How Your Thoughts Affect Your Health (Science Explained)

Can your thoughts actually influence your health?

In this episode of Ultra Life Today, Dr. Lindsay Adrian breaks down the science behind mindset, the placebo (and nocebo) effect, and how your emotional state can directly impact healing.

We discuss:

• The real science behind the placebo effect
• How fear vs curiosity changes outcomes
• Why mindset matters during treatment (even cancer care)
• The role of stress, connection, and emotional health
• Foundational tests that reveal inflammation and metabolic health

 This episode will challenge how you think about healing—and empower you to take a more active role in your health journey.

Listen to the full episode here or watch online: https://youtu.be/knBYrWB6ERs

Visit UltraBotanica.com to learn more about us and how you can get a free sample of our products.

Transcript

0:00:02 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Epigenetically, we have very, very clear scientific data that shows that we can control to some extent how our cells function and the reading of our genetics. And so let's embrace that and be purposeful with that rather than unconsciously getting in our own way about it. And we can do that by seeking joy. We can do that by surrounding ourselves with people who love us and support us. We can do that by being curious instead of fearful.

0:00:47 - (Josh Bellieu): Hey, welcome Back to episode two of Ultralife Today with Dr. Adrian, naturopathic oncologist, board certified, and on and on and on. Lindsay's a featured speaker, as you know, in conferences around the world, speaking to her colleagues, her peers, and she's inquisitive. She loves to learn. She continues to learn all the time. I love that about her. In our first episode, we talked a bit about the philosophy behind naturopathic medicine.

0:01:15 - (Josh Bellieu): Patients coming from this conventional medical world into this world of root cause healthcare, and maybe not being overwhelmed, but actually after a first visit with, with Lindsay, feeling hope, feeling like, hey, I'm empowered, I can do something. And we're going to walk down a road and talk a little bit about patient experience with Lindsay. What may happen with someone that helps them begin to go, wow.

0:01:40 - (Josh Bellieu): What she's recommending to me is working. We may talk first 30, 60, 90 days and even dive into some patient experiences that Lindsay can tell us about. So welcome back, Lindsay. We so appreciate you taking the time because I know you have got a jam packed schedule.

0:01:56 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): So thanks, thanks for having me. It's always lovely to chat.

0:02:01 - (Josh Bellieu): So what is a usual focus for you? I'm assuming that maybe that first 30 days after you do an intake and an interview with someone and you're learning this health history, as most conventional doctors, you know, look at a few pieces of paper, they glance at them, they go on because they've only got five or 10, 10 minutes. You know, it's not their faul. They're working within a particular healthcare system that only allows them to function at a particular level. I always tell people on my podcasts or our radio show, it's like, please don't blame your allopathic doctor.

0:02:36 - (Josh Bellieu): This is the way they were trained. This is the way they were educated. This is what they know. So don't blame them, but be willing to recognize there's a whole brave new world out there, that you can be empowered and take charge of your health and partner up with someone like yourself. So let's, let's talk about maybe the first 30 days with a patient for you and feel free at any time if you've got a particular use case scenario of someone.

0:03:01 - (Josh Bellieu): Because I know those types of anecdotes, we may call them, those stories just really help individuals lock in. Because probably when you say something, you're probably going to have a hundred listeners out there going, that's me. Even though I know we're all different, I don't want to lump everybody into one category because I know it's very specific and patient specific. But tell us about the first 30 days with you. Someone has come in, you're doing an intake, and where are you going to go from there?

0:03:28 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): So I mean, obviously the, the first part is where are they at? Right? Because my first 30 days with somebody who's about to start chemotherapy for a stage four disease, it's going to be very different, very in certain ways than somebody who's coming to me and they were just diagnosed and maybe they've got early stage and what have you. But that being said, there is a pretty solid similar framework in, in some ways. So I'll walk you through that.

0:03:55 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): So my first, you know, I spend an hour and a half with my patients for their first consult. And that's awesome. After I have requisitioned all of their imaging and their labs and their consult notes from their providers. And so before I talk to somebody, I've got a pretty firm idea of what are they dealing with and what's their body situation. So my intake is kind of more what's their mental situation?

0:04:22 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And you know, I've been given the skeleton, now I gotta flesh it out, right? What is, who's the person that's sitting across from me? What are their goals, where are their knowledge gaps, where, where do they have, you know, really firm conviction? And, and all of that because really it's about truly meeting someone where they're at and making sure that I can support them in a helpful way. And again, that looks very different for different people.

0:04:49 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): But at the end of the day, we always talk about diet, we always talk about movement, and ultimately exercise is a form of movement, but it's not the only form of movement. We always talk about social structure, mental health, stress management, kind of pieces. Because truly, if I can get those specific parts of someone's life to shift in a more healing way, they can absolutely experience huge changes in that first month, the first few months. And that's separate even from a whole bunch of supplements or, you know, big, big intense interventions and things like that. And, and again, it really re. Empowers people, which is Part of what we were talking about previously and I really, really want people to have that sense of empowerment.

0:05:37 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): So.

0:05:38 - (Josh Bellieu): So you said something I've noticed over the last. And tell me if this is true. I've noticed over the last seven years that as I would attend these conferences that oftentimes you're a speaker at all of a sudden everyone was talking about the spiritual and emotional component, healing. And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, why hasn't that been at the forefront? Because my limited knowledge and dancing around things like phase one and phase two, clinical trials, reading lots of data related to clinical trials and then learning about this thing 20 years ago, the placebo effect, and then finding out that, oh my goodness, this placebo effect. I mean, I jokingly said to a friend of mine, a business partner, I said, we need to put up a website called placebo.com

0:06:27 - (Josh Bellieu): and we're going to offer all kinds of pills and there's not going to be anything at all in them, but we're, you know, we're going to do this. And I said, and probably up to 40% of the people that choose to take that are somehow going to turn the corner with their health. So I love that. So tell me a little bit. It was fascinating to me. I don't think it's new to you and, or naturopathy, but that's been a big new awareness among your community, hasn't it, that if we don't address this emotional, spiritual component of where a person is at, we may do all the tests and all the supplement and the lifestyle changes and they still may continue to go down in their health.

0:07:09 - (Josh Bellieu): Tell me a little about that and how you actually dive in and address that. And is that a thing that's really emerged as a. We've got to put this as one of the first planks in the, in the building.

0:07:20 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): It's definitely one of the major supports and, and you know, you know me, I'm a physiology first person and I'm an educator. And so I don't hide any of that from my patients. I encourage them to really think about it because when you think about it, then you can do something about it. Dr. Jacob Schorr, who is a lovely man who I've known for a very, very long time, just at this oncology conference that I was at a couple of weeks ago, did an entire presentation called the Honest Placebo.

0:07:50 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And he laid it out beautifully. And so I'm really just going to reflect on some of the things that he just talked about and what it came down to was exactly what you're saying. We know from randomized clinical trials that anywhere between 20 and I think the upper end is 35, 40%. But for sure, at least 20% of the people who achieve the, who get the placebo can feel better. But also, and this is the part people don't talk about, they can get worse.

0:08:23 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): So if they think they are taking a drug and they've been told all the side effects of that drug, oh, wow, there is an up to 35, 40% incidence of side effects to the placebo. And when we tell people that we are giving them a placebo, and so we are very transparent and say, there's nothing in this, but I want you to take it and I want you to believe it's going to make you feel better, they feel better, and there is again, a measurable amount of improvement.

0:08:59 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And so I don't think we need to hide that from people. I think we need to have people really thinking about, well, what is your mindset going into these treatments? And so I'm all about reframing, right. If, if I've got somebody who is going into something that's very scary, like chemotherapy or surgery or radiation, I don't want them to focus on everything that could possibly go wrong because I know that the nocebo effect, which is that opposite of the placebo effect, the nocebo effect, is just as strong.

0:09:32 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And if they are expecting to feel awful, well, they have a statistically significant increase in feeling awful. So I want them instead to focus on when that, that treatment is going into their body. They're thinking about how that is going after those cancer cells or, you know, if, if it's an antibiotic, it's going on and killing those bacteria or, you know, whatever the treatment is, I want them to visualize that it's going in and it's doing its job.

0:10:01 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And then I want them to visualize their own healthy cells standing firm and strong and supporting the body and not being as injured by those treatments or recovering faster from those treatments. And so I mean that from the mental emotional side of treatment is something that I talk about a lot. And then when it comes to that spiritual, emotional side of just the person, I ask a lot of questions about stress management and social connection and spirituality and things like that because.

0:10:38 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And again, this goes way back. I don't know if you've read Bruce Lipton's work, the Biology of Belief, but he was so far ahead of his time, right?

0:10:45 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah.

0:10:47 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): You know, he truly. I read his book 20 years ago, and he was ahead of his time, and he's still. People are just starting to kind of accept that the thoughts in our mind absolutely have an impact not only on how our cells function, but how our DNA epigenetically. We have very, very clear scientific data that shows that we can control to some extent how our cells function and the reading of our genetics.

0:11:18 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And so let's embrace that and be purposeful with that rather than unconsciously getting in our own way about it. And we can do that by seeking joy. We can do that by surrounding ourselves with people who love us and support us. We can do that by being curious instead of fearful. Epigenet, we have very, very clear scientific data that shows that we can control to some extent how our cells function and the reading of our genetics.

0:11:52 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And so let's embrace that and be purposeful with that rather than unconsciously getting in our own way about it. And we can do that by seeking joy. We can do that by surrounding ourselves with people who love us and support us. We can do that by being instead of fearful. And so, again, I always come back to physiology. And so I remind patients that the biochemical soup that exists in our body when we're scared is the same biochemical soup that can exist in our body when we are excited and curious.

0:12:35 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And so I want people to think about, okay, when you are climbing that, the roller coaster, and you've got that anticipation and you get to the top of the peak of the roller coaster and you're looking down and you're going, oh, my goodness. You know, that soup in your body is the same whether it's wow, my goodness, or oh, my goodness. So let's just purposefully try to channel the curiosity and the, you know, the interest and, and digging in and trying to be excited about things.

0:13:08 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And that's not always easy to do when there's a lot of scary stuff happening, but it is a perspective shift. And again, it's about empowerment. It's about re. Empowering that patient to step into curiosity rather than stepping into fear.

0:13:22 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah. So I can see you injecting this unique paradigm of hope to them and letting them know how powerful they are in their thought life. You know, one of my favorite scriptures is, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he wow. We actually express in our physical body that which we're constantly dwelling on, meditating on, thinking to ourselves, turning those thoughts over in our mind. Do you have any practical resources? You mentioned Bruce Lipton.

0:13:52 - (Josh Bellieu): I'm sure you've read all kinds of crazy things, as all of us have these days. About Joe Dispenza workshops, you know, in a weekend where people get out of wheelchairs and things like that, just after they've begun to learn how to reframe their mind and reframe the way they think things and be able to focus on, as you said, you know, this infusion of joy, this infusion of good thoughts versus negative thoughts. Do you have any little practical things like when someone leaves? I bet sometimes you're going to yourself, we got a lot of work to do with this particular individual. You know, they may have had abusive relationships, they may have been put down, they may have suffered this wrong or that wrong. There may be this trauma in their life. In between visits, after you are beginning to develop this relationship with a patient, do you ever say, you know, this would be a great blog for you to read, or this would be, I love plugging other people that are better at things than we are.

0:14:49 - (Josh Bellieu): So what do you might say to them as some tools they can take in between visits? Because you're not there all the time.

0:14:55 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Exactly. No. And I, I, I'm a very big advocate of the best and most appropriate thing for you is the thing that resonates with you. And so for some people that's, you know, their faith. For some people, that's looking at the science. And that's where Bruce Lipton comes in, that' you know, and there are so many great books that have been written on this mind, body connection and they speak to different levels of understanding.

0:15:24 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Right. Bruce Lipton is brilliant. He's also hard to understand for people who don't have that science background. And so it really is what speaks to you. And at the end of the day, there isn't like one specific book that I send people to. It's a feeling in their body. Right. I want people to explore and have conversations with their friends and their community members and to look both within and outside of themselves for joy, basically.

0:16:02 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And when it comes to trauma and managing trauma, I consistently always refer to psychologists and counselors because I do think it's an incredibly important piece of piece of the puzzle. But as with everything, you have to resonate with that intervention. So a traditional talk therapy counselor might be great for one person and completely counterproductive for another. And so, you know, I have some patients who, their perspective shift came from a energy healer. I have some where that perspective shift came from a conversation with their faith leader.

0:16:43 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): I had some where it came from a conversation with their grandch. And you know, Being able to sit and look at the way that your grandchild, you know, looks at the world or your kids or your friends kids or, you know, whatever it is. Because it really is kind of getting out of our own way and not sitting and stewing in all of the things that went wrong. It's about moving forward. So, I mean, I love all of the books out there and the blogs and the speakers that support reclaiming your power and shifting your mind frame. That's, I mean, Joseph.

0:17:25 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Dr. Siegel and the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. These are, you know, core reading for me and for my students. Understanding the vagus nerve and how the vagus nerve is such an incredibly important regulator of our nervous system and how that nervous system regulation helps us to be able to choose whether we are going to be stuck in fight or flight or whether we can come down into rest and digest and process things differently.

0:17:55 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): I love having people go and incorporating breathing exercises, whether it's something structured like qigong or whether it's just opening up one of the calm apps or mind apps that takes people through guided meditation. And again, there are so there is limitless. There is infinite resources out there. What matters the most is the resource resonates.

0:18:20 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah, I love that because for years it was a foreign thought to me until I heard a health educator one time say, do you know if you can actually go find your happy place again? That portion of you that was ignited with passion at some point in your life and it's like, it's almost like nothing could go wrong because you were just in this body armor and you were moving through life because you were empowered with joy.

0:18:48 - (Josh Bellieu): I really, really, really. That was so hard for me because I'm like, no, wait a minute. I'm just a hamster on a wheel and I'm doing this and all of a sudden I wait. And you know, when it changed for me, Lindsay, and I'm sure a lot of our viewers will, it will really resonate with them. When I did have my first child and then my second, and then my third and my fourth, it always reconnected me with looking at the world through their eyes.

0:19:13 - (Josh Bellieu): And it was stunning. I mean, my little four year old granddaughter, the other day, we're waiting in line at a restaurant with my daughter and so I put her up on this brick thing that's really up high and she's above all the adults that are waiting to get in the restaurant. And I just said, hey, jump to pops. Boom. You know, full on. Could care less because she knew I was going to be right there to grab her and hold on to her. And I was like, thank you for reconnecting me once again, God, to this reality that children just have this level of innocence and trust and seeing the world in a way where everything is learning, everything is just coming in and it's just being sorted in process.

0:19:56 - (Josh Bellieu): So connecting with the passion. I absolutely love that. Huge, huge, huge thank you for addressing that. You know, I wouldn't imagine that when you have this conversation of an hour and a half with someone, you're getting an idea of some things that you may want to do. And maybe I'm wrong about this, but do you. Within that first meeting, is there a core group of tests or is it very different per individual, where you go, you know what, there's about two or three diagnostic things that we can do that I think are going to help us maybe uncover some things and know where you're at, that physiologically is, is. Is that part of your world that you find is consistent with most people, or does it vary so much between the individual that you see? And I know you deal a lot with oncology and very aggressive autoimmune stuff.

0:20:52 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): I do, yeah. And, you know, it kind of comes back to even what we started talking about at the beginning there and, and got a little sidetracked on the mental health part of things. But when I am. So our. Our diet and our exercise, right. And how we move have very huge implications in the. The building, right? They are incredibly important because that's what we are making ourselves out of and the environment in which our body is able to heal and all of these things. So when I'm doing testing, the most simple but very, very informative tests that I run on everybody is fasting insulin with fasting glucose, because that lets me know in that body, how is that person taking in carbohydrates and turning them into sugars, and then how is the body processing those sugars?

0:21:46 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Because too high sugar is just like dumping gasoline on a fire while you're trying to put it out. So that one's important. And then C reactive protein, which is our inflammatory marker, and it's a generalized marker. It's not super specific, so it's not perfect, but it is a really helpful tool. And then my. The last one, I mean, I would say I got two more. One is just a basic hematology. In my basic hematology, I'm looking at red blood cells. The health of that red blood cell. How well does it carry oxygen?

0:22:19 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Does it have enough hemoglobin, so iron in it, Is it the right size? Which is your B vitamin assessment, but also in that hematology is your neutrophils and your lymphocytes. And I do something called a neutrophil lymphocyte ratio. And that helps me look at inflammation through another lens because C reactive protein is produced by neutrophils, basically. And if we don't have well functioning immune cells and neutrophils, you may not get a super accurate C reactive protein assessment.

0:22:53 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): But that neutrophil lymphocyte ratio gives me another layer of whether inflammation is a problem. We want that around two, that's ideal. And, and then vitamin D would be the last sort of foundational assessment that I do on, you know, pretty much everybody, because without vitamin D, your immune system can't function. And ultimately your immune system is the part of your body that will get rid of cancer cells.

0:23:17 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And so that's my foundational assessment. And, and I'm using those things to guide more knowledge and information about, well, you know, how, how is those dietary changes gonna impact not only this disease process, whether it's advanced autoimmune or complex chronic illness, or whether it's cancer, but then also, what power do we have to change inflammation? And that's, that's a lot of movement as well as diet inflammation in a simple form, you can think of it like stagnation.

0:23:51 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): And so when we get things moving, there's less stagnation and there's less inflammation. And there's a lot of research and data to support all of those things. And I also want to just say there's no one right diet, there is no one right way.

0:24:07 - (Josh Bellieu): I'm so glad you said that. That is so wonderful.

0:24:10 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Yes. Yeah.

0:24:11 - (Josh Bellieu): Thank you for saying that.

0:24:12 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Absolutely.

0:24:14 - (Josh Bellieu): When you mentioned those cortests and it was interesting to me, you know, hydroxy, vitamin D, high sensitivity C reactive prote, the A1C maybe other than your neutrophil comparison thing, you actually mentioned tests that a insurance company historically will pay for. All of them are, a physician recommends

0:24:40 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): them, every single one of them.

0:24:41 - (Josh Bellieu): You've helped a lot of mystery right now because a lot of people are watching and they're going, oh, how much is it going to cost me in the first 30 to 60, 90 days? Because as you are keenly aware of, this idea of paying out of pocket for one's health care is a completely new paradigm for people too. They're locked in what I call the hamster wheel. Of that conventional system, the conventional insurance, the conventional healthcare systems that seem to own so many different doctors continue to absorb so many of them.

0:25:12 - (Josh Bellieu): So I am so glad you mentioned just basic core tests that if you recommended them to one of your patients, if they have insurance, they're likely to have every one of those paid for, Right?

0:25:23 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): Absolutely. And even when you pay privately for those, all of those tests are really inexpensive. Very, very inexpensive. And there is a ton of information and a ton of value that can be gleaned from just simple intervention. And then again, what we do with that information, the intervention from that test is also very low cost. It doesn't cost anything to get outside and go for a walk. Walk. It doesn't cost anything to shift your diet to just a little more of those brightly colored fruits and vegetables which are profoundly anti inflammatory and antioxidant and nutrient dense. You know, moving away from the highly processed foods. And I'm Canadian, I don't. There's no such thing.

0:26:08 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): While there, okay, there are very few food deserts in Canada, there's not no such thing, but there are very few of them. And learning that the United States has large areas where it's very hard to get, get fresh food hurts my heart. It quite frankly, really, really hurts my heart. But it is always my goal that people can make important changes without it having to be astoundingly expensive. Now I have big fancy tools. I have big fancy things that we can use. And yes, they are very helpful, but they are not the core tools.

0:26:47 - (Dr. Lindsay Adrian): If I have somebody who is not making some of those foundational shifts, I'm putting fancy curtains on a building that's falling down and that's not helpful. And that, you know, again, the movement, the food choices, the mind frame and perspective shift, those will create like 75% of the change. And then all the higher order stuff that's 25%. So it's so, so, so critical to help people make those shifts.

0:27:21 - (Josh Bellieu): All right, you've been listening to Dr. Lindsay Adrian. You can connect with her world. Dr. Lindsayadrian.com that's-r l I n D S a y A D R-I-A N.com this is Ultralife today. You know, I love you covered the foundational tests that are not some ethereal, mysterious test that no one has ever heard of. Well, actually some people have never heard of those tests. I'm so glad that you ment mentioned that that insurance can cover a lot of those things. We're going to shift.

0:27:51 - (Josh Bellieu): And you, and you also are showing me this progression of step by step, shifting the mind a little bit, taking a walk, things that are free, breathing deep. You know, the moment you mentioned deep breathing, do you know what I did instantly? Oh, my gosh. I was like, josh, every time somebody brings up deep breathing, I'm like, I was just doing costal shallow breathing. I need to stop. Start breathing deeper.

0:28:15 - (Josh Bellieu): Okay, well, we're, we're going to move into our final episode here in a little bit. Lindsay will be back for episode three. We're going to talk a little bit about real transformation. I'm going to beg her to give us a few use case scenarios to really infuse you with hope about your life. Maybe she can share some practical examples from her own practice of patients over the years who've actually transitioned not only out of conventional medicine into her world, but then also actually experienced these changes that allowed them to be empowered and health toward a brand new life of living healthy and not just like surviving, but thriving and actually thinking, I am going to be here, going to be picking up my grandkids at 70 years old and have a brilliant mind as well.

0:29:01 - (Josh Bellieu): Lindsay, thanks so much. We'll have you back for episode three, so appreciate it once again. Hey, if you like what we're doing, like, subscribe, share, wherever you find podcasts, you can go to Spotify, you can go to Apple, you can go to YouTube. We have all our episodes archived there. Here you can hear interviews with brilliant people like Lindsay Adrian. Maybe not as brilliant, but hey, yeah. Anyway, we'll be back for episode three with Dr. Lindsay Adrian.