Health Podcast with Connie Sellecca: Manage Your Cholesterol without Meds; The Importance of Vitamin Sleep; The Truth About Ice Baths

In this episode we feature:

An interview with pediatrician and author, Dr. Harvey Karp

How to manage your cholesterol without meds

Dr. Karp’s Five S’s for Newborns

The 90/90/90 method for goal setting

The truth about ice baths and inflammation.


And more ways you can improve your health today.

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

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Gib. Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm Gib Gerard, and today, yes, we have another intelligence to your health with Connie Celica. Episode of the podcast, this one features an interview with none other than famed pediatrician and Author, Dr Harvey Karp, all kinds of information about how to best raise your kids. He's unbelievable. I read his book happiest baby on the block when my kids were little. Anyway, here we go without further ado, intelligence for your health with Connie zelika, remember to drink cold water at the gym. According to a Stanford study, people who drank cold water during exercise were far less likely to experience dehydration than people who drank room temperature water. That's because cold water stops your body's temperature from rising too quickly. Drinking cold water during a workout also means a lower heart rate and better performance overall, and that's true whether you're doing cardio or weight training. Have you ever noticed when you're sick with a cold or flu or even allergies, you feel worse at night? Here's why, according to Dr Michael Smolenski, a circadian rhythm expert at the University of Texas, he says, when you're sick, your immune system sends out infection fighting cells to kill off the virus, but those infection fighters trigger inflammation, which can cause symptoms like fever, congestion and sore throat, and those symptoms are the most severe when your immune system kicks into high gear, which is at night. Another reason you feel sicker at night the position of your head when you're upright during the day, mucus drains instead of accumulating in your throat and sinuses, like when you're lying down at night. Plus, we tend to drink less water at night and when we're dehydrated, mucus gets thicker and more likely to clog your airways. So drink plenty of fluids to keep your mucus thinner, put it all together, and that's why you feel worse at night coming up. We'll talk to pediatrician, Dr Harvey Karp. He'll explain why sleep, which he calls vitamin S, is so crucial for babies and their parents. But first, here's why men are more prone to back pain than women. It's because men are built straight up and down, where women have curves and a straight spine, places added pressure on lower back discs. That's according to orthopedic surgeon Dr Alan Hillebrand. So guys, here's your strategy, run aerobic exercise done upright, builds the muscles supporting your spine, and after you run stretch men with tight hamstrings are especially prone to slipped discs. Here are two solutions for easing the physical signs of stress so you can face challenges more effectively. This comes from clinical psychologist Jenny Tates. Give a half smile. Stress can trigger tension in your face and jaw, but it works the other way. Your facial expression can influence how you feel, so a clenched jaw or scowl can heighten feelings of stress. It's why Botox injections in the forehead can help reduce negative emotions, because they prevent you from physically furrowing your brow or just try a technique known as half smiling. Raise the upper corners of your lips slightly, which automatically releases tension in the brows, and by mindfully relaxing your face, you'll appear calmer on the outside, which makes you feel calmer on the inside. Also try looking far away when the body's fight or flight response kicks in, your field of vision narrows. So try noticing three things in the distance. That's one of the reasons why a brief walk in nature can boost your mood, because you're also expanding your field of vision. Okay, listen to this. If you want an honest answer from someone, don't ask yes or no questions. According to the journal Current opinion in psychology, asking open ended questions is the best way to get the truth. The researchers found asking yes or no questions and leading questions like you like my cooking, right? We're more likely to lead to lies or pacifying answers, just so the other person will drop the subject a better tactic, reframe your question to allow for a real, thought out response, like, what do you think about my cooking? You're more likely to get an honest answer. Today, our guest is pediatrician and child development specialist, Dr Harvey Karp, he's known for his best selling book, The happiest baby on the block, and we asked Dr Karp, why sleep, which he calls vitamin S, is so crucial for babies and adults, and if there's a way to help babies Stop fussing and get the sleep they need, vitamin s really helps with our memory. It helps with our attitude. It helps with recovering. In terms of our body's ability to heal from the from the tiny stresses that occur every day. It's good for our immune system. It's just, you know, it is important for all of us, in terms of staying in balance. Doctors used to say, well, there's nothing you can do with babies. You know, they gotta wake up a lot, and you got to wait for four or five, six months or longer, for them to learn to be good sleepers. But then when parents are really struggling, and they come to us just completely, you know, over the over the off the cliff, we we whisper to them that there is a secret magic way of teaching babies to immediately cry less and sleep longer. Drive them all night in the car, and even most adults, if you drive all night in the car, and the adults sleeping on the back seat, you know they will sleep an extra hour or two. We're lulled to sleep by airplane rides and train rides and those rhythms, the Jigga, Jigga, Jigga, the sound, the motion, lull all of us to asleep. That's why we like to rock in hammocks. We like the sound of the wind and the ocean, and for babies, it's particularly helpful. And so there are ways of wrapping babies called swaddling, and types of white noise and rhythmic motions that that all imitate the womb and and help babies fall asleep much more quickly and and sleep at least an extra hour, or sometimes two hours at night. Today, we're talking to pediatrician, Doctor Harvey Karp and one of his other best selling books is the happiest toddler on the block. And in it, he discusses the strategy for dealing with toddler tantrums. He calls it the fast food rule, and I asked him to explain how that rule can help parents communicate better with their toddlers during a meltdown. This idea of the fast food rule is really how you narrate back a child's feelings. And the concept is this, when you go to a drive in restaurant and you say, I want a burger and fries. They don't say it's $4 drive up front. What they first say is, burger and fries. You want anything else with that? And once they're sure they have the order, then they get to their agenda, $4 drive up front. And so the key concept when when you're talking to a little kid who's upset, or really anyone who's upset is you narrate back a couple of sentences, three, four or five sentences for little kids, one or two sentences for an adult, to make sure you got the message right. So rather than saying, you know, honey, it's okay, you know, the child falls, scrapes their knee, rather than saying, It's okay, honey, I think you're all fine. Don't rush to get to your agenda. Stick with theirs for a little bit. Oh no, you fell. You fell for maybe a little three year old, who is upset you you're you hurt your knee. I saw you fall. And then, and then your face got sad, and you hurt your knee. And then when they look at you with those big eyes, and they you know, are connecting with you, then you can get to your agenda of, let mommy take a look at it, or it's going to be okay. Or, come on, let's go. We'll clean it up with some soap and water. And you get to your agenda. If the summer heat is making you stink, eat more cashews. Researchers at Reading University have found that people with body odor often have a zinc deficiency. It affects about one in three people, and the problem is even worse in summer, when sweating makes you lose even more zinc. But cashews are loaded with the mineral which stops the growth of the skin bacteria that Make You stinky. Not a fan of cashews, you can get more zinc in spinach and baked beans too. Today's medical term echo praxia, that's an abnormal condition where patients involuntarily copy another person's actions. So for example, if you scratch your ears, someone with echopraxia may suddenly start scratching their own ears, and then when you stop, they stop. This may sound like mirroring, which is something we all do subconsciously as a way to bond with others. But with normal mirroring, our actions are temporary and situational. But with echopraxia, health experts say the mirroring behavior is continuous and uncontrollable, as if the person can't help but copy every action they see being performed, and it's a real medical issue, because echopraxia is a common symptom of serious neurological disorders including autism, schizophrenia and Tourette's Syndrome. The good news is that not everyone diagnosed with echopraxia Has any of those conditions, and once it's diagnosed by a mental health expert, the condition is often treatable, and that's today's medical term echopraxia coming up. We'll hear more from pediatrician and child development specialist, Dr Harvey Karp and a. Lot of parents go crazy trying to stop their babies from crying. So Dr Karp will tell us about his proven method for soothing a baby back to sleep. But first, here's a quick way to snap out of a bad mood. Look at the last loving text you were sent and blow up the font like you're severely far sighted. According to research, reading upbeat, positive messages can lift us out of a funk, but if you increase the font to 28 points or larger, you can make those positive feelings last 20% longer. That's because our brain interprets larger words as more important, so those loving text messages will have a more powerful effect. Here are some commonly shared exercise myths you should ignore, according to exercise scientist, Dr Brad Schoenfeld, first you may have heard that the only way to build bigger muscles is to lift heavier weights. Dr Schoenfeld says, not true. You can build the same amount of muscle using lighter weights. You'll just need to lift them more often than heavier weights, and as a bonus, there's less risk for injury. Another fitness myth, running is bad for your knees. For years, people thought that our knee joints were like tires and that they could only endure so much before they wore out. But according to Dr Schoenfeld, our joints have an incredible ability to regenerate themselves, as long as we stay active, meaning we actually do more harm to our knees being sedentary than when we're running. And here's something you should know about the trendy move of taking an ice bath after a workout. Dr Schoenfeld says ice is great for treating inflammation if you're injured, but if you're not, slowing inflammation with ice will also slow the body's natural repair process. Okay, listen to this. If you have that butterflies in the stomach feeling that's a good thing. According to the journal clinical psychological science, the nervous jitters means your body is readying itself to perform at your best. That's because when we get that feeling, the body is sending more blood and oxygen to our brain and muscles to make us mentally sharp and better able to tackle our fears. So don't freak out if you get that nervous sensation in your stomach before a high pressure moment. It's a good thing. It means you're ready back with more health intelligence from pediatrician, Dr Harvey Karp, and he says all babies are born with a calming reflex that's like an off switch when they get fussy. So I asked him to tell us how to activate that off switch. Why would we rock and shush babies. And why even do adults fall asleep without rocking and shushing? It's because babies have a reflex that's kind of almost like an off switch for crying and an on switch for sleep. It turns out that babies are born with over 70 things that we call reflexes. These are automatic behaviors that are built into the brain. It's like built in software, and so you don't teach your baby how to suck or how to swallow or how to cry. Those are built in and automatic behaviors that every baby is born with. And what my work observed about 20 years ago is that they also have a calming reflex in the womb. Babies are lulled into a trance by the normal rhythms, and most mothers will tell you when they're going to bed at night is when the baby gets most active, and when they're walking around during the day and the baby's getting all of that extra bouncy rhythm, the babies tend to fall asleep. Then, once they're born, we can imitate the womb experiences. There's five ways we do that, called the Five S's, and those womb experiences can trigger this reflex just the way, hitting someone's knee with a little doctor's reflex hammer can trigger a knee reflex doing the five S's, imitating the womb experience can can trigger the calming reflex and help a baby fall asleep and and stop crying. Dr Karp will take us through those five S's next back with more health intelligence from pediatrician, Dr Harvey Karp, author of The happiest baby on the block, and he just mentioned the five S's to help babies calm down and fall asleep. So I asked him to take us through the five S's and how they work. The five S's stand for swaddling, which is snug wrapping, usually with the arms down, is what works best for babies on the on the back side or stomach position, however, is the best way of calming crying. The back is the safest position for sleep. But if you're calming crying, you want to flip your baby over to the side, or even the stomach position. The third s for soothing babies is is swinging or rhythmic motion. The fourth s is. Shushing or white noise, and the fifth s is sucking. Swaddling is like the cornerstone. You have to keep the babies from flailing around so they can even pay attention to whatever you're doing to calm them down. And then you layer on different S's. And pretty soon, in the in the days or week or two after babies are born, parents start learning what works best with their baby. And they all, like I said, do better with with swaddling. But then some of them are very sound oriented, and shushing can, like in a second, calm babies down. Other babies don't really respond to shushing, but they respond to jiggly motion. And some babies it's sucking, and some babies need combinations of two or three of those all at the same time. And then if you can do those throughout the night, like using swaddling at night and white noise, then you're able to really smooth them over for the first six months of life to improve their sleep, reduce their crying, and really teach them to be good sleepers. A piece of gum can make us better drivers. The journal Brain and cognition found that chewing gum improves the drivers reaction time by 7% in just 10 seconds. That's because jaw action stimulates areas of the brain responsible for spotting movement, so you're more likely to see a car changing lanes or a bicycle darting out into traffic. More intelligence for your health from pediatrician and child development expert Dr Harvey Karp, if you'd like to know more about him and his best selling books, the happiest baby on the block and the happiest toddler on the block. Check out his website, happiest baby.com now for so long, people were told not to put babies to sleep on their backs. Then in the 1990s that thinking changed. So I asked Dr Karp, why back sleeping is safer. Oh, yeah, 1,000% back sleeping is safer than stomach sleeping for the first really, the Academy of Pediatrics recommends the first year of life babies only be placed on the back to sleep. We know that that about 50, 60% of all infants who die of SIDS, which stands for sudden infant death syndrome, which is this tragic, tragic situation that occurs to 3500 healthy babies every year in the United States. Things that 3500 babies? That's the number of Americans who died in 911 except it happens every year, over and over. No change in the last 20 years per baby. So we know that keeping them on the back significantly reduces their risk of getting their face into the mattress and suffocating or dying, and also keeping them out of the parent's bed or off of the sofa helps as well. So in their in their bassinet or crib, without any blankets or toys around on the back is is definitely the safest position. You know that having a dog can improve your physical and mental health, but what if you don't have a dog, and you aren't at a place in life where you can get a dog, no problem, pet someone else's dog. Professor Nancy Gee is director of the Center for Human animal interaction at Virginia Commonwealth, and she says even a five minute interaction with someone's pet can decrease the stress hormone cortisol and increase the feel good hormone oxytocin. And those effects can improve a person's health, sometimes for a month at a time, and it goes both ways. Dr G says they see the same exact reaction in dogs. Their oxytocin levels also increase when they interact with a human. Here's an email I received at Connie at intelligence for your health.com. It comes from Nicole Whittle, who writes, My cholesterol is high and my doctor wants me to go on a statin. I want to try and reduce it myself before going on medication. Are there any foods I can eat to lower it faster? Nicole, changing your diet probably won't do the job on its own. It didn't for me, but if you change the way you eat and get more exercise, reduce your stress and get more sleep, you can lower your cholesterol naturally. And here's advice for changing your diet from Brigham and Women's Hospital. First get rid of any trans fats in your diet. They're used to extend the shelf life of packaged foods. So look at labels for the words partially hydrogenated. That's code for trans fats. Then go crazy with fruits and vegetables, they have nutrients that lower cholesterol, including fiber plant pigments and cholesterol blocking molecules called sterols, and the deeper the color of the produce, the better it is for your cholesterol. One more way to lower cholesterol, eat healthy fats like polyunsaturated. And monounsaturated fatty acids, you'll find them in plant based oils like sunflower and olive oils. Also eat more fatty fish like salmon, tuna, herring and mackerel, plus seeds, nuts and avocados for healthy fats. Thank you for your email. Nicole, I hope this helps. Okay, listen to this. Are you afraid of needles? Just start counting backward from 100 according to the journal cortex, you can use numbers to numb yourself to the pain of an injection. In the study, patients who began counting backward out loud while receiving an injection reported zero discomfort, and those who did not count complained of pain. So why does counting help? Because it influences the same part of your brain that's used to detect pain, and if you really want to avoid the pain, count and close your eyes. Another study found that pain receptors go into overdrive. If you see yourself being pierced. Get ready to crush your goals with the 9091 method. It comes from leadership expert Robin Sharma. With the 9091 method, you take one big goal, whether it's starting your own business or running a marathon, and spend your first 90 minutes of every day for 90 days working toward that one goal. Why is 90 the magic number? Well, 90 minutes is said to be the limit for focusing intensity on any given task before we lose steam. It's based on our ultradian rhythms, which go in 90 minute cycles and cause our attention to peak and dip after each 90 minutes of peak brain activity, we have about 20 minutes of lower frequency brain activity. As far as the 90 day sweet spot goes. It's not so short that you can't accomplish your goals, but it's not so long so you lose steam or fall into the I'll start tomorrow. Trap 90 days is long enough to build a habit. But an important key to the success of the 9091 method is making it the first 90 minutes of your day, because, according to the University of Nottingham, shortly after waking up, self control, meaning our ability to avoid distractions and accomplished tasks is at its peak. So remember, spend 90 minutes every morning for 90 days focusing on one goal, more intelligence for your health. From our guest pediatrician, Dr Harvey Karp and in his book The happiest baby on the block, he says that it's dangerous for babies to fall asleep sitting up, like in swings or car seats. So I asked him to explain why. Well, babies have, you know, these big heads, these big melons up there, they have big brains. That's why the head can barely come out when, when the baby is born. That's why they call it the Ring of Fire you're delivering a baby, and but they have weak, skinny little necks because they haven't had any need to build those muscles up. And so when a baby is sitting, their heads tend to fall forward or to decide, and that can can crimp their trachea, their breathing tube, and make it difficult for them to breathe. And so sleepers, where the baby is sitting up, or rocking chairs, rocking seats that babies have been put in for sleep, those are all been taken off the market because we don't want babies sleeping sitting up for fear that their heads will roll forward and they'll have trouble breathing. And as we discuss, safely on the back is the best way of reducing a child's risk of getting into a dangerous position and having problems with breathing throughout the night. What about when a baby is in a car seat in a car are they in danger? Then? Yeah, that's a great question. So it turns out that when babies are in the car and they're experiencing that moving and the jiggling and the slight bouncing that happens when you're driving, that's not the risk period for babies, even if they fall asleep in the car seat. The problem is when they're asleep in the car seat, and then you gently that carry them into the home and allow them to stay sleeping for an hour or two in the car seat when they're not moving, that's when we've seen tragic situations happen. So falling asleep in the car seat, in the car is fine, but not staying asleep in the car seat once they're brought into the house. That's it for our show today, our special intelligence for your health with Connie Selig, edition of the podcast, I'm Gib Gerard. Don't forget to rate comment and subscribe on Apple podcast. Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. It helps us out a lot. And also, you can reach out to us on social media. All of our links are listed down in the show notes. We try to respond to every DM, every mention. Of the show, because ultimately we do the show for you guys. So thank you so much for listening. You.