Mindset Medicine: Healing with the Power of the Mind and the Keys to Longevity
with Dr. Josh Axe
Dr. Wendy Myers
Hello. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast, where we focus on detoxification, anti-aging, bioenergetics, and higher-level topics to help you on your health journey. Today, we have a fantastic guest. His name is Dr. Josh Axe. I’m certain you’ve heard of him. He has millions of followers across YouTube and social media and is extremely knowledgeable. He is going to be talking today about mindset and how he overcame a devastating illness that left him unable to walk for a year. He’s going to talk about how prayer, mindset, and nutrition helped him overcome his grim prognosis that he was given. Lots of really fantastic tidbits in this show today. We also talk about birth control pills and how that can contribute to an increase of 283 percent in hypothyroidism in women taking birth control pills and what birth control pills do exactly to your body in this cascade of negative effects on your health. We’ll talk about the keys to longevity and lots of really interesting research that’s exciting on the show today.
Our guest today is Dr. Josh Axe. He’s a leadership expert, entrepreneur, and physician. He earned his doctorate from Plummer College and his Master of Science in Organizational Leadership from Johns Hopkins University. Josh is a co-founder and CDO of Ancient Nutrition and founder of draxe.com. His company ranked in the Inc 500 fastest growing companies two years in a row. He’s also the bestselling author of Eat Dirt: Keto Diet and Ancient Remedies. His latest book, Think This, Not That, will be available nationwide in April 2024. Josh is also the founder of leaders.com, an online platform that provides the latest on breaking news, leadership, business, and wealth. He regularly teaches lectures and trains entrepreneurs on leadership, mindset, and self-development. He’s married to his wife, Chelsea, and they have two daughters. They live in Nashville and Dorado, Puerto Rico, part of the time. They enjoy cooking, staying active, swimming, cycling, and prioritizing time for their faith and family. Dr. Axe, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Dr. Josh Axe
Hey, Wendy. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Wendy Myers
You have a new book coming out called Think This, Not That. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that and why you wrote it?
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, well, one of the things I’ve realized over the years is that food is a very powerful form of medicine, but mindset medicine is really just as powerful, if not more powerful. One of the things I get through in the book is how to heal with the power of the mind. Also, how to set your purpose, find your identity, have breakthrough goals, visualize to realize your dreams, and a lot of those things that I think are really deep and personal and that really matter to who we are and us being successful in life. I’m excited to talk a little bit about that. They are also excited to talk about detoxification, balancing hormones, longevity, and some of those different topics. When I wrote this book, I went through the hardest situation. It was the hardest time of my life when I did this. This was about a year and a half ago. I was sitting down with the doctor.
Actually, I wasn’t sitting down and I was in a hospital bed because I was just diagnosed with a spinal infection. This is sort of crazy because a few months before, I was throwing my 2-year-old daughter in the air. I was squatting and deadlifting. I could do a triathlon. I was in great shape and a doctor sat down with me. He said, Josh, listen, this spinal infection is so bad now that you are likely going to be permanently disabled. He said, you could die. Your best-case scenario is you get back to walking again, but you’re still going to have chronic pain every day.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I just want to stop you for a second. Coming from someone who’s such a health influencer and at the peak of health, I’m sure that was just really difficult to digest. I mean, for anyone, but especially someone coming at the peak of their health and so knowledgeable about health. It’s very humbling.
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, it was. It absolutely was. And I think there’s probably a lot of people that don’t know I went through this experience. I didn’t put out content. I’ve put out lots of content because I love educating and teaching and I’ve done this my entire career, but I didn’t put out content for about a year and a half because of this scenario. A lot of people didn’t know I was going through. I actually went in, I had injured my back years before and I did a lot of things to get it better, got a lot better, but still, I had this nagging issue and I got stem cell done and it really helped, and then it was probably about 90 percent better and I thought I’m going to get a stem cell injection done one more time.
This is where they take your bone marrow, concentrate the stem cells, and re-inject it in the injured area. So, it was my own cells. Well, they went and did this, but something didn’t feel right a few days later, and then I kept feeling worse and worse. Finally, three months later, I woke up, and I literally couldn’t walk. The pain was so excruciating. I thought, well, I just had it a couple of weeks later. I thought, I still can’t walk. Finally, I had to call an ambulance. They had to come to pick me up. And by the way, I was living in Puerto Rico at the time. Our family moved there for part of the year. We lived between there and Nashville, Tennessee. They brought me in, got an MRI, got the report back, and it said I had a spinal infection throughout my disc and my bone, and even into the spinal canal, there was an abscess growing.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Was there a connection to that with the stem cells? Was the stem cells just
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, again, I don’t know if it was stem cells. I don’t know if they were injecting the needle somehow, and by the way, this was not like a hole-in-the-wall clinic. I’d call it the most prestigious and the largest stem cell clinic ever in the world, probably. These were very good doctors. Fast forward again, I was sitting here with this doctor and Wendy, there were emotions I’d never experienced before that experience. I had never felt what hopelessness felt like, never felt despair. I had about 48 hours where it was just very difficult to get that sort of diagnosis. But then I really had to touch back into my foundation and that’s God and say, God, you know what? You’re bigger than my diagnosis and I believe you’re going to heal me and I’m just going to do everything I can to heal. I decided rather than sort of being a victim or feeling like I was a victim to say, you know what, I’m going to do everything I can to conquer this and to heal. And so that’s what I did. Now, I will say that, the infectious disease doctor said, you need to be on antibiotics for three months. Okay. Now I knew what sort of damage that would do, but I also was smart enough to know, well, I’d have to kill this infection. I did a lot of research myself right before I got on the antibiotic. I found this study that said that if you get in a hyperbaric chamber every day for two hours, you can cut your antibiotic time dramatically down to four weeks total rather than 12.
I did that while I did the IV antibiotic. I got in a hyperbaric chamber every day for two hours. I then got IVs such as Myers cocktail with glutathione and vitamin C and a lot of B vitamins. I did IV silver. I did ozone in an IV and I did a lot of these natural procedures. The only thing I ate was pretty much meat and vegetables and berries. I followed this protocol and after four weeks, we were able to completely kill the infection. However, the disc and spine heal very slowly. And so, it was a full year before I could walk again. Just about this time last year, I was off my walker for just a month. Now I’m happy to say that I’m back, probably close to 90%. I actually played pickleball for the first time yesterday and I was like, oh, let’s see how sorry I feel. Gray.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I’m playing for the first time on Saturday. I’m tickled off.
Dr. Josh Axe
Hey, there we go. So, I was so excited. I bought a racket last night. So anyways, excited to get into it and play some more pickleball and just started running 2 weeks ago again. All that being said, I’m already much better than the best diagnosis that I got, and I really praise God because I feel like he led me to the right people and the right resources, and was part of that process. I think prayer played a big role in that as well, but I learned so much along the way. I’m actually grateful for the experience from the standpoint of not walking for a year. I had plenty of time to do research. I spent hours and hours a day researching longevity because that’s another thing I just sort of realized at the time. Even in the past year, I want to be after not walking for a year, I wasn’t like, I want to go out and do a triathlon. I was like, I just want to walk. And so, for me, longevity became such a priority that I started studying a lot with cellular medicine and the mitochondria and how we actually heal with cellular medicine and promote longevity.
That was a big thing now that I’m able to do for myself, for my family, for patients, for people I worked to help educate, help them extend their lifespan and heal. I learned a lot in the process from that standpoint. I’m grateful for it. And then actually I wrote the book, Think This, Not That while I was down, because I really felt like along with the practical things that I needed to do physically, there was such a spiritual and mental and emotional component to healing. I think this book is a really good resource for people who want to experience a breakthrough in life in their mind and spirit. That’s sort of where that book was birthed out of.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, I’m right there with you. Prayer is a very important part of my health journey as well, and asking for very specific things that I’m looking to accomplish with my health and other areas of my life. When you approach it with prayer, you approach it with mindset. Can you talk a little bit about the things you talk about in Think This, Not That in regards to mindset? I think many people have a physical health issue. They only go for physical approaches because that seems perfectly logical. Tell us about the mindset or other ways that you influence your body to heal them.
Dr. Josh Axe
One of the studies that I was already somewhat aware of, or I guess historical facts that led to studies, and that was during World War II, was a doctor named Dr. Henry Beecher. He was the practicing physician during World War two for a lot of fallen soldiers. When they were on the battlefield, at one point, he ran out of morphine. Now we all know morphine is an incredibly strong pain killing drug, and when they ran out of morphine, he told the nurse, he said, listen, we have to give these soldiers something because they were losing limbs and we’re talking about excruciating pain here. So, he said, okay, I want you to fill this vial, this syringe with saline with salt water and inject it into them, telling them it’s morphine. They did that. 30 to 40 percent of them experienced almost the exact same level of pain relief as if they were actually getting morphine. To me, if you really sit there and think about how incredible that is, that your body can create these neurochemicals to relieve pain that are as strong as morphine. Now that very same system that we’re talking about has caused people to have cancerous tumors one day and then weeks later, they get an MRI or a PET scan and they’re gone.
That same system within our body, spirit, mindset, whatever you want to call it has allowed people to either live longer or die early or reverse disease or cause disease. It’s really important to understand, first off, this is a really important topic and it matters because your life can depend upon it, your health depends upon it. There was the study and that’s the placebo effect. Here’s the thing that blew physicians away after the placebo effect. They kept doing it again saying, well, this was a fluke. If they saw the same results every single time, though, the placebo is sometimes as powerful as the drug itself, sometimes more powerful, depending on how strong the belief is about what you’re actually taking. It’s really incredible. There are actually ways to harness and boost the placebo effect. One of those ways is knowing exactly what you want. I did this. When I was unable to walk, one of the things I wanted to do desperately was play with my two-year-old daughter. I wanted to throw her in the air in the pool again. So, I pictured that very specifically. I want to do that. I want to run again. I want to play pickleball. I saw myself doing that in the future. If you know what you want to experience with those fallen soldiers, I want this pain to go away. That’s step number one.
Maybe for you listening right now or watching this, you might say to yourself, why have hypothyroidism? I want to reverse that or I have autoimmune disease or I’ve got chronic fatigue syndrome or brain fog, whatever it is. That’s the first thing you notice. I want that symptom gone. What’s the next thing? The next thing is you want to tie it to it. You want to be emotionally driven by this thing to where you, that vision you have in the future where you’re pain free you experienced the emotions you’re going to have when you get to that place. When I’m throwing my daughter in the air, it’s like joy. Even though I wasn’t able to do it yet, I experienced that same joy and satisfaction knowing, okay, this is going to happen. I can’t wait for it. The third thing that you can do is create a plan of action. Here’s the thing. Sometimes there are people who have what I’d call toxic positivity. We just say, I’m going to heal. I’m going to heal. I’m going to heal. You say it but your subconscious and your nervous system doesn’t actually believe you versus if you lay out a specific program like I did of saying, okay, I want to be able to play pickleball in one year. How do I do that? I’m going to start getting in the pool and doing that type of physical therapy first, and then I’m going to start doing banded exercises. Then I’m going to do weight training and then I’m going to eat these foods. I’m going to do these therapies. This is how I’m going to get in this place in one year. My nervous system said, I can see if I do all that work, do all those things where that’s going to help me heal and get there.
Those are some ways, but I would say that that’s an important part when a lot of people miss. A lot of times people just run to change their diet as they should, but we leave out some of the most critical components of healing when it comes to the mind and spirit. Even if you look up the dictionary today, what is health, you’re going to see it say health is being whole in body, mind, and spirit. I want to mention this too. When you look at one of the oldest forms of medicine, Chinese medicine, they’re very aware of this. We’ve sort of lost this in our medical system today. It’s very sort of cold and non-spiritual, non-emotional, and non-mental. Body and spirit are separate. When you look at Chinese medicine, there’s what they call the three treasures and these words might sound funny. They’re just a different language, but it’s Shen, Qi and Jing. Basically, Shen is your spirit, which then impacts your qi, which is your mental, which then impacts your Jing, which is your physical. If you’re not taking care of your spiritual and mental health, well, your physical health is going to suffer, and so you always want to be caring for all three.
Ads 00:15:48
For anyone listening who really wants to detox their body, go to heavymetalsquiz.com. I created a quiz for you. It only takes a couple of seconds based on some lifestyle questions. You can get your toxicity score and get a free video series that answers all of your frequently asked questions about how to detox your body. Check it out at heavymetalsquiz.com.
Dr. Wendy Myers
We know that emotional trauma can cause up to 65 percent or more of physical health issues. We’re very interconnected mind and body. When people go to their doctor with a health issue, like you, they’re given a kind of a prognosis with really negative outcomes and they’re told, oh, you have three months to live, or people with this don’t live more than five years or what have you. I mean, literally people will believe that. We’ll follow through with that and die within 5 years or after 3 months because they believe that because that’s what they were told. I think that people have to be very careful when they are told that because I personally believe that almost every health issue has a solution, every single one with the power of bioenergetics with the power of mindset with the power of prayer and calling out to God to help me find the tools that I need and or the people, the resources to heal myself. I think people have to be very careful and know who they’re speaking to. If they’re speaking to a conventional medical doctor, they may not be getting everything. They’re getting a myopic view when you’re limited by that person’s toolkit.
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So, let’s talk a little bit about some things that you did to help with your healing. We talked about mindset. Is there anything else that you talk about in your book that helped you kind of overcome this, this really frightening diagnosis and that health issue?
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, let me talk about some things I did in my book and then maybe some things that are more nutritional based that I think people might benefit from as well. I was just very specific about what I wanted and I had to overcome having a victim mentality because it’s so easy to get sucked into why me? For other people, it’s bad genetics or this doctor made a mistake and blamed them. I had to forgive him and it’s interesting. He texted me; this was some time ago and he said, you probably don’t want to hear from me. I know he felt bad for being partly responsible for what happened. I said, you know what? All is forgiven. You know what? I absolutely understand and I’m just praying you and your family are blessed. We got to chat a bit and it was a good experience for both of us. But, he’s a great guy. I really like him and his family. All that being said, I think that I was able to forgive. That was something that was important for me because I thought, well, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten this done and that physician and that was important. I think forgiveness is really important for healing.
The other thing I did was I tapped into my purpose. I think that really fueled me. Let me go back to the victim mentality first though and say this. I decided I would not be a victim. I was not going to make excuses. It would have been very easy for me to be crabby not walking for a year. I had to have my father-in-law. I really did. And then my parents took care of me for three months along with my wife. My wife and father-in-law took care of me for the rest of the time. I decided I was going to be incredibly grateful and thankful. I was going to bear my suffering nobly because my two-year-old turned three at the same time. My daughter was sitting there watching me. My family was watching me. Friends were coming over sometimes and I tried to not complain at any one time. It was really this sort of thing of like, I’m going to be healed. I’m going to be back. And then it’s living with purpose. A lot of people don’t fully recognize this, but it’s so important not to go into complaining and playing the victim. We’re talking about your condition. It is the worst thing you can do to heal. If you truly want to heal, don’t complain about your problem.
Now, listen, there were a couple of times where I was in an emotional battle, because again, you can imagine how bad the pain was and I chose not to take painkillers because I didn’t want to hurt my liver so I couldn’t even roll on my side at times. It was so bad and for that whole time, I never walked. I couldn’t even sit. When I went someplace, I had to crawl. A couple of times I said, Chelsea, honey, babe, come here. I just said, hey, would you pray for me? Or can I just have that for two minutes with you? So, I’m not going to say I never said anything negative or that I didn’t complain at all, but I tried to say, listen, is it okay if I vent for a couple of minutes and just get it out and then be done? I would do it in that way or do it with God in prayer. All that being said, I think that I had to overcome any form of being a victim mentality because that totally crushes your healing. I had to stay positive in my mindset, really harnessing the placebo effect. I also really tapped into my purpose.
I had a friend stop over and he said, hey, what have you been doing? I said, I’m writing a book and I’ve been working on actually this, a second book now and doing this and this. And he said, wow, gosh, if I were you, I would just be eating Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew all day. I said, well, you know what, I actually feel like doing that, but I have so much purpose that that sort of overrides that sort of lethargy and makes me want to go out there and do the most I can with my life more than ever before. That’s another thing I really get into in the book is how to find your purpose and live out your purpose and the strongest way possible. Coming out of this, I have a feeling that I don’t want to be great as much as I want to be good. I want to be a good person. I want to bless people. I want to operate with high integrity and character. I want to make the earth a heavenly place. I want to love people and if I can do that even just with my family and friends, that means more to me than going out and building a billion-dollar company or whatever it might be. That’s not my highest priority. It’s good.
I think right now culture praises the great, but doesn’t praise the good near enough that really good people that are out there today, we try to vilify everybody on both sides. That’s really unfortunate. So, that’s another thing, but I really get into the book. Here’s how to become a hero and overcome the victim mentality, how to find your purpose, how to build a rock-solid identity and who you are. A lot of people have that. You mentioned childhood trauma. So many people have these health conditions because of an identity issue and that’s a big thing as well. I really get into how to do that in the book too.
Dr. Wendy Myers
You have inspired so many millions of people. You have incredible content on your website. I look on your website all the time because you have such thorough articles all backed by research. I love that you have a heightened sense of wanting to continue to do that after this incident. It would be so easy to fall into a victim mentality, poor me, fear, dread, hopelessness, and I think people don’t realize that that is hard. It would be so hard to be in that mindset and to maybe not get the outcome that you had, but it’s also hard to do the work as well get out of that and do something different either. What our brain is trained to do is look for problems and maybe go into a depressed state with automatic state, when we’re in a lot of pain and don’t have a good prognosis, but you just have to choose your heart. Both outcomes are hard.
Dr. Josh Axe
That’s right.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Let’s talk about food. You have a lot of incredible information on food as medicine on your website. What did you do as far as your diet to reduce inflammation and do different things with your diet?
Dr. Josh Axe
I was really focused on consuming foods that support cellular regeneration, and that’s one of the keys. If you think about it like this, a lot of our organs, not all, but most of them are new every single year. Your liver regenerates it as new, your pancreas, your adrenal glands, and your reproductive organs. A lot of our body is complete. Our blood, our digestive system, they’re completely new every single year. If those are regenerating and healing all the time, well, why do you still have hypothyroidism or why do you still have insulin resistance? Why is that happening? It’s because you’re not consuming the right foods. It’s the biggest part of it for most people. My diet was really a lot of lean meat or meats that were high in omega 3 fatty acids. It was some berries or figs or pomegranate really, or Kiwi or some pineapple. These are foods and fruits that have certain enzymes that help reduce inflammation. And then it was a lot of steamed and cooked vegetables. I did have some potatoes on occasion, that sort of thing. Sweet potato or white potato. That was the basis of my entire diet. I took omega three fatty acids. I did high dose turmeric. I did Boswellia. I made ginger and galangal. I did a lot of Reishi mushroom and turkey tail.
I did a very high dose of probiotics. For a lot of people getting antibiotics, I had not taken any medication since I had my wisdom teeth removed when I was 19 years old and I was 42. It’d been a long time but that was the thing I was most conscious of. I needed to protect my cells because antibiotics are very hard on those and they’re very hard on the gut. I also did a lot of glutathione and their precursors, like acetylcysteine and milk thistle. Those things I actually did after I got off the antibiotic. During it, I would do about 100 to 200 billion CFUs of probiotics a day along with prebiotics and postbiotics. But after I got off, I did 1 trillion probiotics a day. That’s very high compared to most people. Most people don’t take over 100 ever. This was 10 times that, a hundred trillion, or one trillion. I think that was a big part of me healing and getting my gut health back so quickly and my health back is really resetting that gut microbiome. So that was a really big part of detoxifying my gut and cells, helping set up my body to win. My ballet never really had loose stool. Most people with their gut would be an absolute wreck for months. I talked to someone else who had to do this and he said that for a year, his gut was absolutely destroyed.
Ads 00:27:04
I want to give thanks to one of our sponsors, IonizeMe Maxx ionic foot baths. These are the foot baths that I personally use and recommend to all of my patients. If you’re looking for an effective way to detox the body, it’s easy that you can do it at home. It doesn’t take any time out of your day and you pull all of these toxins in your body into the water. You want to be doing a foot bath. These are fantastic to blood ions into your body, through the feet and neutralize toxins. They can help with pain, fatigue, brain fog, weight loss, and even with swelling. They’re great at reducing swelling, getting the lymphatics flowing and giving you liver support by pulling out toxins through the feet and into the water. They dramatically increase mobilization and flow of toxins into your urine and stool for two to three days after you do the foot bath. So, they’re not just coming out in the water. Get yours today at healthandmed.com.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I think people don’t realize after they take antibiotics, they can decimate at least half of their good gut bacteria. It’s just devastating.
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, and I think a lot of people don’t realize too. You don’t have billions of probiotics in your gut. You have hundreds of trillions in your gut, probably. You definitely have at least trillions. It’s so doing billions. If you’ve been on an antibiotic, you also need prebiotic fiber and those probiotics can definitely grow and multiply a lot. You want to do a very high dose if you’ve ever taken an antibiotic. Some people don’t realize you might say, well, I haven’t. Now, most people have taken an antibiotic sometime in the past five years, but even if you say, well, I haven’t taken an antibiotic, well, do you use a hand sanitizer? Is your water completely clean to where there’s no chlorine in it? Is every food you eat organic because 80 percent of the antibiotics given are given to livestock via cows and chickens and the animals we eat? So, people get so many more antibiotics than they think they do via not just the prescription and even birth control. Certain medications in a way, act as microbiome inhibitors. Not just destroy is one word, but basically it alters it greatly. I’m a big fan for detoxification for longevity, for just healing the gut of ultra-high dose probiotics because if you would drink a big thing of goat’s milk kefir, there are trillions of probiotics in there. It’s actually much higher as a dosage than most probiotic supplements today.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, I agree. I kind of tend to skip the probiotics. I go for the keepers, the coconut water keepers, the raw krauts and things like that, and just dose up every day. I’d seen you on another podcast where you talked about birth control and the statistics on how that can contribute to depression, which really rang true for me because I was on that since I was a teen. My mother was terrified of me having a pregnancy like she did as a teen and so she wanted to prevent that. I spent all my 20s with a moderate level depression and that it just really hit me like a ton of bricks that you’re mentioning these stats on how birth control pills can contribute to depression. Can you expand on that?
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, yeah, that’s one of the things people don’t realize, and one other thing I hit on is hypothyroidism. The statistic is something like if you have ever taken birth control long term, your chance of getting hypothyroidism goes up by like 283%.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Like, hello? Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m sorry, it was the hypothyroidism, which I dealt with my whole life as well.
Dr. Josh Axe
So, when I first opened my functional medicine practice in Nashville, I used to have a brick-and-mortar office. Now I have a virtual clinic. It’s Doctor Acts Clinic or the Health Institute. I still work with practitioners to see people but that was where I saw my biggest shocker. When I was 26 years old, I graduated. I went and started seeing patients. My shocker was how many women had hypothyroidism that was sort of mild. I was like there are so many. And then the other thing was depression, anxiety, a lot were on antidepressants and anxiety medications. One of the things I also started realizing over the years was this tied to methylation and what happens in the gut microbiome. When you take an antibiotic, or take birth control, you wipe out a lot of good bacteria and you cause yeast and candida to overgrow. What starts to happen and what that will do is it will decrease your nutrient absorption to where you can’t absorb B vitamins very well and it affects a lot of things.
I could go on all these tangents about epigenetics and how it affects that too, but let’s stick with sort of methylation here. Let me give you an example with one study. There’s a study at a Stanford and they found that if you take a probiotic supplement, your levels of B vitamins that you’re absorbing into your cell and blood go up by 50%. So, there’s a really dramatic increase. I mean, that’s huge. Think about that. Many more double the B vitamins in your body and you have to have these B vitamins to run a process in your body called methylation that creates neurotransmitters, including glutathione. So, if you want to detoxify, you use your body’s most powerful detoxifying agent. You have to methylate very well, and you need certain nutrients to do that. You need vitamin B2, B6, B9, B12, and that’s just for creating the neurotransmitters that are important for mood and also for creating thyroid hormones. There’s a whole other part of it then where you also need some zinc and magnesium and iodine and selenium, and that’s for also creating glutathione, which is important as well. So, all that being said, if you are deficient in any one of those nutrients, and it could be that you maybe are even taking vitamins, but your gut not absorbing them. So that’s why, again, going back to this probiotic discussion, it’s so important, even for detoxification, because your body cannot create the antioxidants it needs to detoxify internally.
If your gut microbiome isn’t healthy, you can’t methylate properly to create proper hormones. One of the things I’ve had a lot of patients do is do high dose probiotics including their diet. I typically have them like coconut yogurt or kefir or something like that and some other probiotic rich foods. I have them take a probiotic supplement, a soil-based supplement and then I will have them take a methylated B complex that has all these methylated nutrients in it. Sometimes I’ll also have them do a granular, which might have liver and organs in it, just because I mean, the reality is it’s actually probably nature’s methylator in terms of what it’s going to do for your body and system. I’ll get them on that. The results are typically just amazing being able to do that for some people who struggle with hypothyroidism and depression and anxiety. The results are really, really positive.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, there are millions of women on birth control and yes, it has a purpose. We know we need birth control. A lot of women, including myself, suffer from chronic yeast infections and candidiasis.
Dr. Josh Axe
Let me point out another important factor. Part of what it does when you get depleted like that is it affects your body’s metabolism and increases your core body temperature. That’s why people with hypothyroidism tend to have a colder internal body temperature. Now, that doesn’t also mean they couldn’t have hot flashes and get hot sometimes because their body isn’t strong enough. It’s one system of their body is not strong enough, or it’s so depleted that it can’t regulate body temperature properly, but that’s part of what’s going on. If somebody has hypothyroidism and they’re listening to this, you should do a lot of things to warm your body internally. Drinking ginger herbal tea, getting in an infrared sauna is fantastic for those people. You would want to be careful and probably never do a cold plunge unless you’re going to a hot tub right afterwards or do contrast therapy because your body temperature is already cool, but it really affects them.
People don’t realize that taking birth control depletes your body of vitamin B1, zinc, magnesium, and probiotics. Those are all the things you need for neurotransmitters and in thyroid hormones. The reality is when somebody takes medication, all of the side effects are not on the bottle. There isn’t a single medication that doesn’t deplete your body of certain nutrients. If you don’t go and then replace those nutrients, which still sometimes it’s almost impossible because you’re disrupting the gut. So even if you take them, you’re not going to absorb them well. But birth control, it’s one of the, one of the worst drugs out there in terms of what it does for disrupting the gut and your cellular health.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Well, thank you for that really clear illustration. I’m sure there’s a lot of light bulbs going on for some of the listeners. Let’s switch over to some keys for longevity. Some of the things that you learned, what we need to do to fuel ourselves, maybe throw on some info about detoxification there. We talk a lot about that, but what are some of the really key insights, maybe things that aren’t so common that you learned about how to improve longevity?
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, let me talk about food and then I’m going to talk about spiritual practices and more of the mental and then I’m going to also talk a little bit about exercise here. Let me just mention this. There’s a great study on this for longevity, which I’m going to bring up because you had mentioned you played pickleball earlier. They did a study on the sports and forms of athletics that increase your lifespan. The most number one, as a category as a whole was tennis, badminton, and pickleball. So, playing racket sports more than any other sport by far increases your lifespan the most.
Dr. Wendy Myers
That’s why you see all these elderly people playing tennis. They’re still doing it in their eighties.
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, it’s amazing, and when I read the study, they said there were several factors involved. One was hand-eye coordination. The other one was in reflexes. That’s very important for aging slowly, having quick reflexes so you don’t fall. There are all kinds of things that prevent it. The other thing was cardio. It’s not as cardiovascular as say running, but it’s still cardiovascular fitness and you’re actually using your legs quite a bit. The last one is community driven. If you’re playing double pickleball with somebody or doubles tennis, there’s bonding. It’s fun. It’s competitive. It’s keeping yourself sharp. It was by far the most. Nothing else as a sport was even close to that. I want to say the second. After those racquet sports I might get this in the wrong order, but it was either swimming or cycling. I want to say swimming was next. We know that’s great. It’s a full body activity. It’s very good for lung health. It’s very easy on the joints. And so, swimming was next. Then I want to say cycling was after that. And then after that, it was soccer. And then after that, I want to say it was like weight training and walking. Those were the things that, and you’ll notice there, even though golf is a sport, it wasn’t on the list. Basketball wasn’t on the list. Of course, football wasn’t, I think that actually would probably age people, but generally speaking, neither was cross country running or triathlon. So again, those are the things.
If you’re saying, I want to extend my lifespan, you want to play racket sports. You can swim, you can cycle. Most people may not play soccer. I played it growing up and I loved it. But anyways, that might be harder, but again, probably it’s a lot of leg kicking. That can be good. And then, of course, as we talked about, it’s a little bit of weight training and walking too, especially walking. There are other longevity studies showing that walking is tremendous, especially if you can do it where you walk more briskly and if you can walk up and down hills. That was very good. Now from a nutritional standpoint, in terms of longevity, I think it’s really important that we increase our cellular mitochondria. Your mitochondria are like the power plants of your cell. They’re the engine. They’re what drive and create energy for your body. And I think in Chinese medicine, the way they would explain this, I remember, one of my two favorite acupuncturists in the world, this one, I’m going to refer to his name is Dion, but he’s this amazing man from Taiwan. When I first went to see him, I’d been traveling a lot and he said, he said your battery is down here. It needs to be here. And I said, okay. They would call that Shen in Chinese medicine, but what they’re really looking at from Western medicine is your cellular energy, your ATP, and the health of your mitochondria. That’s also tied to adrenal function, how well your adrenals are doing. Picture your body like that. Now phones don’t do this as much, but if you’ve ever driven a golf cart where the battery is low, it starts putting along and doesn’t have much energy. Think about your body in the same way. For a lot of people, hypothyroidism is like this.
When you have hypothyroidism, your thyroid and your adrenal batteries tend to be very low. There are certain herbs, foods, lifestyle practices that start to build up that battery and then all of a sudden, boom. I’ve helped hundreds of thousands of women reverse hypothyroidism and it was because I’m not just giving you a random diet or supplement or pill. We’re very specifically going and treating the root of the issue. We’re going to warm the body and we’re going to drive the battery up. In Chinese medicine, they actually call hypothyroidism a Qi and Yang deficiency. They call it kidney, but it’s really an adrenal gland. Qi that’s cellular energy and connection to the adrenals and yang is heat. It’s your body’s ability to regenerate. Those are the things we got to drive up in the body, but for longevity, again, it really is tied to that Qi. Adaptogenic herbs are going to be very high on that list, Reishi mushroom, cordyceps, all, but most of those medicinal mushrooms are going to be high and herbs like ashwagandha. There’s a berry called schisandra that’s used in Chinese medicine and very good for immunity, very good for kidney health and adrenal well, that’s going to be on that list. Rhodiola rosea and ginseng are very good for men, especially over 50 for building up that young energy for women. Dong quai is also very good for building the blood. That’s actually good for almost all women, especially if you have any low energy or borderline anemia. A lot of those adaptogens are going to be at the very top of the list.
Clinically, when you look at the studies, green tea, especially matcha, is going to be very high. It contains a compound called EGCG, which reduces oxidative stress. That’s one of the biggest things that causes us to age more quickly and then also leads to inflammation. This is also why hyperbaric chambers can be really good for people for regeneration, getting that oxygen and reducing some of that within the body. This is also why actually even hydrogen water can reduce some of the oxidative stress and so that can be good. I would say adaptogenic herbs or vegetables, they’re going to have a lot of those phytonutrients, especially the green leaves. Those are going to be good for a lot of those things to activate glutathione production. Berries are going to have those antioxidants that reduce the oxidative stress as well. The foods that I think are the best for that again, are berries, acai, maki, goji berry known as we’re looking more of the exotics, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, tart cherry, granite and figs are going to be the highest. There are dark blue, blacks and purples, reds. Those are sort of the sort of fruits you want to get a lot of when it comes to anti-aging according to the clinical literature.
After that, getting some of the omega 3 fats, doing things like bone broth, good sources of collagen, but really, it’s berries, it’s adaptogens like mushrooms and doing lots of herbals. It’s those dark berries. It’s vegetables. It’s wild organic meat. That’s, in a nutshell, the best diet for really driving forward with longevity and last but not least, when it comes to the mental spiritual side of things, having a sense of purpose in your life. There is a study that found that when somebody retires from work, if they don’t find something else that’s deeply purposeful in their life afterwards, they tend to die a lot earlier. If you don’t feel like you have a sense of purpose, that there’s something spiritually and mentally that’s affecting your body physically. Knowing this is my purpose, this is what I’m called to do. You don’t have to think there’s not, this doesn’t have to just be one thing. It could be serving others, loving others and making earth a heavenly place. If you are doing that and you have something that you can volunteer for, whether you get paid or don’t get paid either way, you’re driving towards that increases longevity.
The next thing here, and last thing I’ll mention is community. One of the longest studies ever done at Harvard found that the number one thing of longevity, more than anything else I’ve talked about today, is community. If you have a sense of, I’ve got supportive community virtuous people around me, that’s iron sharpens iron. That’s huge for increasing your longevity and the length of your life. Doing everything you can to get tapped into that sort of community extends your lifespan more than anything.
Ads 00:45:45
I want to give thanks to one of our sponsors, Pure Body Extra Zeolite. As you know, toxins are all around us and in the food that we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and you can do something about it. With over 1 million bottles sold, Pure Body Extra Zeolite is changing lives with its natural detox. It’s a nanonized zeolite that’s proven pure and optimized to remove the toxins that have been building up in your body. Just a few simple taste free sprays a day and you can detox every single day. Get your bottle at thegoodinside.com.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, absolutely. I think there is such an epidemic of loneliness sweeping our country and the world. There are so many different ways that you can combat that. There are so many amazing communities and pickleball leagues or your church or whatever. There are lots of different, wonderful living communities, a lot of different things like that, that people can seek out. Let’s talk about exactly how toxins age you, can you discuss that a little bit? I don’t think people realize the impact that all the different heavy metals and chemicals and glyphosate, et cetera are having by being a catalyst for aging our bodies quicker. Can you talk about that a little?
Dr. Josh Axe
There are several pathways from which toxins age us, but just to talk about a couple of them. One, internally, let’s say you eat a food that has glyphosate on it. The first area that’s really going to disrupt is the gut microbiome. There are studies showing this. I was actually just talking to one of my closest friends, his name is Jordan Rubin about this. We were talking about how there’s studies showing that glyphosate damages the cells in the gut. It doesn’t only kill the bacteria, but it also then starts to damage the gut and the cells itself. And then from there, what’s going to happen is you won’t be able to absorb nutrients. Here’s the other thing though that a lot of people don’t realize. You also won’t be able to create the right nutrients. Your gut bacteria create nutrients, whether it be butyric acid, certain B vitamins, even neurotransmitters like serotonin. Your gut is like a manufacturer of nutrients.
Most people think the only place I get nutrients is when I eat food or take a supplement. No, your gut specifically creates vitamins and minerals and nutrients. So, if you have a toxin, especially on a food and you consume it, that’ll start to wipe out the good bacteria, damage the gut cells and disrupt your body creating a lot of those things I had talked about earlier with methylation, a lot of the B vitamins that are responsible for eventually creating glutathione, which is your body’s master antioxidant for detoxification. There’s no doubt the food we eat has a big impact there via that pathway via the gut. There’s also the pathway of airborne toxins that you’re going to have, which affects the lung alveoli. That’s going to then cause systemic inflammation in your lungs, which are actually a major detoxification organ as well. It’s going to damage those in the process and then even affect the blood and that’s going to be a major problem, even affecting your oxygen levels, and that’ll cause you to age. One of the biggest factors that cause you to age is, of course, even to die is when your blood becomes less oxygenated, and so that’s very important as well.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, oxygen is the main fuel for the mitochondria. That’s their main fuel. The sun too as well.
Dr. Josh Axe
There’s actually the neurochemical pathway, which is if you have negative thoughts, if you’re sitting there, if you’re angry at somebody or you hate somebody, or you’re unforgiving somebody, your body will actually start creating chemicals that are actually toxic to your entire body. So, there are a lot of pathways to this. I think the most common pathway we’re aware of is the oral pathway and what it does to the gut microbiome. There are so many things like heavy metals. There are so many medications that are probably the biggest thing that is toxic to people that it’s disrupting their detoxification. People today think I’m taking an aspirin and this is good for me. Taking NSAIDs is the 15th leading killer. It’s very toxic to your liver and your kidneys and your intestine, your stomach lining. So, no, it’s a toxin. Birth control, I mentioned again, people think, oh, it’s baby aspirin. It’s not, it’s like a vitamin. No, it’s not a vitamin. So, all that being said, the single biggest form of toxin that we’ve probably taken that we’re unaware of, at least, are conventional medications that your doctor prescribed for whatever condition you have. Alongside that, it’s going to be the foods that we spray in our produce.
Now the greatest form of toxins from food comes from our meat and dairy products. Now, if meat and dairy is organic and grass fed, they’re not going to have toxins. Those are clean and those are fine. But if you’re eating conventional meat or conventional dairy, there was a study out of Spain that found that there are about 21 different medications found in non-organic animal milk, even things like estradiol. For women, that’s really bad because that’s going to increase your risk of estrogen-based cancers. It’s also going to increase your risk of infertility because that gets too high and progesterone gets too low. For men it’s going to cause more feminine characteristics and it’s going to cause testosterone to drop. I don’t think people realize how disruptive these chemicals are, I’m just eating non-conventional meat. It’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal, and you’ve talked about this on your show. I’m certain of it, but it’s the bucket effect. It’s not a big deal one time, but if you do it consistently time after time after time after time, you accumulate these toxins and your body can’t handle it. Eventually, it starts disrupting your hormones, your gut, and of course, your body’s ability to even cleanse itself of other things.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, I know. When you’re taking medications that your liver has to process, hey, guess what? The detoxing you could normally be doing with all the influx of toxins we have on a daily basis, that takes a back seat because it’s dealing with the medications. Some people are taking five, ten medications every single day and just watching their health take a nosedive.
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, and listen, I know there’s a time or place to be on something for a period of time. But the problem is that the people go to their doctors today and their doctors will say, you’ve got to be on this medication the rest of your life. Well, if somebody goes in, I know this is a basic one I’ve had on several times when I helped so many women with this is, they’ll come in and they’re on hypothyroidism medication. Their doctor acts like, first off, it’s, you can’t do anything about it. We can only adjust your medication. But if they would actually get to the root of the issue, a lot of those women could. We’re sending them with antidepressants. Maybe if somebody is having a major episode, there’s a few months period where you do with medication, but at the same time, there should be counseling. There should be dietary changes, lifestyle changes, finding your purpose, all those other things so they can get off of it. But most of the time it doesn’t happen. It’s how you need to be on this drug for the rest of your life.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Dr. Axe, thank you so much for coming on the show. That was such a good show. You are so full of knowledge. You have millions of followers across so many platforms for a reason, so thank you so much for coming on the show. Why don’t you tell us where we can get your new book, Think This, Not That.
Dr. Josh Axe
The new book is in bookstores nationwide. It’s also on amazon.com. You could just go there and look up Dr. Axe, Think This, Not That. We’ve got rave reviews of the New York Times bestseller. If you want to read a book that’s really deep, meaningful, it’s going to help you live a more significant life, live out a strong purpose and help you grow more, check out Think This, Not That on Amazon. And then also, I’d encourage people to check out my podcast. It’s called the Dr. Josh Axe show. You might also just search online on YouTube or Apple Dr. Axe. Maybe you want to learn more about methylation. Well, I’ve talked about it. You can look up Dr. Axe methylation or Dr. Axe hypothyroid, just on YouTube or again, check out the podcast. I’ve had so many great guests and topics there, but those are probably the two best places to find me. I do a lot on Instagram too. That’s just @drjoshaxe there too. Wendy, thank you so much for having me. It was a joy; great questions and I was excited to share. So, thanks again.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Well, thank you so much, Dr. Axe and everyone. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Myers Detox Podcast, where we have experts from around the world talking about detoxification, anti-aging, and bioenergetics, and some of these higher-level topics to really help you get those missing keys that you’re looking for on your health journey. Thanks for tuning in.
Disclaimer
The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Wendy Myers and the producers, disclaims responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of the information contained herein. The opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests’ qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.
