That’s Not Aging. That’s Inflammation.

Inflammation vs. Aging 0:00

inflamed, but what I do have is, and they'll go through this list of symptoms, got some joint pain, got some aches and pains. When I wake up in the morning, I have this stiffness, takes me five, 10 minutes to get my feet on the ground and really get moving. My body needs a moment, or they'll say I've got brain fog, frequent headaches. They'll say when they eat something, something's off. They're just not digesting their food anymore. They're gassy or bloated or issues like that. And so, or their mood is off.

Something's off and they don't quite know how to describe it. And so typically when it's women who are sharing this with me and they're in their 40s, and they're like, I guess all of this is just aging. I guess that's what this is. And I always look at them and say, that's not aging. That's inflammation. Welcome to the Natural Heart Doctor show. I'm cardiologist Dr. Jack Wolfson. Heart problems don't come from a drug deficiency. They come from root causes where cardiologists never look. On this show, I sit down with experts who challenge the mainstream rhetoric and talk about what actually builds a heart built to last.

Get ready for a dose of cardiac longevity. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Natural Heart Doctor show. I'm the host cardiologist, Dr. Jack Wolfson of Natural Heart Doctor, and I want to jump right into it right now because I've got a good friend of mine who is about to be publishing your first book, Dr. Shivani. Yes, this is it. The inflammation code. There it is. Absolutely gorgeous. The inflammation code by Dr. Shivani Gupta. Shivani, let's jump into inflammation real quick and then we can weave in kind of your backstory and how you got into this.

You can tell the story of your father and all the things that are really inside of the book. I know as a cardiologist, inflammation is bad. All cardiologists know inflammation is bad, but all they have are statin drugs and other pharmaceuticals to suppress the inflammation. So break it down for us. What is inflammation? So, you know, so many of us know what acute inflammation is. It's when we get hurt. When your elbow hurts, your knee hurts, you've got this acute pain in the body. Your body is sending you the signals, swelling, heat, that acute pain.

And then what most of us don't recognize is this little insidious thing called chronic low-grade persistent inflammation. That's what we call it in our field. And when people come to me, they usually say, you know what? I'm not inflamed, but what I do have is, and they'll go through this list of symptoms. Got some joint pain, got some aches and pains. When I wake up in the morning, I have this stiffness. Takes me five, 10 minutes to get my feet on the ground and really get moving. My body needs a moment.

Dr. Shivaniu2019s Backstory and the Inflammation Code 2:51

Or they'll say I've got brain fog, frequent headaches. They'll say when they eat something, something's off. They're just not digesting their food anymore. They're gassy or bloated or issues like that. And so, or their mood is off, something's off and they don't quite know how to describe it. And so typically when it's women who are sharing this with me and they're in their forties, and they're like, I guess all of this is just aging. I guess that's what this is. And I always look at them and say, that's not aging.

That's inflammation. It's inflammation that's driving up the symptoms of aging. And you're just going to chalk it up to aging and give up and assume there's no sovereignty or tasks or homework that you have to do here to get out of this phase. And so I really look at chronic inflammation as this forest fire inside of us wreaking havoc, causing damage. And we're just not paying any attention to those fire alarms that are going off. And so when I wrote the book, I sat there and thought, how can I show everyone that this ancient Ayurvedic lifestyle is anti-inflammatory?

And it showed us a way to really live in alignment with nature, use nature's tools so that we can win at our health. I love it. That's a great intro. And I love the way you pronounce Ayurveda because I'm a Chicago guy, right? So I sound like a white guy from Chicago saying Ayurveda, you know, so I like the way you pronounce it that much better. And I would love to dive deeper into that. But this concept of inflammation, I love how you are basically saying that pretty much all symptoms that people have that those symptoms are all linked to inflammation.

And then of course, as we get to the root cause of the inflammation, that's gonna be the key strategy to optimal longevity and really optimizing how people feel. Correct. Yeah, you know, I mean, you're a cardiologist, so you know, oftentimes we show up at the doctor's office. And we by then, it's a stack up of issues. It's hey, I don't feel good. Something's wrong. You do that blood work. I'm sure the majority of people are walking into an office like yours or practitioner office where high cholesterol A1C is on the rise, HSCRP is high.

Everything's trending in the wrong direction, but the solutions we're given are like, here's a statin, you'll be fine. It's like, well, where's the conversation around inflammation's the root cause? And there are big lifestyle shifts we can make, or even small lifestyle shifts that have huge effects. A few simple diet changes, we can win at inflammation. Shifting sleep. Sleep is a big one. Exercise and movement. Are we really addressing where we stand on our own obesity and our own health? And so that's where, coming from a family of all diabetics, I realized, okay, inflammation's a root cause.

We're just not addressing it in a really holistic or global way. And that's why we're not getting the results we want. Because when I go to the doctor, they're usually like, take an NSAID, you'll be fine. And I'm like, that's not an answer as to what I'm going to do to really reverse this. Yes. And so why don't we, why don't we go reverse it from here and let's talk about what led to the writing of the book, the inflammation code. You're a brilliant woman. You've spoken to a lot of people, a lot of different stages.

You've got a wonderful supplement company and we'll touch on that in a little bit as well. But you kind of could have gone in any direction about a title for your book and an area of focus. So maybe let's talk about a little bit of your backstory and then how do we come up with inflammation is kind of this big push and message because I certainly agree with it. But let's talk about where it started from. For sure. So I grew up in Houston, Texas to my parents who are new immigrants from India. They came with nothing and they worked really hard to build the American dream.

And so growing up, we ate a lot of McDonald's, a lot of junk food as we were running around from sports to dance classes. And I somehow was always the sickly kid. And probably the diet we were on wasn't contributing, plus a lot of stress, a lot of travel. So I would go to the pediatrician and she would just write me a script for antibiotics. We'd fill it. I'd take it. And then by the time I was about five, every year we started going to India to see my grandparents and my cousins. And if you've ever traveled to a country like India, you'll know like one bite of chutney and you've got Montezuma's revenge, India style, you're down for the count and sick.

And so I learned early on, you have to be so careful when you travel, you have to be so guarded. But I probably took really strong antibiotics all the way through middle school, high school and beyond. And so it took till I got to college for me to finally say, you know what? Maybe this is not working. All we do is go to the doctor and take scripts, and I get better, but I still have some symptoms. Versus whenever I'd get sick and I was inside one of my grandma's houses, she would reach for the spice cabinet.

She'd be like, turmeric and cumin and all these spices. I'll heal your symptoms. You don't need to go take those serious drugs. And so I just grew up in two worlds. I grew up where spices can do the job and antibiotics can do the job. You can run to one kind of doctor or you can go to the naturopath. And then what was also interesting was every time I'd land in India, something would happen to one of my grandparents. It would be someone needs a quadruple bypass, there's a stroke, a heart attack, a leg amputation.

And I kept thinking, okay, so I'm a sickly kid who's got major problems and these people called the grandparent generation are struggling at their last quarter of life with really serious disease. That's gonna happen to my parents' generation and then mine. So as a smart girl, I looked at that situation and said, something has to change. Societally, we are working really hard to earn money and build financial foundations, success for our families and raise good kids.

Food Timing, Circadian Rhythm, and Ayurvedic Eating 8:51

You're telling me that last quarter or third of life is spent in hospitals and doctors offices, taking 20 medications. We're still sicker and we're still walking down that line towards death. in a really painful way. And that's what shifted my mindset. I said, well, then what's the root cause? We have to address all the root causes. And it's inflammation. With diabetes, it's a lot of times our obesity. It's our stress. And that's what my family struggles with. So when I went to write the book, I could have called it The Ayurveda Lifestyle, How to Win at Vibrant Health with Ayurveda.

But truly, at the core of it, I want to show people inflammation is the root cause. it will cause devastation to you and your family. But you could have stopped that process so much earlier. Now, is it easy? No, I get it. Living an anti-inflammatory lifestyle, as you know, takes commitment. It takes really restructuring your life. But we can all choose where we sit on that gradient. And that's the whole point of the book is learn completely different mindset and approach to your lifestyle and preventive health plan.

And when you do that, you can get a completely different result. So the moment I took myself off of those hamster wheels of life and said, no, we're going to do this differently. Then inside of my household, we live a very non-toxic lifestyle. We're very worried about, I worry about our environmental toxin burden and how is that contributing to our inflammation. We are eating fresh organic food that's cooked in this home with love. Because how else can I actually provide nutrition and nutrient density to my family?

I'm pretty committed. I'm obsessed with sleep and sleeping on time and whatever it takes to get that circadian sleep to win it inflammation. And then it goes on and on. But I taught those six pillars of Ayurvedic lifestyle that I thought here in the West, we could easily implement in our lives in a doable way and thus win it inflammation. Yeah, and I like to think about the whole process as a tree. And again, this analogy has been used. Metaphor has been used very often, right? How like the top of the tree are all the leaves and the branches.

And those are all of our signs and symptoms of disease. And that could be insomnia, fatigue, weight. It could be high blood pressure. It could be diabetes. And then we've got the root cause of everything. And in the middle is the metrics. And my favorite metric, just like you're talking here, is inflammation. measuring those markers of inflammation. And I know you talk about those in the book and about the measurement, and I love the measurements, the metrics, just like if you look at your gas tank and you see how much gas you have in there, that's your metric, or you look at your financial statements, or you look at if you're a business owner, your profit and loss statements.

These are all things that we would look at to determine our status, and I love the idea of measuring the metrics. Tell me about, but let's, let's kind of hone in on the food and maybe some of your favorite food strategies. And again, I love the spices. I have an ebook that I wrote years ago, 20 spices. for better blood pressure. Like just that alone and how like those spices really are all these natural compounds that are natural ACE inhibitors, natural angiotensin receptor blockers, natural beta blockers, calcium channel blockers.

So tell me about some of your favorite foods for inflammation and maybe two or three top spices. Sure. So I would say on the food side, I did a whole chapter on food, and I talked about how to eat and when to eat, not just what to eat, because we're living in a moment where people get pretty extreme on the what to eat side. There's the whole carnivore crew, there's the raw vegan crew, and then there's everyone in between those spectrums. And so it's so interesting to watch what diets are working for some people, what aren't.

I find a lot of times when we are in a health crisis, We really do need to bring in those very mono diets and those very strict diets. And then we need to see what is our actual lifestyle diet going to be that actually holds those results. We can't just completely step off those plans. But in IRB, though, we talk about a more moderate diet. We talk about protein and fiber, of course, and some healthy carbs. But whatever is that moderate diet that keeps you in your zones of health and wellness, But we also talk a lot about how you eat and when you eat because a lot of times nowadays, people's health and food practices are so far gone from what they used to be.

In the ancient traditions, it was about community and gathering and sitting around a fire. And when you ate, you focused on the food. And nowadays, the habits are, we're eating on the run, we're eating out of wrappers, we're eating garbage food that's not even food. And I know you and I align a lot on the topics of like, eat real food, eat real things that will benefit you. So if we're going to eat on the go, we're not even going to be in rest and digest to absorb those benefits of that food. If we're eating off schedule, let's say you're eating super late in the night or super early in the morning, and not when your digestive fires are strong, then you're not going to win.

And so in Ayurveda, we teach we all are living on the circadian clock. We are all circadian beings. What's cool is modern science has proven that the circadian clock is true and every cell has a circadian clock. But Ayurveda came up with this concept of circadian rhythm and teaches it to such a depth that Ayurveda says that when it's 10 to 2 on the circadian clock, that is when the sun is highest in the sky and we call it the pittha time of day. And so during that time at night, 10 to 2, you're meant to sleep.

And that's when your fires come out to clear the lymphatic system, glymphatic system and inflammation. So sleep is a big topic I love teaching about because otherwise we're not going to win at our health. But then during the day, we teach that 10 to 2 on that clock is when we're meant to eat our biggest meal of the day. So it kind of fits with a lot of the big intermittent fasting conversations we have around middle of the day is when you eat. But 10 to 2 is when you can eat your harder to digest foods.

Maybe it's nuts or seeds or red meat, whatever is hard to digest for your body. Maybe it's cauliflower or broccoli. Like for some of us, it's just different vegetables. But that's when your fire is strongest to absorb the benefits from that food. So we teach that breakfast should be smaller and warmer if you have breakfast. And dinner is actually meant to be lighter. It's meant to be a soup or stew, something that's faster to digest for the body so that three hours before bedtime, it's finished digesting.

And then when you go to bed, all processes are for cleaning and clearing and healing the body. They're not there to just deal with your dinner. And so that's how we think about food from the Ayurvedic perspective. And then spices is a whole other topic. I'm so glad you wrote a spice guide. That's so beautiful that you validated spices in that way. In Ayurveda, we teach that the super spices are so powerful. I have a whole chapter on cumin and coriander, cinnamon, fennel, fenugreek. I mean, we're obsessed with that ginger.

And then my whole PhD topic was turmeric, so I can talk a lot into turmeric. What if your heart could actually get better, not just managed? What if your recovery didn't depend on adding more prescription drugs, but on finally understanding why your heart is struggling in the first place? I'm Dr. Jack Wolfson, cardiologist at Natural Heart Doctor, and we believe heart disease isn't random, it's a message. It's a message that inflammation, toxins, nutrient deficiencies, or lifestyle stressors are driving your symptoms beneath the surface.

That's why our approach goes far beyond the band-aid, typical cardiology approaches. What we do is if we want to prevent, treat, and reverse cardiovascular disease, we help you develop a natural evidence-based plan to help your heart recover. So if you're ready to move past fear, past confusion, and past just take this and wait, you deserve real answers.

Spices, Turmeric, and Supplementation 17:00

Visit naturalheartdoctor.com forward slash discovery and get the answers you've been searching for. the answers that can help you achieve your best heart health. Your next chapter with a simple, free discovery call should start now. What about, because now that we're talking about it, there's something, and I think it is of, I guess, Indian descent. Amchur, is it? Amchur, yes, mango powder. Yes, the mango powder. And I love that. I love the taste of it. I love adding it in. And just for anyone who, and obviously people who are going to be watching this, they're going to be kind of on our line of thinking, but just in case maybe they're sharing it with someone else who's like, oh, you know, spices or medicinal.

This is all in PubMed.gov. You know, you go onto the medical literature and that's where you and I are spending so much time. We're in that medical literature side of things and it's, The wisdom that our ancestors knew for thousands of years, they knew it naturally and they didn't need to study it. It was just obvious to them. But the fact that this stuff has all been studied, it's all been researched. And when people say, oh, you know, turmeric, you know, whatever, curcumin, and you're like, oh, there's only 5,000 studies, you know, about this.

in mainstream, it shuts people up pretty quickly. But it's beautiful, too, just adding on all these different exotic spices and flavors. And when you eat them down and you're just kind of maybe to invoke a Hebrew phrase, lechayim, you know, to life, How amazing that is. Give me, and I apologize to kind of globally put this in together and not know your particular heritage language. Kudrati would be one. Speak Hindi. Because I'm from North India. So Hindi and Hindu. Yeah. Okay. So in Hindi, how do we say like, if you and I are having a meal or we're having a beer and we click the gluten-free beer and we say like to life or, you know, cheers, what is that in Hindi?

Oh my gosh, we don't really drink, so. Well, anything, okay, what if we're heading, okay, we got a glass of turmeric tea, your favorite herbal turmeric tea, and then we click the glasses and we say. I mean musty, like must means happy, so I always define, like my younger son is just pure must, pure joy. I would call it like musty, like that happiness moment, yeah. All right. Maybe that's more of a guy thing, man, where we're like, we're, we're, we're sitting in the pub together and we click and in German, in Germany, when I was in Germany for a Oktoberfest years ago, right?

It's like everyone's Prost, Prost, you know, Nostrovia in, uh, in Russian, whatever. So I, well, this is all obviously fantastic with all the different dishes and, and all these things. Indian food. Hindu food, as I know from my medical training, I know I told you this story when it was kind of like me and the Hindu guy and the Pakistani guy and he got me the Jewish guy. And we're in this kind of meeting of the UN Cardiology Fellowship, but every Friday we had ethnic food day and they would bring in the trays of Indian food.

And I mean, just like endless, I would get like this massive plate of rice and naan and samosa. and just different gravies we're putting on top of it. And it's amazing. I didn't have a heart attack and diet at that moment. I know it's tough. You know, I think it's a big part of why in India we have such a high prevalence of diabetes and heart disease. We eat a diet that's way too heavy in carbs, refined sugar, refined carbs. fried food, sweets, like we love all of it. And I had to learn very early on.

By the time I hit high school, I was like, I have rules. I don't eat any of those foods. Those foods are poison. So I really had to reprogram my own mind. And my family has a tough time with it, because I'll go home to Houston. They're like, just one roti, just one branta, just one. I'm like, just one piece of poison. And they're like, that's so obnoxious. You don't have to be like that. And I'm like, well, look around. You're all sitting here at A1Cs of nine. You're all sitting here with now those advanced stages of diabetes, all the diseases, everyone's got a cancer diagnosis now.

I'm like, what are you guys doing? You have to change the behavior. So I think there's an updating and modernizing that still has to happen in the Indian culture. It is happening, I would say, since pandemic. And so there are a lot of nutritionists out of India who are like, look, our lentils are good, but no white rice, no bread made out of white flour. You can limit that, guys. Let's bring in the tofu. Let's bring in high protein. So I think a lot of work still has to be done there, but at least we've started with awareness.

So everyone's healthy, but they're miserable because you took away the rice. I know it's tough. It's tough. I'm gluten-free, so I end up eating some of the rice that won't eat the breads. But yeah, it's not easy. It's a big shift, and it's at least not accepted on the elder generation level. My generation is definitely shifting. People are eating meat more, eggs more, protein more. It's a very protein-forward society nowadays that we live in. There's an awareness there. We're talking so much about the science of it.

That's actually where I think super spices has such a powerful role, is as we're going so protein forward, at least the super spices bring in variety, a lot of nutrient density, a lot of those benefits of plant phytochemical nutrients that we used to get. So that antioxidant benefit, anti-inflammatory benefit, in case you are very pro-protein and pro-meat, then at least in that diet, you're going to get all the benefit of the plants, but through the spices. which is easier. Cumin seeds, I'm sure is a spice I never get to talk about.

We use asafoetida or hing. That's a very powerful one for gut. Cumin seeds are amazing. Coriander is a heavy metal detoxer to utilize ginger. It's so digestive supportive. It's going to help the gut and gut digestive fire. And then you know my favorite is turmeric. My whole PhD dissertation was turmeric. But back in the day when I did that PhD, it was between seven and eight, maybe seven and 10,000 scientific studies in PubMed. Now we're at over 17,000 scientific papers and we have double-blind placebo control trials for turmeric for so many different issues in the body.

And so I like to highlight for people that when it comes to turmeric, there is the raw turmeric that so many of us use. Then you can dry it into the spice, and that dried turmeric is a more concentrated version. But what most people don't realize is out of the entire turmeric plant, only three to five percent of it is the curcuminoids. And those curcuminoids are the most effective part of the plant at reducing inflammation. It's a powerful antioxidant, powerful immune support. It's antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal.

And so I like to take that three to five percent and extract it at the highest potency in proportion to mother nature. And that's really the magic spot is in supplements, we can play a lot of games around how we extract things and how we pull things out and how to do things in the most inexpensive way possible just to sell a product. But there's also an entire group of people like you and I who actually build supplements for purity, potency, efficacy to drive a result because we actually want to see people get better.

And so I've always called on you and I'm like, hey, Jack, I'm dealing with this right now. Tell me what to take. And I take your products because I want to know who I'm talking to when it comes to the foods that I'm going to ingest. And to me, supplements are just a deeper version of food in a more potent way to drive a result. So I'm a big fan of turmeric because of its anti-inflammatory antioxidant properties. And over and above what we would get in food because, I mean, really, yes, you can season different meats and stuff like that with your turmeric.

I mean, obviously, turmeric is the main ingredient in curry and curry dishes. And obviously we can make those super healthy. We can make them questionable. But then where does supplementation kind of fit in on top of that? Because you and I are speaking the same language, of course, and that's why we're talking right now. Because it is this concept of eating what I say, you know, behind me, even my mantra, you know, eat well, live well, think well. and you're talking about the sleep, you're talking about sunshine, you're talking about movement, physical activity, you're talking about community and relationships and fostering all those things that are so critical.

What do we use to decide when we go to add in a curcumin supplement like you have at your company? You know, I think it comes down to how are you feeling and where are you seeing your health going? Is it going in the right direction or the wrong direction? In any given year, we could be on the right track doing the great things and then something comes in and throws a wedge in the system.

Gut Health, Curcumin, and Mental Inflammation 26:30

For me, 2025 was the year of mold. Discovered mold in my blood testing, then discovered it in the house, then got even worse symptoms in the summer, had to hire a whole new team, fully remediated again, mold dog, mold testing, mold remediation. That's when I called you. I was like, hey doc, could you use some more support here? I need like every tool from every friend that'll start to support this body to think and work really well. And so I think we all have years like that, moments like that, or trajectories.

So like I mentioned, in my family, it's a setup. Like literally everyone I know, and I can see it in my current generation of younger cousins, everyone slowly, weight creeps up, blood work trends in the wrong direction, gets hard to lose the weight, lives become more and more stressful, everyone's got their kids and responsibilities, careers getting more intense, and we're literally following the same pattern. I've seen this pattern generation after generation. Where does it lead? Diabetes, heart disease, and then all the after effects of diabetes.

And so assuming all of us are, I wouldn't say all of us, many of us are on that track, I think it's important to understand early on, when do we need to pull back and say, hey, I'm not on the right track here. I need to change it. And that's where ancient wisdom comes in. Ancient wisdom says, look, you have the ability to live on nature's clock. That's your circadian clock. You have the ability to know your elemental design or constitution and design a blueprint around how you manage your health and your body.

You can use super spices. You can shift your diet. You can also understand where your gut digestive fire needs to be amped up and supported. We call it UGNI. Where do we need to really support it and build it stronger so we have that metabolism that we want to have? And then finally, where do we need to address stress? Because in the book, I wrote the whole book and was so excited to teach it to the world. And at the very end, I thought, you know, if we don't address stress, we will have caused the inflammation physically anyway.

And we were doing all the work to win at it. I do a lot of work to win at inflammation. I exercise well, eat well, all those things. But if I'm going to sit there and be in my sympathetic nervous system and stressed 24 seven, I will still lose at the battle called inflammation. And so I called that chapter mental inflammation to really highlight for us. And that term came to me and I was like, that's it. Our mental inflammation and that mental load is killing us and causing this physical inflammation.

And so for all those reasons, I take turmeric because I've done enough research on this one ingredient to know that it is such a beautiful insurance plan for me and for all the people who I work with. to at least mitigate that baseline low grade inflammation that is a culprit. And then once we are feeling better, we have less of those aches and pains, less of those symptoms, then we can go after building a great lifestyle. One of the ways that I look at the way the body gets damaged is when we have all these toxins coming in, you're talking about the mold mycotoxins.

There's also bacterial toxins that come from a water damaged home, which we believe is affecting the majority of people, let alone people around the world. Forget about it how people live in that. And all of the toxins, and then yeah, you get the plastics and the phthalates and the parabens and the pesticides, it all damages the gut microbiome that leads to intestinal hyperpermeability. maybe touch on some of the literature on curcumin and curcumin supplementation even and the gut microbiome as kind of healing that particular area and once you heal the gut microbiome I think in so many ways and you maintain it that way that it just now it seeps into the body where everything just starts to repair from there and like this ripple effect.

for sure. So we have in the literature a lot of great science on curcumin for what you just talked about. One, we know that it's antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal. So if we have these pathogens and things in the body that don't belong, curcumin knows how to clean house. So I think of it as this ultimate janitor. It goes in the system. If there's malignant cells, if there's cells that need to go, that needed to have cell apoptosis, cell death, curcumin creates that and gets them out of there. Then it goes after senolytic cells, zombie cells, which are cells that are damaged, that are knocking into other cells, causing them to become zombie cells.

And then when we get to the gut, curcumin does help with healing up that gut barrier lining that you spoke about, but it also helps get rid of bacteria that aren't good while leaving our keystone bacteria in place. So it's anti-candida, anti-age pylori. It has these very positive effects on the gut. And then also is beneficial for anti-aging. So when it comes to sirtuins, AMPK pathways when it comes to our telomeres, elongating the telomeres. And then like I mentioned, it reverses those oxidative species that are causing oxidation in the system in the first place.

I happen to love that it supports neurocognitive as well. So neuroinflammation, neurogenesis, we want more brain cells, mitogenesis, we want more mitochondria. And then it also helps repair cellular damage and helps repair our DNA. Which is a big deal. So from a global sense, you were talking about, look, when you heal the gut, you're really healing everything. In curcumin's case, it's this powerful tool from Mother Nature. The body knows how to receive it and utilize it. It's adaptogenic in that way.

And as an adaptogen comes into the system, the body says, you know what, we need this first for these big pains and aches and pains. Next, we're going to go after the medium problems, next after the small problems. And then it just keeps doing that work. And then it becomes a protector in the system because it reverses those oxidative species and keeps that low-grade inflammation at bay. That's why I love curcumin. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, because you talk about its anti-aging capabilities.

And for those of you who've met you in person, what they can see on the screen, you look like you're 25. You probably get confused with like your kid's like older sister is my guess. So I love people like you who like, you know, people look at you and they're like, well, whatever she's doing, I want to do that too. I want that skin. I want to look, you know, super young. I think what's even younger about you is honestly is your is your heart and your personality, your purpose, your sense of enthusiasm, your infectious smile.

It's always so fun to be around you, which ultimately, like you said, that mental inflammation, maybe unpack that a little bit more. Like, what does it mean to, you know, reverse the mental inflammation and find the positivity? How do we do that? You know, I think there's so many ways to become negative, sad, tired, and weighed down by the world. And Ayurveda taught us something interesting that I wrote about a long time ago when I was doing my masters. I wrote a book called The Conscious Pregnancy because at that time I was preparing to have my first child.

And I thought, gosh, here in the West, we spend no time understanding this idea. We just get pregnant, have kids, run at that delivery room, assuming everyone's got us. And then we wonder why we have these crazy frenetic children in society right now. So I wrote a book called The Conscious Pregnancy. It was kind of my master's thesis. And one concept I ever read that teaches, it teaches a lot about pregnancy and all of that. But one concept I loved was everything you consume goes to the child. Everything, not just food, every thought, every piece of news, every piece of social media.

Nowadays, we have so much language for that. That was over 10 years ago. Now we know every micro plastic, every phthalate, every pesticide, every single thing will go. But if you take a moment and just understand that from an energetic standpoint, And now take it forward. I am not pregnant and I will not have more kids. I have my two beautiful children, but every single thing I consume, my body has to digest and process. So I don't watch horror movies. I don't watch the news. I really try hard to stand guard at the door of my social media and how it comes through to me.

I am a big guardian of my home. I consider this a fortress that I get to live in and raise my children in. That's why the mold project was a big deal. It was like an invasion of sanctity from such a toxic level. So I just took it on like a battle and I won and we're not doing that one again. But there's always something insidious that might be trying to come into your space or your life. And so that's where I think mental inflammation is so powerful is if we tune in to our own intuition, we will get those pings.

We will see and hear like, you know, that person's vibe, it's not a good vibe. Or that thing I'm saying yes to, I actually really want to say no to, if I'm honest. Or you know what, I started, I just the other day watched a TV show and I thought, that's really bad. This is going to take you down a rabbit hole and you're going to fester and think about this person in this drama series. You don't need that right now. How about we walk in nature, meditate more, listen to our Zen music, spend time with the people we love, and keep lifting up our vibration.

That is one key piece of mental inflammation I wanted to bring forward. From the science perspective, I can teach in a lot of ways. We have a digestive fire. Don't let it get knocked out. We need resilience. But truly, I was trying to bring in this energetic understanding of you choose your life, you choose your life design. You can base this on your elemental design, or you can just learn to tune into your intuition all throughout the day, and it'll give you the answers.

Book Launch and Where to Find Dr. Shivani 36:30

Such wonderful stuff. Dr. Shivani Gupta, so wonderful to speak with you. When is the official launch date of the book published by Hay House? I know I'm going to be obviously a huge promoter of it. I love it. It's just really exciting to get this great information out to people. So when's the book coming out and then how do people connect with you? for sure. So the book comes out February 3rd, 2026, and it'll be out there in the world from thereafter. The website for it is theinflammationcode.com.

My website is my name, shivaniguptha.com, and I'm on Instagram as at doctor.shivaniguptha, but there's lots of book bonuses and gifts and guides and classes on my website as well as my podcast. And then my supplement company with the turmeric and the herbs is at fusionaryformulas.com f-u-s-i-o-n-a-r-y and we made a special code naturalheartdoctor will give them 15% off. All right so that's a lot of stuff for people to remember the good news is we'll put it all into the show notes and wherever else to make sure you get that information there and thank you for that for that offer for our our listeners as well.

So again I wish you the best in in the book and I know it's going to be a smashing success and you know what it's all about really. The success is really measured and I know you know this you know what so well it's just measured in the lives of the people who we impact that are just They're stuck, they're sick, they're your family members, they're my family members, and they're just getting either no advice at all or the wrong advice in the medical community. I know you and I both feel strongly and respect the people.

who work in emergency rooms and trauma centers, but you and I don't have to go off on a tangent about the diabetes epidemic and how all they want to do is throw more pharmaceuticals at people and you and I are like, wait a second, how do we get rid of diabetes? Let's eradicate it and let's do that one person at a time. Wonderful. I will thank you again. This has been another fantastic episode of the Natural Heart Doctor show. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Natural Heart Doctor show.

If this episode challenged what you thought you knew about heart health, make sure you follow the show so you don't miss what's next. And if you're ready for a deeper personalized approach, you can schedule a complimentary discovery call at naturalheartdoctor.com forward slash discovery.