling her, let's not. That's a false belief, the fact that all of your worth and value comes from taking care of kids that are under the age of 18. I'm like, your worth and value is so far beyond that in terms of, you know, you know, listen, you may have a gift of being a caring person and, and serving others and loving others, but I'm like, just find a way to take that same gifting you did with your kids.

And, and bless others in that same way other people. And I said in have a conversation with your daughter, bring this up that you want to get reconnected to her because you never brought it up, because you didn't want to burden her daughter with that either. So anyways, all that being said, and then I want to give you another example of this doctor day. This is for me personally, I had a limiting belief growing up that I wasn't smart. And here's why. When I was a freshman in high school, I was in freshman 101 freshman English class in high school and I had a teacher asked me to stay after and her name was Miss Noble, and I stayed after class. She said, Josh, would you stay after Stanford class?

And she said, Josh, she said, what? What do you want to do after high school? I said, well, I don't really want to be a doctor. And she literally laughed out loud. She goes, you know what, with your grades, you'll you'll never be a doctor. She said, my, my daughter had a 3.8 GPA and she barely got into at school at Ohio State. And by the way, this is really on my heart at the time because my mom had just fought cancer the year before, went through chemotherapy, everything else. And so I just was saying to myself, I want to help people like my mom.

And so she told me, and so I and so she said, listen, you're getting a D in this class. You got an F on this paper. She said, you need to try harder and I walked out of there and I just thought, and the thing I took away as a kid, it's, you know, we all translate things different way. But the story, the narrative I started telling myself was, well, I'm not smart. And then I went. Two weeks later, my mom brought me to see a medical doctor who diagnosed with ADHD, and they're talking about me like I'm not in the room.

And then I thought, well, gosh, not only am I not smart, I'm like, medically not smart. There's something actually wrong with me the way I learned in my brain. And so in high school, I just I really just stopped trying. Now, I did graduate high school with like a C minus GPA, like a two point low something, and I just graduated so my dad wouldn't get too mad at me. You know, it was kind of the the motivation and the purpose. and then I applied a lot of colleges got turned down,

Emotions and organ systems in Chinese medicine 26:00

but there's one college that I wanted to go to and they said, they said, you're not in, but if you come to summer school, you take all these classes and you average above a 3.0, we'll let you in. And I thought, okay, well, I don't want wanna be the kid that doesn't go to college and stays home and lives with his parents. So I went and I said, I'm going to take these summer school classes. Well, first class I had to take English 101 in college. So I go and I said, I'm really going to try, okay, I'm really going to try.

And I went, I got my first paper and I really tried. Well, a few days later, the teacher, her name was Miss Williams. She asked me to stay after class and I thought, oh no, not this again. And then she said to me, she goes, Josh, she goes, what do you want to do? She she goes, what's your major? You know what? What do you want to do with in college? And then once you graduate? And I said, well, I said, I, I'm really not sure I didn't pick a major. I really wasn't sure. And she said, well, you know what?

She said, I think you should consider becoming. Ay ay ay ay ay. English major, journalism major. She said you got the highest grade in the class. I can tell you're a really talented writer. And I said thank you. And I walked out and can I tell you, Dave, I really felt like at the time I had like a, like a memory transplant or a mindset transplant, like, I went from feeling like I was not smart at all my entire life to then feeling like, you know what, I can be great at something. I can be a great writer.

And it completely changed my entire future. And so I had this limitation, by the way. It was like an organ transplant, literally. I literally feel like, you know, it's like you take a diseased heart or liver and you, you get a new organ transplant. And it was that life giving to me. And there's a lot of people today, Dave, that are living with these false beliefs about themselves, the false beliefs about the world. And because of it, it's completely holding them back from living out their dreams, from healing, from being their best.

And by the way, like I went on, and when I say this, I don't say any of this to boast. I just want to give people an example of this. Like I went on to become a doctor. Yeah. I then went on to become, you know, go on Doctor Oz, like, you know, almost ten times and write seven books and some bestselling books and have, a supplement company that does you know, is over worth over $100 million a year. And I've been able to help transform, like, thousands of lives of people coming up to me saying, doctor, actually help me reverse my thyroid issue or my diabetes or whatever it is.

And here's. The thing. Yeah, people that know you now and never, would never know that you struggled with that. Right? And that's really the power of words, especially when you're young and especially from people we look up to like teachers, parents, which is the words that are spoken over us bring life or they can bring death. And so fortunately, you had that English teacher that took you aside and told you that. It's so important. And, you know, here's the thing I want to mention for a lot of people listening or let me go back to this, if I would have, if I would have stayed, if I would have continued believing that limiting belief, I wouldn't have done any of that.

I wouldn't have become a doctor. None of that would have happened. I wouldn't have written a book. I wouldn't have started a business. I wouldn't have done any of that. Married the woman of my dreams. None of it would have happened. And there's a lot of people listen to this podcast right now, and they have one single limiting belief that are holding them back from a complete breakthrough, a breakthrough in their relationships, a breakthrough in their business, a breakthrough in their health from one limiting beliefs.

And I do want to mention, that's why I wrote the book. The really the subtitle is How to Break Through these Limiting beliefs. And so I want to encourage everybody to check out and go to Amazon bookstores nationwide. The book is called Think This, Not That, and get the book. By the way, if you go to Josh acts.com, I also have a mindset masterclass and a workbook I'll give you for free. It's like over. It's a hundreds of dollars worth of value for free if you just. But if you just get the books, you can go to josh.com or any of these bookstores and get it.

And then you can go to Josh acts.com and get the free the freebies there. But again going back to this, I think there's a there's so many people who are living and this is true with health. It's like if you don't believe you can reverse your Hashimoto's thyroiditis or your, irritable bowel disease or your chronic back pain, you won't. Versus if you really continue to educate yourself with the stuff Doctor Dave is putting on, you really are able to create these new, empowering beliefs. You can experience a breakthrough.

There's a very specific process to do it. But all that being said, you really want to make sure that's something you really go forward to do because I really believe that's the, you know, this might be the thing you've been praying for. Just realizing I just got a I just got a breakthrough, that one belief. I want everyone to think about that right now. What is that one limiting belief right now? That false belief. Maybe you're maybe you're beating yourself up about something or you believe something falsely about a relationship.

Whatever it is, identify what those top 1 or 2 limiting beliefs were and then get my book and really work through how to overcome that. Yeah, and the great thing is, what we know about neuroscience is you can reshape your brain. So even though you have these limiting beliefs and perhaps you've seen the damage that they've caused, maybe in relationships, in your health, in different outcomes you've had at your work or business or whatever it is. you can reshape that. You can change those mindsets no matter how old you are, no matter you know how far gone or what diagnosis you got, you can reshape your mind and reshape your body.

This is what we teach here. This is what you know. Your book is helping. Helping, help people with. And then, of course, that interactive program is, you know, if you're dealing with any sort of health issue, I definitely would recommend go to Josh axe.com download and follow that program because he's going to walk you through it and also obviously read the book while you're doing that. It's just so powerful. Yeah. Well thanks so much, Doctor Dave. Again. I'm super excited about it. So, what else should we talk about?

Regenerative medicine. Yeah. Well, yeah. Some other. Yeah. Well, finally I want to talk about, you know, maybe some specific conditions, like, I know in Chinese medicine, they talk about the liver kind of holding on to anger and bitterness. Right. Of course. Liver is your primary detoxification organ. And literally almost every chronic health condition there's a liver component to it. Right. And so but there are other things like, you know, there's for example, brass cancer and different types of specific diseases.

Yeah. And there's thought to be certain limiting beliefs or certain kind of dominant fears or thoughts or anxieties that people have that are correlated with that. What have you found with your research? Yeah. So let's hit on the five, the five main according to to to ancient agent medicine. And so by the way you know there are some new medicines that more people are. It's funny, somebody asked me the other day if I'd heard of German New Medicine. And and the reality is I'm like, well, German new medicine.

I'm like, it's kind of a take on Chinese old medicine. But anyways, it's it's a little different. I've read about I understand it's a little different though, but, but there's the, you know, people in Asia, we'll talk about this for a long time. So here's the first one. So so so the first one is correlated. Let's start with liver. As you said, if somebody has gallbladder disease, if somebody has actually even high cholesterol there's a number of things. But if you have any issue related to liver, gallbladder cholesterol you're not detoxifying.

Well, certain types of cancer, it tends to be tied to a specific type of emotion that's related to anger. And and so and here's how this works. And let me let me jump out to another organ system because people will really understand this one. We know if your body gets in a fight or flight state, you have fear. That's the emotion. Fear. Your adrenal gland. Start pumping, pumping out adrenaline and stress hormones like cortisol. Okay, so we know that for a fact. but the same happens in every organ system.

No matter what emotion you have, it affects a different organ system, negative and positive. So with the liver and gallbladder it's anger, frustration, frustration, impatience, resentment and bitterness. And then actually unforgiveness impacts two systems. So, so the liver and the immune system. So so all that being said, if you have a lot of this is like, why do we call someone an angry drunk? Well, well, alcohol causes liver toxicity and cirrhosis too much. I mean it's a these are very tied together.

So one, we know if you got a lot of anger built up Unforgiven is towards others and you're I'm. They say that what do they say if you're harboring unforgiveness. It's like drinking poison. What's poison? It's a toxin. What's it affecting? It's affecting the liver. So all of these words are there there for a reason. And so that's the first one. If you've got any liver gallbladder issue anger that's going to affect that system. The next one let's talk about the adrenals again. And by the way the adrenals are also in this system very tied to your reproductive health okay.

If people are living in a fight or flight state it's going to affect the adrenal glands. Now, what happens then in Chinese medicine, by the way, is sometimes you have a secondary organ system that's affected. So with the liver, if somebody has a lot of anger, the next area will affect is the heart and then cause the blood pressure to to go up okay. So that's the secondary system that's affected with the adrenal glands. The secondary systems are affected or to the reproductive system or the thyroid.

In women it tends to be the thyroid causing hypothyroidism. In men it tends to not be the thyroid, it tends to be the testes. And testosterone. and so most women with thyroid issues there is an adrenal component. That's why also when you when you look at a lot of the remedies, they tend to be a lot of adaptogens like ashwagandha, which we know is an adrenal herb but also supports the thyroid as I know. Have you written about extensively in your in your, in your articles and newsletter. And so but similar thing for men it's low testosterone.

If men are not unplugging relaxing now there's other things to build testosterone. But that is a really also still a very key component there. of that. So again, we know that that the emotions of fear and this could be

Neuroplasticity, family patterns, and healing the next generation 36:00

fear of failure, fear of disappointing your parents, fear of letting others down. If you're a big people pleaser, there's a lot of fear of wanting to make everyone around you happy. Fear that you're going to fail in your career so you don't write the book. You don't launch the business. You don't change jobs or careers, right? So that fear really these these emotions build up like toxins in your organ systems. The next one is your heart. And so if you have this tends to be very relational. If you've got really a lot of relationship turmoil that affects your heart, okay.

If you feel disconnect, if you don't feel connected in a sense of community, if you don't have a community and you're isolated and feel shame of those sort of issues, it really affects the heart. And then the heart. If there's heart issues that can also affect the thyroid or the neurological system. but but there's there's a big effect there. And so, so, so the heart and also think about your heart. If you have a lot of anxiety is one of the main emotions there as well. That can then affect the blood pressure.

So we know emotions affect your organ systems. And then a couple more, the next is the immune system. And the immune system is mostly tied to your lungs and your colon, your colon, where almost all of your probiotics, the microbes in your body live. And so when you have, and this is tied to things that have happened in the past, okay. So if somebody has had something happen in the past, could be physical abuse, could be sexual trauma, could be you always wanted to do something, but you have a lot of regret for something you just never did.

And if you're still if you have things that happened years ago that still bother you today, that is shutting down your immune system, it's weakening your immune system. And so you really need to move on from those things I mentioned earlier. Unforgiveness affects two systems. Unforgiveness is resentment or anger or something about something in the past. So it's affecting both the liver and the immune system which unforgiveness of all it's known that it's the it's the chief of all negative emotions that will cause cancer, because cancer is primarily an issue of immunity and toxicity.

Yeah. You know, I talked to my friends over at Hope for cancer in Mexico. Yeah, where I've sent a lot of people. And one of the biggest things they do, you know, obviously they detox people. They've got them in hyperbaric chambers and doing enemas and IVs, but they say one of the most important things they can do within that first week is help them work through unresolved bitterness and unforgiveness. So good. Yeah. So good. And those people are, you know, a at Oasis or that there. Can. Hope for.

A yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. So good. and then the last system is this is the digestive system. And this is really correlated with your pancreas and your stomach and upper and your in part of your, your intestines as well. And so if you have a lot of worry, think about if somebody worries a lot, they'll say, oh like I have an upset stomach can actually cause digestive disturbances. And so, that, that that's a major issue if you worry a lot and you're always you're just always worrying or here's another one obsessing or your or control.

If you always want to try and control things that are not in your control, that will make your digestive system sick. And you've seen this, right? Like like you and I both taking care of patients with irritable bowel disease, Crohn's, colitis, IBS, and what will cause them to be just as inflamed as eating dairy or gluten is. If they have a lot of worry or they're going through a stressful time in life. Right. So so there is absolutely this brain body, this physiological connection that a lot of people aren't aware of enough.

And it's that if you're if you're if you really want to truly heal whatever condition you're dealing with, you got to go full at it with diet and the other natural remedies and also your emotions. And so if you are struggling with unforgiveness, forgive, move on. And then now focus on the future because that's all about that. You know, if you're struggling with the heart, the main emotion to heal the heart is joy. If you can get joyful singing, dancing, those sort of things actually help build joy.

Part of, gratitude is incredibly important, because it is for really healing all systems. So all that being said, you want to take whatever. Like if you're hopeless, start finding hope and build your faith, right? So so you want to both let go of the negative and then start fostering the opposite emotion to help that organ regenerate and heal more quickly. Yeah, it's such powerful information. And you know, we know that when we're fearful, you had talked about how we get all these stress hormones and those activate the amygdala and the limbic system, and then we get more neuroplasticity there.

And that inhibits what we call our frontal cortex. And that's what allows us to kind of dampen fear and think more complex thoughts, like you had to get out of limbic and into your frontal cortex in order to say, hey, I'm going to write a book about this. I had these limiting beliefs. I'm going to write a book. So you got proactive. That's the frontal cortex. But you had to dampen that limbic system, that amygdala firing, or you would have never got there. Right. And that's exactly the cool thing about neuroplasticity.

And this is really important because we can also pass this down to our kids. You know, you've got two young daughters, I've got I've got four young kids. And what's interesting is that my wife, for example, she grew up and, by a single mom, she was raised by single mom. Her dad, who now is a part of her life, was not a part of her life. Right. And so she always struggled with kind of this fear that I'm not lovable. Right. And my daughter, joyful, was five and a half. She will ask me. I'm I snuggle her, you know, tell her how much I love her every single day.

I'm here every day telling her this and she'll ask me, like at times, maybe when I'm upset at her or, you know, when I when, you know, send her to her room or perhaps I'm giving somebody else, one of my other kids attention, she'll come up and say, do you love me? Right? And she has no reason to think that. But perhaps she got that same insecurity from her mom. And for me, I struggled. I always struggled with fear of failure and my and what's interesting is like my biggest nightmare. This is funny, but I, I will dream sometimes that I have to go take a test.

And I've never been to the class. Like, I don't even know what the material. And I've got to go in and take this test, and I'm like, I wake up in like a hot, a cold sweat because I'm like, I'm going to fail. I don't know what's on this test, what's interesting is my son, he's doing this program, Duolingo, both of my twin boys, they do this program Duolingo. And, they're learning Spanish and they're they're learning it really, really quickly. It's it's, you know, they're doing it online. And, he told me he's had nightmares that he's failed because, like, every day they're trying to, like, pass two segments and they're like super driven, goal driven, kind of high achieving boys.

And he's had nightmares that he didn't pass Duolingo. Like, he just told me that last week. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Like he got that for me. Right. And so. What's crazy? And I just want to mention this and feel free to share your thoughts on this. But, you know, as I have really studied cellular medicine, how to heal the cells, how to regenerate and create a new thyroid. So people are completely reversing these conditions. You know, I, you know, this is epigenetic. I mean, it's crazy when you look at the epigenetics, which for anyone listening, I mean, the research is undeniable and incredible that what the parents do affects the kids.

I mean, we know it from the basic standpoint of, you know, pregnant mothers and the health of their gut microbiome being passed on to the kids. Well, it's far more than that. I mean, our cells have memories. Okay. Now, now your kids aren't going to remember, you know, what your your memories at all. But our cells do have memories that are passed on via DNA in our, in our, our these epigenetics. And so some of those same emotions and those thoughts in a way, are going to creep back into them.

Closing thoughts and resources 44:00

So the more that you can heal not only your gut, not only your heart, not only your organs, by eating a healthy diet, the more that you can actually retrain your brain, even when you're like, like in your adult years, it actually helps your kids. I mean, it's just it's amazing. Yeah. You know, I just think I'm so grateful I've been able to work through this and to continue to work through, you know, my own insecurities. And my wife has as well, so we can identify them in our kids. And really speaking to them and really help.

Yeah, in a sense, give them this advanced knowledge that, hey, this is something you're probably going to struggle with throughout the rest of your life. But I did two and here are tools, right? Here's things that you can do right to help overcome that and kind of create that neuro plastic change. Like I said, getting out of that limbic system as quickly as possible. You know, sometimes we have anxieties. We have fears. Part of being a human right. But I the more awareness we have being able to identify it and then kind of switching our mindset and saying, okay, well what can I do about this? Right.

Like how can I, how can I reduce this tension? And what do I actually have control of that I can do right now? You know, like with my kid, with my with my sons, I coach them in sports and they're great athletes. And I always tell them, here's what we control, like your effort and your attitude, right? Give all your effort and always have a good attitude. Right. That's all you can control. You can't control if we win or lose. But if you have a great effort and attitude, you're going to have fun and that's going to give you the best chance to win.

And so it's kind of like that we want to have we want to have awareness and then figure out like, hey, what can we actually control in this situation to give us the best chance at having a positive outcome, like you were talking about? If somebody what you said earlier, that was like what every doctor should be telling their patient, it's like, okay, well, you have a 50% chance of healing this. If, you know, you just stay where you're at right now. But if you, you know, work on your mindset, you have hope and you believe, you know, you believe this and you're praying over this and you're following these strategies that gives you an 80, 90% chance to heal, right?

And now that gives you hope. That gives you, you know, it's and, gives you enthusiasm. Right. And, and a game plan to attack it. Well, and I want to say this Dr. Dave, if and I and I want to see how much you agree with this if, if, if we had the average person with type two diabetes going and see a conventional medical doctor. What I believe their chances are of reversing type two diabetes are if they're just following what that doctor telling them to do and believing what they're tell trying to do.

It's close to 0%, right? Okay. Yeah. If they would come to you and I. And by the way, I don't I'm not trying to be boastful here, but I think it's about 90%. Yeah. Type two diabetes average person comes in Dr. Dave and I work with them and they follow the exact plan we give them. I just and my point is and there's, there's there's a combination of two things. They're those other doctors, either they're totally unaware or they don't believe it can happen. It's a limiting belief. Most doctors have you and I believe with absolute certainty, no, of course this can heal because we've seen it done thousands of times, type two diabetes.

And so and we're going to give you the exact plan to follow. So it's I mean that's the reality that we're, you know, we're living in today even with the whole medical system. So yeah. Absolutely. Well, this has been a great interview. We could talk about this for hours. you know, really appreciate it, guys. The book is mindset as medicine or know it. The book is think this not that. Right. But it's all about mindset as medicine. Think this, not that. And you can also get the goodies at Joshaxe.com.

So guys check that out. Dr. Axe thanks again for your time. Any last words inspiration here for our audience. Yeah just a few more. Number one Dr. Dave, I'm gonna have you on my podcast here soon as well. So hey, if anyone has a listen to my podcast, encourage you subscribe there as well. I'm also on YouTube and I think you'll have we've I've had some great guests on there, everyone from Tim Tebow to Carrie Underwood, to brilliant minds like, Dr. David Jockers here and some other great, great minds in natural medicine.

And you can follow me on social media. And, I just want to say last thing. Just remember this. Like, you don't need to change everything, but just one, one dietary change thing about if you just change breakfast at the 30 or diet if you just change your mindset. I mean, that could totally create a breakthrough for your life. So. And encourage you. The books think this, not that. And and then I appreciate everybody listening. And Dr. David again, appreciate you man, for for sharing your wisdom and being and being a great friend for so many years.

And I'm excited to get together in person. I got a few events I'll let you know about here in the future. Would love to connect with you. and, thanks so much again. Yeah. Sounds great. Thanks so much. Josh.