Your Childhood Is Still Affecting Your Health

Opening and Guest Introduction 0:00

Trauma is more about the resources, the support that we had to cope with stressful events. I had an understanding and I think the field has to understand that it's not again what happens to us. It's what's happening in our body when we don't have that support. Our body is our mind, our nervous system, and to create safety not based on what is objectively safe, but what familiar, what predictable. Even if it creates dysfunctional habits, physical illness, it will be what is the preferred response.

Welcome to The Natural Heart Doctor Show. I'm cardiologist Dr. Jack Wolfson. Heart problems don't come from a drug deficiency. They come 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, Dr. Jack Wolfson, cardiologist. Welcome to another episode of the Natural Heart Doctor show. Super excited because I've got a great guest that most of you probably already know.

If you don't, I don' know where you've been. She's got 9 million followers on social media, so she should be in your feed. And if it's not you, who doesn't know of her? Of course, like one of your friends does. Dr Nicole LaPera is a holistic psychologist trained at Cornell University. the New School for Social Research in the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis. She is the founder of the Global Healing Community Self-Healer Circle and the author of multiple New York Times bestselling books, including How to Do the Work, How To Meet Yourself, and How Be the Love You Seek.

And again, with over 9 million followers, her message is reaching people all over the world. Her new book is called Reparenting the Inner Child. Nicole, welcome to the Natural Heart Doctor Show. I am so honored to be here. Well, listen, it's, I'm so honored to have you here because a lot of what I've been doing for so many years is what i call the 100 year heart method eat well, live well think well. I feel like I am really skilled at the eat. Well I, feel, like, am, really, skilled, at, the live, well parts but the think, while parts I absolutely horrific at yet every time I take a history on someone who's had a cardiac event there's always an emotional component to that.

Break that down for me. I want to speak as I shared with you personally before we hit record. Your work is so near and dear to me because when you even ask me this question, I think immediately of my mom, who struggled with kind of chronic mystery illness, chronic pain her entire life. Somewhere when I was in my early 20s, was diagnosed with a heart congenital problem that required surgery, went through all the different traditional routes. And I've come to believe after learning and seeing similar issues, patients coming into my office who couldn't think well, couldn' t shift or break the habits that were causing them suffering in their life.

I really sought to understand why and so I landed on the why often lives in the body in our early childhood in trauma. And so, I want to thank you for emphasizing the live well portion of things because in my opinion that plays so much greater of a role and I know for my mom included From lifestyle choices that I believe were grounded in her own childhood trauma and inability to cope with emotions, quite literally contributed to not only psychological and emotional issues with depression and anxiety being pretty much the only way I knew my mom to be,

Trauma, Nervous System, and Heart Health 3:24

but also again, physical complaints and diagnoses, including heart issues. Thank you for sharing that regarding your mom. Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer worldwide and we're not making a dent. I don't have to convince you, you know this as well as I do. The pharmaceuticals are not working, the procedures are working and that's why, again, I think your work is so groundbreaking. We look at childhood trauma. have a higher risk, heart attacks, strokes, blood pressure, rhythm problems, cardiac death, all the other stuff too.

How can we best bring that out in people? Because that's not easy for people to talk about, right? Like how does the average person bring out or the doctor even bring it out? Or how can people approach their doctor and say, this may be a problem with me? I think it's important for all of us to understand a more expanded definition of problem or apply the more traditional trauma, what that really is, and obviously then what it looks like. Because for a very long time, we reserved the diagnosis of having experienced trauma for those of that had, you know, an event that put our physical safety, our survival at risk.

And we now understand that trauma isn't necessarily applied to events per se. Trauma is more about the resources, the support that we had to cope with stressful events. Because when I look back in my own childhood, right, from the little that I can recall, which is a testament to my kind of trauma that did not know I had experienced until more recently, I had financial security, so to speak. I have somewhat safety. It was a bit more of a stressful environment. Two parents, one of which my mother and was in care of myself and my siblings in the home.

So I didn't think I checked any of the boxes for having experienced something that could contribute to the symptoms that I was experiencing, which ranged from anxiety to dissociation to physical symptoms, difficulty with sleep and everything in between. So for me, I had to understand and I think the field has to understanding that it's not again what happens to us. It's what's happening in our body when we don't have that It's the dysregulation that lives in our nervous system. It is quite literally the physiological changes that happen in different structures of our brain.

to cope with daily life. And then once we understand that, I think intuitively, we can make space for conversations in doctor's offices about stress, lifestyle, right? What does day to day look like? And how is my body able to weather the storms of life going back, of course, to early childhood? Because that is for many of us where stress has occurred and at adaptive coping mechanisms have been created that then we continue to rely on Even though we get older, maybe we have this information, yet we can't create the change that we're looking for or the health really.

Well, and then, but you know, so maybe walk us through what you think is kind of one step that somebody could take if they think that, all right, I've suffered a cardiac event or I'm worried about that. Or maybe I, kind I got this family history. So many people have extreme health anxiety these days. They're so concerned that they're going to have an event, but how can people move forward and how, can they try and really kind of discover this area? Obviously, you know, your book and stuff like that.

And, and maybe again to the, to your first book title, how to do the work. Like a lot of people don't even want to do the work or do they even know, you know what to. And I think obviously that's what makes, I guess I'm answering my own question because your book is a great starting place for a. Lot of these conversations, but really just opening up the eyes of the medical doctors. As you. Know, we get no training in any of this, any. Of this. You know again, it's such a massive area. I think what we're kind of talking about here to some extent is, right, how do we build a bridge from insight, information, new resources, where people are telling us lifestyles and poor interest impacts us to new actions, because that's where a lot of us remain stuck.

And thankfully, though, again, I will speak from my own profession, clinical psychology, there was never any conversation about the nervous systems, how emotions live in our body, cause physiological reactions. Never had I heard about nutrition and the importance of lifestyle. It just wasn't included at that time, now a couple decades ago, in my training. So for those of us who did meet this information, I did so, you know, kind of diving down rabbit holes online, making myself present to this new information of stress and epigenetics and our body and the role that our nervous system is playing, so many of us still, again, remain stuck between creating new action.

So the first step of any change, whether it has been inspired by a cardiac event, some other physical illness, or even just emotional suffering or dysfunctional patterns in our relationships, these are things that often bring us to the desire to change. It is important to begin with awareness. Without judgment, I go into, of course, throughout all of my work, you know, an explanation of how in which most of the patterns,

Building Change Through Awareness and Small Actions 9:00

even the physical illnesses that we're struggling with, cardiac included, are often based in a beautiful adaptation that our body needed to create for ourself in an early environment that, again, we continue to rely on. So with awareness, it's compassionate awareness right, maybe seeing the lifestyle choices that specifically around how our body is dealing or coping with stress. How are we eating, how are sleeping, are moving, right? Are we having stress constricted in our bodies? How we are dealing again with those more acute moments aside from just general lifestyle, right, is my body equipped to deal with stress when stress happens, then we can focus more, too, on those more acute moments when those reactions from stress happen, when the know better doesn't really translate into the do better.

And this continues to go back to our reliance that our nervous system has on what's familiar habits and patterns again that were once protective become exactly what we rely on either categorically you know for our daily lifestyle to our identities to again these more acute moments where we're overreacting under reacting causing more stress to Our body and again remaining stuck so with awareness whatever age, without judging kind of what it is that is created, the physical or the emotional diagnosis that it's inspiring us to new action, creating then the opportunity in real time, right?

Not to theorize, not to wish away the symptoms, but literally to show up differently, whether, again, it was through new lifestyle habits that we can more consistently maintain or new ways to deal with stress in those acute moments. Yeah, no, definitely very helpful, you know, as far as, yeah, those little techniques of when we feel stress coming on, right, how do we deal with that? And I know you, and so many of your social media posts really kind of pertain to that, where you may say, if you are experiencing something, go outside for a walk.

Go outside and get fresh air. Do a five minute breathing exercise. And the beautiful thing about these things too is that they're free, you know, they are free tips. It's not like you have to do something that's totally out of the ordinary. Because, to the medical doctor component of me, I also think about, okay, clinical psychologist. Then of course I have this in my mind, Sigmund Freud. I lay down on the couch and it's like, tell me about your mother. And that's not what you're telling people.

You're not telling. And I love how you, cause this all ties into the eat well, the live well the think well. The components that you have. Yeah. It is about the food we eat, getting outside in nature, these lifestyle, this grounding, you know, type things that help us with the, think, well category. For a long time, my field emphasized, and I have to admit, I was training to be Sigmund Freud for a very long I thought I loved that psychoanalytic model. The Philadelphia School allowed me to practice with people outside of typical anxiety or neuroses.

I saw people with all different diagnoses from schizophrenia to borderline. However, it really overemphasized the power of our mind. Right? This is emblematic in CBT, the gold standard still to this day, sadly, in my field, which is change the way you think, change, and then change what you do. And so, again, I found myself several years into a successful private practice with clients who were very committed, very self-aware, would come in week after week and it seemed no matter of thinking new or affirming new things, were creating the change that we were, myself included, as someone who only knew myself to be anxious, nothing was creating that change we wanted.

So, until we understand how much of a foundational role our body is playing and our ability to even think clearly or differently or execute a new choice, we're going to stay stuck in those patterns. So that's now what I over-emphasize is building from the bottom up. But I also want to say, I mean, even hearing you and I are like, these things are free, the holistic psychologist, we are so grounded in giving free accessible tools. A lot of my community is international, so I understand that there's financial insecurity, though the reality of it is even a small free new choice will challenge our nervous system, will create stress.

Because our system loves the predictable, the familiar, it loves to coast on autopilot, we use less calories, right? So for all of those reasons, even something as simple as maybe listeners are kind of rolling their eyes, you're saying just get out in the sun. It's not so simple, being present to our life in a new way. And then more often than not, the stress of that to an already overtaxed system is exactly what sends us right back into the old habits. Now we feel more shame, right? Because why can't we do these little things and create the change that we want?

Yeah, I mean, why is it a struggle to create those little changes and why do we feel shame about it? And then what do you do? What if your heart could actually get better, not just managed? 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 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.

Stress, Cortisol, and Medication Tradeoffs 15:00

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. So our body is our mind, our nervous system. We'd love to predict, anticipate, right, and to create safety not based on what is objectively safe, but what Even if it creates dysfunctional habits, physical illness, it will be what is the preferred response because our nervous system always wants to find the quickest way to alleviate the discomfort, which oftentimes is predictable.

The thing that I know comes next because in the unknown, the uncertainty could be something far more traumatic and stressful than what I already it's kind of like the devil that I know old adage so we do that and we bring beliefs from our childhood right we put lenses over our daily experience and I make a case that everything that we're talking about actually creates physiological or neurobiological changes from a nervous system that if I really want to simplify it right struggles to downshift from a stressful event, from changes in our HPA access, where our amygdala becomes hypervigilant to the body's natural threat detection system that we need to survive, right, begins to see threat around every corner, even if and when So things aren't threatening.

I like to cite a very common, maybe cited study, which is there was a population of people that suffered from what is known as complex trauma, Which is simply consistent stress often happening within a relational system. Again, back to that more expanded definition of trauma that I offered earlier. And what they noticed and assessed was that these individuals, right, when compared with a group of individuals who did not have that diagnosis, When they were shown a neutral picture, their amygdala would react as if it was a threatening one.

So that their kind of examples, I should say, that our physiology, our brain, is actually now contributing to the continuation of our symptoms because our amygdala begins to become hypervigilant. We see and react to stress where it is not present in all occasions, and we begin to lose access, again, so to speak, to our prefrontal cortex, which is where insight, right, the ability to create change from the top down actually lives. So again I speak of often the brain changes that are real. And this kind of goes back to like the chicken or the egg, right?

What caused the symptoms? The reality of it is our environment. Even in my new book, I speak of not just our environments, our ancestors' environment and epigenetic changes where we live and are born with this hypervigilant threat system based on threats that we didn't even experience. are actually physiologically noted in brain scans, so to speak, and then become the cause of those continued symptoms. But thankfully, science now knows the brain, as we once thought, is not static. It doesn't just form and never change.

We maintain the ability for neuroplasticity throughout life. But again, I think it's important because these are the moments where again we feel shame, we overreact. It doesn't matter how much we know it is not a huge threat. We have someone very well-meaning, loved one telling us to calm down. Our body quite literally cannot in those moments until we teach it how. Okay. And I like the fact that you brought that up because from a medical standpoint in order for me to, I guess I say a lot of controversial things.

And now you get into this aspect of when you're dealing with patients that we've got this idea that these epigenetic patterns are occurring before conception, how it had to do with your parents and your parent's parents, and all these things. And we do know, according to the literature from a cardiac standpoint, that, these behaviors Like if mom or dad, their behaviors before even conception impact your adult onset of cardiovascular risk. And when you mention that to people, yeah, now of course they lose the ability to even think about that.

Maybe you lose, I would lose maybe some credibility if you start getting into maybe with some of these woo woo type of, you know, concepts. But as you're pointing out, there is literature that really supports it. There's stuff that we are compelled if we want our best life to mitigate those previous experiences. And I want to continue to emphasize and acknowledge those were beautiful adaptations for our ancestors, right? That's what stress does. The more challenging an environment, we need to learn where to find food, where do find safety, because that very beautifully sets up the next generation, assuming that back when our when ancestors were living, didn't have airplanes to travel across the world and suddenly be in a new environment.

So more often than not, they were having offspring that were quite literally living in the same circumstances. How brilliant our body is that epigenetic changes can happen, that we are impacted beyond the DNA in our cells, but we're impacted to the degree of how our cell function. Because again, and I cite this in my new book, A very fascinating study in the Netherlands investigated a group of women who were pregnant during a very severe famine. It was called the Dutch Hunger Study. And so when food was so scarce that at one point that the citizens were eating sawdust, quite literally no nutritional calories, and these women were Changes happen in their own bodies, right?

That was, you know, growing a baby at the time to help them survive. It was holding on to the very few calories that they had. it was storing fat, anticipating or not knowing when that food shortage would end. So fast forward in time, the food shortage very thankfully ended. The famine went away. But what they saw well into the future is that in the offspring of these women who were pregnant at the time those changes held. So even though there was now food on their table, right, their cells were functioning as if there wasn't.

And so this is the case for all of us, who came from ancestors. Some of maybe have access and know the family stories of The the war that they've been through the abuse the trauma right that may be the food insecurity that They dealt with But they actually live on right the way their body needed to change to survive lives on in us And again, the science is very real. Um, thankfully it's becoming more studied these epigenetic changes but I like to reference that one study because that's Fascinating.

What they also found, just to wrap the hope into this, is these epigenetic changes would continue in the offspring if the offsprings had children until someone like a cycle breaker, like that all of us are doing in our own families, shows up and begins to change the way their bodies are operating. So it was fascinating to see that with lifestyle changes, with access to health and nutrition and regulation in their nervous systems, those changes actually reversed. when future generations were able to more or less go back to a baseline as if they weren't again born of offspring in this famine time.

Yeah and I think a lot of the struggles with obesity these days and overweight really is that whole the people who could hold on to weight they would survive during a famine but it's more so than what you're saying than just like okay well people with the genetic predisposition to the ability to store calories

Inner Child, Reparenting, and Childhood Patterns 23:00

as fat. That was one factor, but then we had this other epigenetic thing as well where, you know, stress because of famine that, these changes that occurred that would allow us to restore. And then as you're saying, the answer is to unpack all of those stress-related factors and I'll put my words out there, agree or not, that the answers is not necessarily ozempic or some other pharmaceutical. Um, you know, going forward and I want to ask you another question about that too, but I'll let you, if there's anything else you would want I just want to, I think, maybe insert cortisol as well into this conversation too, right?

Because cortisol, when our major stress hormones, which we need in the short term, it sharpens attention, quickens reaction time, and mobilizes energy. It also results in us retaining inflammation and, quite literally, fat around our belly area. And I, think of myself in early childhood, was so shameful. When I was a little girl and I wasn't a dance class and now all the little girls around me had little tight leotards on and i had this little fat cortisol belly quite literally that, of course, I didn't know where it came from at the time and all I felt was self-conscious.

So I just want to insert cortisol into this conversation as well. The more acute the stress chronic distress, the more literally cortisol begins to change and results in inflammation and fat. storage in certain areas of our body that also maybe it contributes to sugar eating behaviors and everything in between that again creates a body, that is just simply not well or as well as it can be. You know, now that I mentioned like ozempic and stuff like that, one of the things that i've seen, and again, I'm an anti-pharma guy outside of an emergency season, stuff that.

So this whole idea that because of how the GLPs affect the brain, that it's also like dumbs us down in the sense of we don't enjoy other things. Maybe we. Enjoy relationships. We don' like holding hands, you know with our partner, like all these other Things I've seen this so many times over the years. I'm 55 years old, been in practice a long time. There's no, there's not free ride. there is always these side effects that go along with these pharmaceuticals that don't do one thing. They do many things.

Yeah, I think that, you know, pharmaceuticals, without making a sweeping statement, but somewhat, there are a lot of medications that have been made for more acute moments that are now being relied on, right, pervasively and chronically over time, that again, if we want to just even take as we both kind of acknowledge a holistic model of the human experience, the body included, to speak to your very wise point, right? If we're trying to work on a symptom in one area, chances are other areas of our body are going to be impacted, again, depending on then how long we are on certain medications.

I mean, as someone who was on anxiety medications throughout my entire 20s, I remember coming home from college sitting at the kitchen table telling my family that I was now on medication because I lacked the chemicals in my brain that, you know, would help me deal with the anxiety. And so I, was going to be on these medications. I thought at that point forever to manage my anxiety and I've come to realize that especially when we're talking about benzos. These medications were actually supposed to only be taken for a short period of time, and yet I had seen, this is of no fault of the psychiatrist that were prescribing me the medication at that time because they were operating with the awareness that they had, but they weren't giving it to me for period of time.

So that's, I think, the general thing that I want to say about just medications in general is I don't think that they're always being utilized in a way that is maybe of benefit. And I do think sometimes, again, with my mom, trying to rely on, right, find the underlying problem then treat that problem and what I had seen with her was that often treatment of one problem only led to symptoms in another area and then the need to, right, treat those symptoms. And so by the time my mom had passed, she was on so many medications, one of which was the very powerful oxycodone because we had no idea.

When she was prescribed that, her doctor did not sit her and my father down at the time to let her know how addictive that was. Having dealt with chronic pain for the entirety of my experience with my mom, she had me when she 42, this was her mid to late 70s when prescribed this, I had only ever known her on pain medicine. So she finally got to the end of the pain medicines that she had known were not working. And so I understand to some extent why she was then offered this very powerful opiate.

But what it then led to for my mom was quite literally addiction, her inability to get off of it and to then be stabilized with any other pain med to point where as a family, we kind of decided it was probably better for her just to stay on it, which she did until her death. Yeah. It just, it makes me think, you know, what an amazing world it was like before any of these, before the medical doctors got involved. And yes, there was trauma, but what, an, amazing existence. The human is, the human frame is to be able to do and compensate and do so much.

and then it just it gets very easy for me to get aggravated with mainstream medicine, all the stuff that I've seen and, and all of the people really just suffered. Not to throw everybody under the bus, But one thing I love about also in the beginning of your, of is the concept of people looking at the picture of themselves in their childhood. And you, we've all seen, now we all see, I've seen how, you know, it's kind of like there's the two adults, but then there is also the pictures of them as little kids.

Is that a good way to look at so many different interactions, not only for ourself? And I love that. I think back to, and I'm sorry if I, if i'm wandering, but I go back too, like my childhood, I would describe as pretty magical. You know, just parents who loved me. Um, you know great, a fluent area in Chicago land, growing up had everything, every opportunity. Going back, there's some things that were going on with my parents that I've uncovered since then. And now I look at things differently.

But even as you point like these little things, that can be seemingly innocuous experiences, how they linger with us for so many years. So I just gave you five different things. I apologize. No, I'm totally scattered on this one. How is that benefit of that childhood looking at the inner child? And then maybe we can come back in a sec and address those little things that happened that seemed like they were nothing, but go back to the Inner Child. What does that mean? So even that, I've seen that the image that you're speaking of, right, with the adults back to back, two little children in the middle.

So literally that is a beautiful visual representation of what we've now come to know. Of course I did not coin this word inner child, but my hope is to give it some language grounded again in our body and our reactions. But simply speaking, the inner-child is the part of us that learn to cope in our earliest environments, our relationships included, right? And this is the part that learned how to manage unpredictability, conflict, disconnection, unmet needs. This is also the point that it does not matter how far we've moved from childhood, how long, and how many ages that we have grown from our childhood.This is a part many of us will still notice shows up in the most ordinary of moments, short response in an email or a delayed text sends us immediately spiraling and worried that something's wrong or that this person is leaving us.

Who the Book Is For and How It Helps 31:00

Very personal one to me. When any version of feedback feels very personal, it feels like someone is saying something very negative about me when perhaps it's even helpful feedback that could help benefit me to integrate or the thing I think many of us experience when someone's tone shifts, right, and we immediately feel our body bracing, right? More kind of behaviorally or consistently in terms of a pattern. It's also the part that shows up when we overwork, to gain a sense of worthiness. When we shut down or stay quiet in moments where we have to or need to speak up.

Where we overexplain, apologize automatically. And all of these things, again, that at one time, these reactions aren't random. These patterns aren''t random, they're what we've learned or our nervous system, I should say more accurately, has learned to feel safe. and to maintain connection in those earliest environments. Right? So all of the learning, all the beliefs that we form in childhood are often then the ways in life that were reacting. And to speak to, I think, a statement that you made in there, it can be so beneficial when we not only understand this about ourself, right?

We can shift from criticizing our self, wondering what's wrong with us when, we can't seem to ask for support when we need it or whatever it is, we can understand, oh, that might be because staying quiet in childhood was the only thing that kept me safe. Or I didn't actually have someone to support me in my childhood, so now I logically know I need support and there might people around me who want to offer it, but it feels so unfamiliar. So we give ourselves compassion for those reactions that again are wired into us, are going to be how we show up, especially as stress increases.

And we can also maybe then begin to extend compassion to those around us, right? Seeing overreactions, underreaction of our loved ones as what they really are, a function of a dysregulated nervous system. More so though, of course, most of us want to change those, so now we could include our body in the conversation of what's happening in those moments so that we don't have to rely on those early adaptations anymore. All right, so, and thank you for that. And thank for not making fun of my rambling that I gave you.

No, I followed you all along. I knew where we were going. Let's, let's kind of, I guess, wrap it up if you will, because it just makes me think I got, want to dive more into your book and your work. And again, continue to watch your Instagram stuff because I am such a left brain guy. It takes me quite the while to get into the, what I would maybe say if, you're going to make it so simplistic as, as you know, right and left. But who, who definitively should be reading your books? And what will they get out of it?

I mean, as far as I'm concerned, my hope is that this book is for quite literally everyone. Whether you want to think about your childhood, whether you believe it has impact, we are all humans, again, that are so greatly impacted by the environment around us. And my hop is, through this, book and all of my work, but this one in particular, it gives you not only kind of a roadmap of awareness, so to speak, where I talk about stress and our ancestors, right? And our beliefs and culture and society and all these things that we've absorbed, some of which we don't even realize we have absorbed that are impacting how we show up, but I very intentionally map out, not in all of the chapters in particular, in the reparenting chapter, which is simply, the ability to show in a new way to care for that inner child part of us, many of which that doesn't know how to manage unpredictability, can't navigate conflict, is continuously disconnected or can create the connections that we desire or doesn' know or don't even understand what needs are.

And I specifically have an entire chapter that's dedicated to a step-by-step, so to speak, roadmap. Not only how to understand ourselves differently, but in how make the changes that we want. Because in my opinion, what you will hopefully gain from this book is not only compassionate awareness for yourself and the people around you, whether or not you're in relationship or are not with them in all areas of our life, not just in our families, and not in just our romantic relationships, meeting strangers in the grocery store and how we navigate moments with other humans.

But again, that this book gives you the accessible tools, again understanding that change is hard. We all have different life circumstances with huge to-do lists and things that grab our attention. So ways in which to make little small shifts that in my opinion can quite literally not only transform our own lives and relationships, but I am of the belief that as we find safety and security and we're all energetic creatures and we begin to change the signals that we're sending to other people. And this could sound lofty and woo-woo, but I think this is how, in a very destabilized external environment and world, so to speak, this how we can do our individual part to quite literally change world around us.

No, that's wonderful stuff, you know, because, from a cardiology standpoint, all of these things, stress, anger, anxiety, fear, worry, social isolation, markedly increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. There's specific, there's a women's diagnosis called Takasubo cardiomyopathy, which is the broken heart syndrome. A stressful event leads a woman to have a massive myocardial infarction. And we go in there with catheters. There's no evidence of any blockage. It was likely a coronary spasm, you know, that happened.

These are becoming more and more common. So it really is so critically important again to kind of Throw in the title of your, of you're first book, you know, how to do the work that you do have to, because no one else is going to come do this for you. Right. You really have. Read these kind of, if you want optimal health and wellness and longevity, uh, and there's, I mean, there there. dozens of cardiology studies alone that talk about all these other factors and how it leads, you know, to problems.

So dive into Dr. Nicole's work, for sure. Yeah, I'm shaking my head because I could even go down a whole other rabbit hole of finally now we have some research that documents the negative impact of just emotions, right? Not being able to be with our emotions. Process our emotion. I mean, those are even being mapped onto cardiovascular diagnoses, events, etc. Again, I think that the book has something for all of us. We are all raised by humans that were imperfect in themselves, repeating patterns that they learned from childhood or over-correcting from their own childhoods that didn't always serve us, again, we're retaining those beautiful adaptations until we become aware, maybe meet some new information and begin to make

Closing Reflections on Healing and Cardiology 38:00

new choices. And when we do, I do think that then we shift from, right, surviving to a life that's healthier and dare I even say, one that feels fulfilling and thriving. Great stuff. One last question. How do the people closest to you, do they ever push back and say, don't Dr. Nicole me. Don't psycho analyze me and every conversation. And how difficult is that for you to kind of step back from that and almost become like you're back to the seven year old girl from outside Philadelphia. It's so funny, I appreciate you asking me that.

I get that asked and assumed of me often, though. Admittedly, the seven-year-old girl in Philadelphia had actually learned an opposite habit, which was not speaking my perception, awareness, information, my opinion to other people. Again, in a childhood that lacked emotional attunement and safety, keep it to myself. My mom would hate throughout my teenage years how secretive I was, but again, that was because I didn't feel safe expressing my opinion in a system that already overly stressed. So I have to thank my mom, who is now gone.

The strength of that is I've learned, and this really greatly helped my relationship with my Mom, Because of course, as I understood that pattern, it does not serve me to keep my opinion to myself. As I try to empower myself and walk through the fear of telling someone what I think of them. Of course as entered my 30s and my 40s, I have started to share more consistently with my mom while she was alive with the rest of my family. Though that protective part is actually got pretty good at saying, okay, here's my, right?

Here's opinion and take it or leave it. Because I then, what that gifted me I should say is, the reality that you kind of went back to is we have to do the work for ourselves. It's hard, it's a daily, consistent effort we had to put in. And so I was very clear, and I think this is the case for all of our survival-based adaptations. There can be a strength or a value. So I understand that I can't always keep my opinion to myself. I've been able to strike a balance where I would share with people my opinion, my perspective, and I'm also then able disconnect from what they do with it.

I don't take it personal if they don' like it, if disagree, If they dont apply it and that helped me preserve the connection that my mom was able To give me in her last few years because quite honestly she didn't want to really do anything new and she didnt So, instead of getting upset with her, demanding her to hear me or be offended or take it personal that she didn't care or wasn't utilizing all my brilliance, I was able to say, oh, okay, accept. I've said my piece and I accept that you're going to do what you are going do, which might be not do anything.

Yes. Yes, yes, well, you know, again, this is so, so fascinating. I love it because again is just all my years, four years of medical school, three years in internal medicine, and three year to cardiology. We never talked about any of this. And I'm so grateful that you morphed from that seven-year-old who kept everything internally to getting it out there. And, I look forward personally to exploring more of your work. I know obviously you're getting out to the world and I think you are undoubtedly saving So many lives and really just doing it just so much.

So grateful. And again, anyone who's listening, you know, right now, get tuned into what, and I'll put this all in the show notes and we'll blast out emails to everybody because again like this is, I'm not trying to do any of this. I am looking for little tidbits, Dr. Nicole, to be able to tell people, hey, this a huge area, the stink well component and you really need to dive into it, you need to really get into these areas because undoubtedly it's leading to your blood pressure, it is leading your palpitations, its leading spontaneous coronary artery dissection, so many things that are just cardiac related and you're not living your best life.

Read Dr. Nicole's work and I think that's going to make a huge, huge difference. Thank you. Get a copy of the book. And I'll say this to anyone who is listening and they get your book and I don't feel that it was valuable. I will personally cut them a refund on that because I feel so strongly about the stuff that you're sharing. So again, Dr. Nicole LaPera, thank you so much for being on this episode of The Natural Heart Doctor Show. Well, thank you. I'm honored. Thank you for your wholeheart support and truly thank for the work that you're doing.

Again, a part of my inner child is healed by knowing that there are cardiologists, medical doctors out there that are really expanding and evolving their thinking. Because I live the witness of all the suffering that comes when we don't have the tools, the answers to what is really driving all of these symptoms and diagnoses. So truly, I thank Thank you, thank you. Another episode of the Natural Heart Doctors Show. We'll see you all 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.