Why Inflammation Is A Repair Problem, Not A Disease

Introduction and Dr. J's Background 0:00

Everyone complains about it. You go through the insurance model, which is sick care, and you get five minutes. A doctor listens to you for five minute, but they interrupt you usually after 30 seconds. And they only have time to write a prescription. That's part of what I meant when I said medicine has become a business. rather than a service to humanity, and most importantly, as you just said, to the individual, the person, personality, life story of the people in front of you. And I think part of reason that people enjoy being with me is I start with, tell me about yourself.

Tell me the story about your life, including the traumas that still prevail that impact your hormones, your immune system, you cardiorespiratory system. All of you is influenced by traumas very often that occur in childhood. Hi, welcome back to the podcast Healthy by Dr. Jen. It's Dr Jen and today we're going to be talking to Dr J Russell Jaffe. So he has is like a father of functional medicine is what or maybe a grandfather. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, the grandfather, so he has lots of, not certifications, but degrees.

So he's an MD and a PhD, also widely well-versed in nutrition, which we'll find out today. He started out in a more conventional training, and then he started apprenticing different comprehensive practitioner healers and spiritual beings. They kind of shaped it and led him to now practice mostly outside of academic Western medicine. So he's going to share today his experiences and the knowledge that he has curated over decades. Welcome Dr. J, I appreciate you being here. I really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation.

Yeah. Yeah, it's great. And I think the big question is, you know, tell us about your background and how you went from more conventional to now stepping outside of that for, for most of your time practicing medicine. Well, I've been stepping outside of things for a long time. I was trained in conventional internal medicine at University Hospital under Norman Levinsky, who was a tough, but he helped shape a lot of us in internal medical. Then a miracle happened and I invited to the National Institutes of Health, known as NIH, in Bethesda, Maryland.

I did a residency there in clinical laboratory medicine or clinical pathology. One day I was a resident, the next day, I in charge of the residency program, which I completely revised because I thought we needed to encourage people to have compassion, ethics, and commitment to putting patients first. seeing them as human beings, which of course they are, with a mind, body, and spirit. Initially the residents resisted this, but then they came to feel that maybe this opened up their humanity and their experience.

So yes, while we were at NIH, we had a number of people of repute and quite well known, and some of them not so well-known, but they taught me all how to be a better physician, a service to others. And maybe we'll get into it, I have been mentored by some the most remarkable people you could imagine. I would like to share how they have helped shape me. Yeah, that would be great because I think that's really important and sometimes that mentorship is missing, you know, and really like in the hospitals and residency, we would do exams and we learn from each other's experiences or cases or our failures are things that worked well.

So we need to really bring that back to medicine because it's so just protocol driven hospital, you know, metrics right now. And, if you haven't noticed, If you're listening out there, no one's getting better. We definitely have to go back, to how medicine was supposed to be. Couldn't have said it better, so we're on the same wavelength. The main mentor, the main person who helped shape me, and we've done a book about him, I met him at his 80th birthday party. We had him till 110. And at the moment, my plan is to outlive him if I can and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as he was.

His name was Bhante Dharmawara. You can guess from that that he a monk, a Cambodian Buddhist monk who was revered And I literally mean that by the Sihanouk family in Cambodia, the Nehru family, in India, and the Dalai Lama. The first time I saw His Holiness with Bonte, His holiness was on Capitol Hill. He's a very distinguished speaker. It comes off the dais and we are, this is my friends and I, are as far away as you could imagine from the action, rope line,

Mentorship and Patient-Centered Medicine 5:30

what have you. He breaks free, he comes over and puts his forehead on Bhante's toes, which is the highest admiration you can extend if you're Buddhist. So when his Holiness goes to the receiving line, I said, excuse me, Bhanti, i've been your student for many years. What just happened? He looks at me with a little smile and he says, well, you know, why outrank him? There are actually just a few people in the world who in Buddhist hierarchy outrank the Dalai Lama. He's also my daughter's godfather.

And he was gracious enough to let her live with him at his private monastery for a number of months. We gave her a gap year between high school and college. She spent a part of that time with her horse because she was a show jumping, actually quite recognized in show-jumping at the time. But the time, brief and important as it was, helped motivate her to become who she is now. She is the starter and was until recently the chairman and CEO of Mobi, M-O-B-I, you might look that up. It's a very successful company doing ethical AI.

You might think that's the contradiction in terms, but it is not. And they have been quite successful being both caring and competent. And I am most proud of my daughter because she is both sides of that. She cares about everyone who works with her and for her, and she's highly competent, which means she asks now to go around the world giving talks about what they do and helping spread the message. So that's the short story. Yeah, love that. So with all of this experience, how did that trickle into working with patients?

Like what were some patient success stories that really, you know, they weren't getting better with regular conventional medicine, but you really helped them. Well, a few that come to mind, there was a very famous rabbi who had a problem that is very characteristic of Jewish people. So anyway, he comes to NIH and they're going to remove his spleen to save his life. I checked that this was really the guy and fortunately at NIH, if you're on the senior staff as I was, you can just walk into people's rooms and say, hello, how can I help you?

His name was Rabbi Soloveitchik. In his time, he was so respected and so revered that in religious communities, if he said yes, it was yes. If he says no, there was no disagreement because he thought before he spoke and he A dear friend of Cardinal Cushing, so the Archbishop of the Boston Diocese, who was his next-door neighbor, and he had a lot in common in philosophy. Of course, they were somewhat different in tradition, but that's an example of touching someone who is enormously important in my life, just because I showed up.

That's interesting. And yeah, I mean, showing up is important. Not a lot of people do that anymore. So with this influence, how has this changed how you see autoimmunity and what is auto immunity? Well, let's start. What is Autoimmunity? That is a Greek Latin word that means self-attack. It means that your immune defense and repair system, instead of repairing you, is attacking you. Now it is considered to be a fire that burns and harms, and therefore we need to suppress it. I feel that is philosophically and pragmatically wrong.

We need and reframe the immune defense and repair system so that it can correct whatever has been harmed by the autoimmunity and more importantly, rebuild and restore you so you can live life with joy, with aliveness, and with vitality and appreciate every day and every moment that you have. Yeah, I agree with that, how you said the autoimmunity, especially with medications, even supplements sometimes, you know, it's just we're suppressing it. We're calming it down. And that's not what we do. If we have a fire that we want to put out, we, have to get rid of it, take it out.

small embers. I mean, look at the wildfires out on the West Coast. You've got to get rid of it, take it out. And a lot of these medications or the ways that we look autoimmunity, it's like you just live with it. It's just It's not good. So I had Hashimoto's, thyroiditis, and I was told that there was nothing you could do about it. This was when I in medical school, so I believed what the doctors were telling me. There is nothing that you can do it about. It would just eventually kill your thyroid tissue and you'd have to be on medication the rest of your life.

And I believe that for a while until I found integrative medicine and now my Hashimoto's is My antibodies are zero, it's reversed. The damage though, I still have to be on thyroid medicine because I got half of my thyroid taken out and because like the thyroid tissue got damaged. So, you know, the fact that I will be a medication for the rest of life is because... I kind of believe the lie, but the problem is we are just not treating disease with the right scope or the lens. With autoimmune disease, comes inflammation.

So how would you define inflammation? Inflammation is a repair deficit.

Autoimmunity, Inflammation, and Trauma 12:00

I'll say that again, inflammation is not a fire to be suppressed and fought. It is the sign of repair deficiency. The body is meant to heal itself. Very often we get in the way of that process, maybe we can talk about that, because I don't fault the physicians. I do have a critique of the ways in which we're educated. because over my lifetime, medicine has moved from a service to humanity into a business where you pay ever more and you may not get good value. I will also add, and just mention, the doctor who first performed and put on the world stage The ability to remove part of the thyroid and the parathyroid gland and leave part it in was Dr.

Richard Eggdahl, who was our chief of surgery. And I was once operating in the room, I just a student at the time, or an intern, and he says, well I would like you to run my lab for about three years and then I'll make you a chairman of a department somewhere. And I was pretty sure he could do that, but I lifted up my hands and I said, Dr. Egdo, these are not the hands of a surgeon. He said you don't have to cut. You don' have tie knots. you just have know what's right and what wrong and assert yourself.

That was very generous of him. But fortunately, shortly after this event happened, I get a call from NIH that if I can come a year early, i can do my residency and double board certification in laboratory medicine. And my bosses and my mentors there said, look, we're busy doing what we are doing. Show up and do something. And so every year we published articles in the Annals of Internal Medicine. I got an article into Journal of Clinical Investigation before I had my MD courtesy of Dan Dakin, who was a very famous blood clotter or coagulationist in his time.

And, so we together published the fact that collagen in its native form activates platelet aggregation or platelot clumping or blood clotted. And in its non-native form, it doesn't do this. So there was something about the structural architecture. This was the first article to argue that the quaternary structure, now there's primary structure. That's the sequence. There's secondary structure to tertiary structure and then there is quartenary Since our article, which fortunately has been well cited, there are over a thousand articles that now say the environment determines the outcome.

The architecture is important. So I've learned both sides. I have learned to be humble and more humane, more considerate, and be able to listen deeply to the story of the life of that person in front of me. and hopefully be helpful to evoke their healing responses. Yeah. You know, it just makes me think of just a talk I had today with a patient that has just been through a lot of trauma the last two years and you know we fixed her gut health, her sleep, we're working on her hormones and unless I would have If I wouldn't have asked her, like, how are things going?

How's your family? Because I knew she was struggling with some things, you know, she wouldn' have told me and it was such a big stressor and part of what she's going through and her body just doesn't feel safe enough to heal. So I talk a lot about, parasympathetic exercises for vagal nerve stimulation and prayer and meditation and limbic system exercises because You know, another big part of that is just sometimes people just want some, they want to listen. And that's part healing too. What is medicine now?

Everyone complains about it. You go through the insurance model, which is sick care, and you get five minutes. A doctor listens to you for five minute, but they interrupt you usually after 30 seconds. They only have time to write a prescription. That's part of what I meant when I said medicine has become a business rather than a service to humanity, and most importantly, as you just said, to the individual, the person, personality, life story of the people in front of you. And I think part of the reason that people enjoy being with me is I start with, tell me about yourself, Tell me the story of your life, including the traumas that still prevail that impact your hormones, your immune system, Your cardiorespiratory system.

All of you is influenced by traumAs very often that occur in childhood. and that people are burdened by at least until someone cares enough about them, and I will use the word loves them enough, to evoke their healing, their ability to forgive themselves and forgive others, because traumas do happen. They are part of life. But if you can cultivate the ability, not forget, it doesn't go away, but it does not have to rule your life, Yeah, that's a good point. It's not a promise like taking it away.

Yeah. I'm a Christian and, you know, I was just reading a lot about this that, it's escapism, right? So a lotta people, they use drugs, alcohol, some people even just covering it with medications like benzodiazepines, and it is escaping from the pain, like needing to forgive. Sometimes we have to sit in the And then we can heal, right? And forgiveness, like you said, is so big. Forgiving ourselves, forgiving others, yeah, such a big part of healing. Now, can you talk about why scientifically, why that would help healing, for giving?

Well, I can talk in complex and biochemical terms, because I am a biochemist fundamentally. So if you have the stress or the distress of traumas that will influence your hormones, that we'll influence, your immune defense and repair system, That will alter your cortisol, which is the stressed hormone. We need a little bit of cortisol especially in the morning to get us up and going. But if the day is ruled by stress hormones it will eventually cause you to be impaired. It will eventually cause you to burn out.

My parents had terrible childhoods, I was emotionally bereft as a youngster. I have learned to forgive and not forget, but use these traumas as opportunities to live more fully in the moment. Now, in my case, this means half a century of meditation and mindfulness practice. And as you just said, it includes reading the Old and New Testaments, which have lots of embedded meaning, lots embedded stories that we can use to our benefit now. I could go on and on, but let me stop and ask where you would like to take the conversation.

Yeah, I mean, for the nerds out there, You know, why does cortisol drive so much disease? Like, if we didn't have cortisol in our body, we would be dead. We need some cortisol. But where is that point where, you know it helps us run from a bare and acute stress versus always feeling stress? Why is it so bad? Well, just put your finger on it. In the morning to get you out of bed to, get your cortisol should be at the high point of the day. But if cortisol stays up throughout the. You'll be more grumpy.

Your immune system will eventually be suppressed. It won't be able to repair you. And so autoimmunity is what emerges out. Of excess cortisol.

Cortisol, Forgiveness, and Healing 21:00

There you go. So when we look at this, so what I don't want people is to blame themselves. Like I want them to be like, oh my gosh, it's my fault I have an autoimmune disease. Because that's not really what we're saying because other things that can stress the body out is environmental toxins, you know, trauma that wasn't your fault. We talked about that. You know the gut being a disaster, having a mold exposure. So there's other things, but right now I see in functional and integrative medicine, everyone is treating all those things.

But then they don't focus on the emotional and trauma. So that's why I want people to know it's both. It's being, you know, Gosh, you know, I'm sure you get people that have seen other providers and it's like they're on a million protocols and a billion supplements, but no one's talked to them about how a traumatic event when they were eight, You know. I've even had a patient just a car accident. you know, has really impacted their health and we had to help her navigate through that. So yeah, so it's just very interesting.

I mean, do you think, Dr. J, that like the world we live in now is just not what our bodies were designed for because of all the stress, the external stressors? Well, many people could talk more knowledgeably about this, but evolution is a slow process. We are meant to be able to integrate, which means partly to forgive, partly to understand what happened, because challenges, traumas, can also be opportunities to reflect, to learn how to be a better, more alive, vital, loving person. And I think they are often misunderstood as something to suppressed with medication and I feel that is profoundly missing the opportunity to turn the traumas into more aliveness.

Yeah, I love that. And you brought up the old and the New Testament. Well, in the Old Testament, you know, and Genesis, what they meant for evil, God made for good. And then New Testaments, I love Romans 8.28, we know that God works all things together for those who are called to His purpose. So I used to be more grumpy and pessimistic, And I feel like I got a lot of trauma from my medical school education, like seeing people not do well and stuff. And I've had to really dig in and surrender on that.

Now if something crazy happens, I look at my husband and I'm like, well, that sucks. What can we learn from it? How can do better? And the peace that comes with that, it's very healing because we are not meant to be not at peace and not happy. You know, we live in a broken world. So obviously, things are not going to be good all the time. But we're marinating in the sea of toxins. We can identify them and reduce them. Toxic metals, lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, nickel, just to mention a few. And then there's these forever molecules like PFAS, and then, there is microplastic.

Now, I fortunately live in the woods in an old house and sometimes people come to fix it or repair it and they say, my gosh, there's no mold around here. And I say what do you mean? And they said, you're very lucky to live here and I do consider myself very fortunate to have found this place when it was a shell of what it is now. But now it has become a retreat because renewal is something that we should continuously see the opportunity to do for ourselves and extend this in loving kindness to those around us.

I turned a horse barn into an artist's studio and now, it's a guest cottage. If people want to come and spend a couple of days immersing themselves in our healing environment, I welcome them to do it. Well, that's amazing. Well you kind of shot off all these like toxins, all of these heavy metals real quick, you know? So I want you to dig into that. But I'm also wondering, do you have plaster or drywall for your... No, there's no dry wall in this house and the plaster is old and so hard that very often repair people find the bit, the part of their drill breaks because the old-fashioned plaster is so hard.

Well, I think we need to bring back that trade. You know, i've talked to my husband about this. So my old office building in Ohio was an old historic building, like built in the 80s, but it was all plaster. And I remember I was going to change like offices a few times. I'm like, maybe we should rent or go to a different location. And the one place that we were looking at, I was kind of serious about, they had like the air conditioner like exploded and leaked and there was water dripping everywhere.

And I walked in with my front desk staff at the time and she was like, oh, this is mold. She's like this isn't going to work. You know, the building, if they called us and they're like well, we're going remediate it all. There will be no, and I'm like no. Like unless you would use like my mold rem mediator guy, even then, there were so much damage. So plaster is more porous. So I think plaster, it's almost like a cement mixture. I would joke, like my old office, I'm like, It's all plaster. This is basically mold-free.

It is the perfect place for integrative, chemical-sensitive mold healing patients. Did you build it yourself? I am very curious. Oh, no. No, but I found it, and I bought it. But I was one of the founders of The Holistic Medical Association under Norm Shealy. department within that organization, and I have inherited a place that is intrinsically ideal for healing for myself and for those who come. And very often just the quality of the air, the quantity of environment, The fact that we don't have any of modern conveniences We live a very traditional life, but a high quality of life.

But for example, there is almost no plastic in my environment. There's none of this clear wrap that you might find food wrapped in because that clear rap provides micro plastic. there's no styrofoam around my home. So over time I have found what could be potential sources of toxicity and found a way to live well and hopefully long while enjoying an environment that is free of toxic metals, free forever molecules. We have no ducts in our home.

Environmental Toxins and Healthy Living 28:30

we do have some HEAC units in different rooms. But I think one of the problems of modern living is if you have central air conditioning, you will have duct. Those duct need to be vacuumed out at least twice a year. And even then you'd be surprised how much mold and other potential toxicity can hide in these ducks or hide In the environment that you are living in. So I'm a big fan. I need to schedule a duck cleaning for the spring. Please do. Your life will be better for that. Yes. I'm going to write that down.

Yeah, because we, I don't think we have since we've moved into our new home, but yeah, it's very, oh gosh, like it so sad when someone's home is toxic and like you really just try to do the best you can. And I try talk to my kids about it and you know, they don' microwave things in plastics, obviously. Like I've even like brought, if I knew I was going into a restaurant where we would have leftovers, If I think of it, bring a glass container to put stuff in. Good. Yeah, it's, but some of the stuff's unavoidable.

Like, for example, you know, my kids play sports and now they have indoor practice facilities and what's on the ground, It's all recycled tires, You know? It is all recycle tire parts and that is so toxic. And do you remember that study they did on soccer goalies and they had increased? of cancer because they were always diving in it. It's tough. Like, you know, even some of the newer playgrounds, they use that recycled tire material instead of dirt and mulch. And it's funny because. They kind of spin it as, oh, this is upcycling and better for the environment.

No, it is not. My chief of staff who happens to live downstairs, I live upstairs. He's been with me 35 years. but he is very attuned to the quality of the environment. Very often we're marinating in the sea of toxins because we are not yet aware of how we bring them to us. So over time, I was a founder of the American Holistic Medical Association and the Environmental Medicine Society. I think we have forgotten much of basic rules of living long and well. And as I indicated, my mentors have lived long, and I plan to follow in their footsteps in part by living a simple or simpler life free of the conveniences of modern high-tech living.

Yes, we have Wi-Fi, but I make sure the routers are not too close to me. So I think you can achieve a balance within which you get the benefits without the risks of Modern Living. Yeah, I love that. And it is about balance. You know, and I often talk about this with even diet with having kids, you know. We try to keep the home and the food in the Home as clean as we can, but also you know, my son likes his Reese's peanut butter cups when he has friends over. And, you, know it's like this tug-and-war.

I don't want to be so restrictive and stress him out and have him feel shame or that is being disobedient, so we try to set those parameters. because the basis of his diet and the way we live is good, right? Like this is pretty, this a funny story. So he is in this trail life organization and they're going on this like weekend camping trip and hike. And the leaders said specifically, make sure the boys wear polyester underwear because if they wear cotton, they are going to get too much chafing because it's going be warm.

I am very adamant about like no polyestery underwear in my house. My kids know that. Yeah. So I'm like, okay, you can get pear, polyester just for camping, maybe just- Or you could use silk. That's a good idea. Yes. Do you think that- Again, I am happy to share with you and your audience that there are solutions that do not impair the quality of your life. In fact, they enhance the qualitative of life and around here, there's lot of silk and not too much polyesters. Well, it's interesting cause like, you know, the, well, probably wouldn't know or care about this, but for women, if they, lay on, silk pillowcases, It helps your hair, as opposed to cotton.

But if you type in silk for anything, You're getting all a hundred percent polyester. Like you actually, have to read so carefully as consumers because they will market it as silk, But it really polyesters. So I will say that warning, For the underwear though, that's a good idea because I was actually joking with my husband and I'm like, let's get him wool underwear. Well, quality wool, which is a little bit expensive, is good choice. I happen to prefer silk. My children are of an age. One is 40, one is 37. And my son, 15 years ago, started a permaculture biodynamic food forest in place of our front yard.

So from spring to fall, we can go outside and pick herbs or whatever is ripe from berries to vegetables. And so I'm very grateful to my son for being able to bring him around the world, including to Commonwealth. I don't know if you know of Commonwealth, but the regenerative design Institute at Commonwealth is the foremost teaching center for regenerate. Agriculture. And my dear friend, Amory Lovins, started Rocky Mountain Institute. In 1976, he published an article called Soft Energy, which means renewable energy, the choice not yet chosen.

But he had the privilege of putting solar panels on the White House under the then president and the president that followed took them down. But that's another story for another time. So in every situation, what I find is an opportunity to live well and toxin free. or to marinate in the sea of environmental toxins, many of which are invisible. I don't blame the individual that is, quote, stuck in this technology, but I do feel that we have to open our eyes and our ears and noses and sense of aliveness We here eat only whole foods, mostly organic, some biodynamic.

Biodynamics is like super organic. I did not learn this as an internist. But for the last half century, I've been able to improve the quality of our life and the simplicity of living well and enjoying the environment. So nature nurtures us. Nature, nurture and wholeness are some of the principles by which we live. Yeah, that's great. No, I am super grateful for this conversation just because I'm still on the underwear. I didn't think of silk underwear! Well, it took me like five minutes to find it, but I did find some mulberry silk men's boxer briefs.

I think I'm going to get a pair for my husband and my son. I mean, they're pricey. They're $19 each, but they last a long time. If you correctly wash them, if you keep it simple and whole and ask the question, what can I do to enjoy the quality of our lives? And at the same time, not invite toxins in like polyester and all that goes with that. But enough said. Yeah, well, you know, honestly, it's hard and I try to do like 80-20 with that. You know I'm trying to buy more for women's fashion to be fashionable and you how it is.

Everything is, pictures online when I am doing book signings or presenting. It's usually polyester. But like when the stuff I like live in, at our mini farm and that day in and day out, I cotton, you know, and I'm trying to buy for those everyday shirts. So if you're just looking at a shirt or jeans or pants, try to by cotton or linen or, well, so just look what you are inviting in. Like just try, not that you gonna be like, okay, I can't wear anything, like not extreme, but like the stuff I am bringing in more, pajamas, your sleeping them for eight hours, your pillowcase in your sheets.

I mean, I guess I would say just start with that, right? Because you're spending... Place to start. Yeah. Around here, the pillowcases are silk. The sheets, we have a king-size bed. Rebecca, when I met her, was a bronze sculptor. Now there are some parts of the aesthetics. She's a very fine artist. But there are many toxins that can creep in in the process of starting with clay and ending up with a bronze.

Nature, Biohacks, and Daily Routine 38:30

So as I kind of mentioned, we turned a horse barn into an artist studio and now a guest studio. Life has evolved in ways that have increased my joy of living. I'm of an age where I measured every six months and the measurements come out that I am functioning at half my biological age. That's amazing. Well, it's possible. I mentioned this not to call attention to myself, but to say this is the way you too can choose to live. So I'm near 80, but I am functioning as a 40 year old and I plan to outlive my mentor who lived to 110. Yeah, that's amazing.

So I've just loved this conversation with just, you know, what to focus on. And, especially coming from you, use so many tools in your toolbox and what you spent time talking on, people should really take notice to that because that that the secret sauce. Dr. J, I have a few rapid fire questions before we tell everyone where to find you. Okay. What is your favorite biohack that actually works? That's a good question. My favorite biohack is nature. Yes, I would agree with that. What would you be doing if you weren't a doctor?

I think I have by now become a farmer. I'd concentrate on renewing the soil. that serves the source of my quality of environment and life. And I think very much I would become a farmer. Around here, we have five to six cords of oak, seasoned wood to burn in our fireplace. Yes, you can have a fire and enjoy it in a safe and effective way. Um, and as I indicated, I choose to live in the woods. I chose to living in an old house that has lots of fresh air infiltrating coming in just by the nature of the construction.

Very often we are isolated from nature, from nurture and wholeness. And I think that is part of why very often we burn out. Very often, we acquire chronic illnesses that either can be mitigated, can reverse, or can, in the best cases, be avoided. Yeah. I definitely agree with that. What is the favorite part about your morning routine? Well, at my age, the favorite part is getting up. So I get up, I have a warm shower. I am all natural clothes and fibers around me. And then I had a very simple breakfast.

Only eat twice a day, not three times a I think very often were overfed and undernourished. But as a nutritionalist, as an environmentalist how could I avoid the fact that I have transformed my home into a place where it's simple to eat lively

Books, Ethical Buddhism, and Closing Thoughts 42:00

and well? And then just one word to leave the audience with for the week. Love. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Dr. J, it's been great. So how can everyone reach you? You have some books I would love for you to share with our audience and your website and Instagram. Thank you so much for that. We have a number of books, four of them are in print and some others coming out. The Alclin Way of Living encapsulates everything I've been talking about. That was our first book. I think the most important book in some ways is an homage to Bhante Dharmawara.

It's called Bhanti Dhirmawar, A Most Remarkable Monk. it's about bringing Buddhism back to India that was part of his mission in life. But importantly, he crafted and was a pioneer of what's called ethical Buddhism. Not just the practice of ritual or meditation, but to use that as a stepping stone to improve the quality of not only your life, But by extension, everyone that comes in contact with you. I believe that people are able to unburden themselves by talking with me, because even though I talk a lot, I start with deep listening.

What is the story of their life, including the traumas that they have been burdened with, so that I can help them forgive, not forget, but forgive and take into the current moment the opportunity to live, to love, and to be loved. That's beautiful. What a great way to end. Thank you so much for your time and it was so great to meet you. I love it to be able to talk to you and sounds like you have such a beautiful oasis like retreat that is your home, right? So that's great. Well, I've tried to create something that an environment.

and an example of what others can do for themselves to live as joyfully and as healthfully as I do. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr. J. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks, Doctor Jen. Thank you. So much.