Health Podcast with Connie Sellecca: Dogs Feel Your Stress; Smart Phones Ruin Breathing; Exercise Stops Cancer

In this episode we feature:

An interview with Oncologist, Dr. Sanjay Juneja

Sleep your depression away

Dog Walking dangers

Gut Reactions and the power of your subconscious.

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. Today we have for you yet another special intelligence for your health with Connie Celica. Edition of the podcast. Our guest on today's episode is Oncologist Dr Sanjay June. He is the ONk doc on Tiktok. Say that five times fast anyway, here we go without further ado. Intelligence for your health with Connie Celica, there's good news about sleeping in on your days off. New data in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that people who slept later than normal on Saturdays and Sundays were significantly less likely to have symptoms of depression, and that was especially true if they had to skimp on sleep during the week. So how much sleep made a difference? The study authors say getting an extra one to two hours on days off did the trick. What is the minimum amount of exercise we need for better brain health? It's 25 minutes a week. That's it. That's less than four minutes a day, and it could help bulk up your brain and improve your ability to think as you grow older. That's according to a new study by Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, they scanned the brains of more than 10,000 healthy men and women from ages 18 to 97 and they found that those who walked, swam, cycled, or did any kind of moderate workout for 25 minutes a week had bigger brains than those who didn't, No matter their ages, and bigger brains typically means healthier brains. The differences were most pronounced in parts of the brain involved with thinking and memory, which shrink as we age and contribute to cognitive decline and dementia. The goal of the research was to see how little exercise we really needed for better brain health, because very few people get the recommended amount, which is 150 minutes a week, but the effects of 25 minutes a week of exercise on people's brains were real and can help to maintain our ability to think well, as we grow older, coming up, we'll talk to blood and cancer specialist, Dr Sanjay June. He'll share a list of cancer screenings he recommends we all get even if you don't have a family history of the disease. But first, if you're a dog owner and want to reduce your pet's stress level, you might want to start by reducing your own that's the recommendation of University of Bristol veterinary school in England, they found that dogs can smell when humans are feeling stressed, and it actually makes them sad. And they found that the smell of stress in humans caused stress in the dogs too. And that was true even if the stress odors were from strangers. It shows that dogs are able to sense people's emotions, and those emotions are contagious. When are you most likely to get into a car accident? In general, deadly car accidents mostly occur in the evening, and it's usually between five and 7pm that was found to be the most dangerous time, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that's when people are heading home, and there's heavy traffic coupled with tired and distracted drivers. That aligns with other research showing morning and evening rush hours are the most dangerous times to drive. For example, in North Carolina, one out of every four car crashes occurs during evening rush hour. And in a review of road crash studies, researchers found that morning and evening rush hours were associated with a 28% increase in Crash fatalities. One major reason why those are times when drivers are more aggressive and reckless and there are more trucks on the road. Okay, listen to this. The secret to finding love is smell. According to the journal Chemical Senses, women consider a man less attractive if they smell something bad while looking at him, even if he's not the one producing the bad smell. And the opposite is true. Too pleasant odors make women find pictures of men much more handsome. Researchers say, since bad odors are typically associated with disease and danger, it makes sense that a good smelling guy would seem more attractive. Today, our guest is Dr Sanjay June. He's a board certified hematologist and medical oncologist who's better known to millions of fans on social media, as the ONC doc. And surprisingly, even though modern cancer screenings are less invasive and more accurate than ever before, Dr June just says a lot of people still refuse to get tested until it's too late. So I asked him. Where this resistance to cancer screenings comes from, and why it's important to still get them. There's something scary about getting a test. But remember, a lot of times, the screenings are designed to catch something before it becomes cancer. Again, you usually have a lead time on some of these cancers that evolve, you know, over a period of time, number one and number two, you know, if, God forbid, it is cancerous, you can often cure solid tumor cancers like colon cancer and breast cancer, if it's early, if it's early and small and hasn't gone anywhere, you know, it's pretty low lipped in the sense of, you know, most stage ones don't need chemo and all of those things, but only if they're caught early, and that's what screening does. It basically says, Do you have anything that could have become cancer later? Do we need to take it out? We need to look at it, or do you have something that we could just take out and be done with it? And that's extremely important. The second part of that is also why people think, you know they don't need screening, is because they think it's an inherited disease more than it is a cancer that's in your lifetime. And only 10% of cancers in adulthood have anything to do with your inheritance or family history. Believe it or not. I know some people need a moment, but it's it's true. I mean, 90% are because of behavioral stuff, what you're eating, what you're inhaling, what you're drinking, and just getting old enough, quite frankly. And so it doesn't spare you know anybody, and I think that's really important. Today we're talking to Oncologist Dr Sanjay June, and he was just saying that a lot of people resist getting cancer screenings because they think the tests only apply if you have a family history of cancer, even though a whopping 90% of new cancers are being blamed on people's lifestyle habits, not their genetics. So because the guidelines seem to be changing all the time, I asked Dr Juneja to share a list of the most current cancer tests he thinks we should all get at some point. Yeah, so screening guidelines are updated when it's appropriate to sometimes get the age lower. But the things that always people think about are definitely colon cancer screening and pap smears in women and mammograms, those are all important, because a lot of these cancers give you kind of a pre cancer lead time. So when you're screening, you want to get all of those done, because there's usually an interval of time before it becomes cancer. So mammograms, again, colonoscopies, pap smears. And if you smoke, and you've smoked over 25 pack years, meaning one a year or two over 12 years, for 25 years or over, and you're 50 and over, it's very important to get a CT lung cancer screen. That's an annual low dose CT to where you can catch an early lung cancer, because usually lung cancer is caught pretty late. Those are the ones that people think of as well as if you have a lot of sun exposure, you know, talk to your doctor about any skin lesions, and those are kind of primarily what people consider the, at the very least, the screening modalities that one should get. There's a little bit of debate on prostate cancer. So I talked to your physician about where prostate cancer screening guidelines stand, I guess, in their wheelhouse. Why are you tired? Blame your smartphone, not because the blue light keeps you awake because it makes you breathe less deeply. Scientists found that people who use their phones for more than four hours a day had lung function that was over 30% lower than those who use their phones less and just so you know, the average person is on their phone four and a half hours a day. So why would phone use lead to poor lung function? Because we hunch our shoulders and bend our heads when using our phones so our airway is restricted and we're not fully expanding our lungs. As a result, we breathe more shallowly. Today's medical term acute catarrhal conjunctivitis, that's another way of describing pink eye, which is one of the most common eye infections. It's normally caused by bacteria or viruses, but it can also be triggered by allergies. However, it's important to know the difference, because bacterial and viral pink eye are both highly contagious while allergic, pink eye is not the treatment for allergic pink eye is also different than treatment for infectious pink eye. So how can you tell the difference? If your eyes are intensely itchy. That's probably allergic pink eye infectious. Pink eye comes with all the standard symptoms of goopy, discharge, swelling, redness and pain, but you don't have intense itching. However, the discharge that comes with pink eye is what makes catarol conjunctivitis highly contagious. In fact, once we get it in one eye, it almost always spreads to the other eye, and once the germs Get on your hands, they can easily spread to other people. The good news most people with pink eye recover within a week of getting treatment, which usually involves using antibiotic eye drops, and that. Today's medical term acute catarrhal conjunctivitis coming up. We'll hear more from our guest, oncologist, Dr Sanjay June, also known as the ONC doc, as in oncology, he'll tell us how shockingly common cancer is. And here's a hint, you likely have a form of the disease right now as you listen to this show that may never get diagnosed, it is perfectly harmless, but first when you work out, get going quickly. Don't wait to push yourself. A study from the College of New Jersey found that working out harder during the first half of your workout and taking it easier during the second burns up to 23% more fat than doing the opposite. Toddler tantrums are a part of life, but here's something that's contributing to the problem handing toddlers a tablet to keep them occupied. Here's what a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association pediatrics discovered. It found that tablet use between ages three and five years old was associated with more outbursts of anger and frustration, and it became a vicious cycle. Kids who were more prone to anger and frustration were also more likely to have higher tablet use a year later, the experts concluded that early childhood tablet use contributes to a cycle of problems with emotional regulation. So why is that? A big reason is that when kids are handed a tablet, they don't learn to deal with negative emotions themselves. Instead, the tablet, computer or smartphone soothes them, and that can result in anger management problems later in childhood and into adulthood. Now that doesn't mean that kids can't use a tablet or smartphone ever. What it does mean is that they shouldn't be given one when they're crying or upset as a pacifier to calm them down. That's when they need a parent's help to learn to self soothe. Okay, listen to this. Trust your gut research from Drexel University found that our gut feelings are usually spot on, because the way our subconscious works, it takes into account a lot of information in a flash, but when we stop to analyze the situation, we tend to push aside our initial instinct in an effort to evaluate things more fairly. But your brain has already subconsciously done all the work for you, so trust your gut feelings. It's your brain's way of steering you in the right direction, back with more health intelligence from Oncologist Dr Sanjay June, host of the target cancer podcast, and something he gets asked about all the time is when test results come back showing you have pre cancer, because a lot of people think that's the same as a cancer diagnosis. So I asked Dr Juneja to clarify what pre cancer really means and why, it's usually not something to freak out about. When we say pre cancer, it's like, you know, 510, 15% over 510, years, it may have become cancer. Like, that's what we mean. It's not like, Oh man, you were two, you know, weeks away. And that's why, when you have that lead time of usually, like, you know, like 123, year chance of developing something. And it's usually around 10% why not get that thing out, you know, beforehand? And that's how you should think of screening. Is like, you know, one probably gonna have nothing that's just statistically the most likely. Secondly, most are gonna, if they need investigation, gonna be something that that turns out not to be cancer. And then, even if it is something that's not not cancer, is something that's pre cancerous, that has a lower chance by, you know, a lot of people's definition of ever being cancer, but it's gone. You just take it out when you have the screen and take care of it. So, you know, there it's just, it's a nice way of just saying, hey, the stuff that could have been a problem that I would have known about, that's the stuff you want to think that you're looking for sure you detect full invasive cancers as well. But if you're doing them at the intervals that are recommended, that is statistically unlikely. That's where we get the intervals. Believe it or not, that's why colonoscopies maybe three years of repeat a five or a 10, depending on like, hey, we want to be ahead of this thing on the screen. There's some pre cancer stuff, and that's why we're saying three years these intervals are based on statistical likelihood. Now, if you don't do them for years, then those intervals get, you know, obviously they don't apply as well. So you want them to apply to you like, whoa, if I get one, it's unlikely, because the mammograms a year from now that there should be one that develops in that time. Back with more health intelligence from Oncologist Dr Sanjay June, also known as the UNK doc on Tiktok, and according to the latest health data, we have about a one in 100 chance of being diagnosed with some form of cancer by age 60. And thankfully, most forms are 100% treatable if caught early enough. But since the word cancer technically refers to abnormal sex. Cell growth, and the human body has more than 37 trillion cells. I asked Dr janeja If all of us will likely have cancer at some point. I'll tell you. I'll Gib you one better you have had cancer or what really could have become invasive cancer multiple times, and I have as well. And anyone probably old enough to understand what we're saying, or listen has. And the beauty of that is, and we're a bunch of in great side joke, but it's kind of true, because we have about 10,000 mutational errors. You know, every couple of days that our immune system is constantly being like, whoa, this doesn't look right, and it kills it. And that system is what protects us. That's why we learned so much. Believe it or not, unfortunately, with HIV and AIDS, when AIDS, where your lymphocytes, you know you're really immune compromised, we learned and saw cancers we've never seen before because your immune system just went out. And that's what happens with rat models. Sometimes things look too good to be true is because their immune system is impaired. And of course, cancers will grow. So we're beating it all the time. The next time you go on your daily walk, take your phone with you and snap pictures along the way. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that taking pictures makes our activities more enjoyable and increases positive feelings. For the study, researchers had people engage in an activity and told half of them to take photos during it, the result, the people who took pictures were more engaged with what they were doing and had a better time than those who did not take pictures. That's because when we know we want to take a picture of what we're doing, it primes us to be a more active part of the experience, which increases our enjoyment of it. More intelligence for your health from Oncologist Dr Sanjay June, if you'd like to know more about him or his target cancer podcast, he's easy to find on social media, just search for the ONk doc, as in O N C, short for oncologist. And on this show, we've had multiple guests tell us that stress is like jet fuel for helping cancer tumors grow. So I asked Dr Juneja what he recommends to lower our stress and reduce our odds of ever getting cancer. There's no question that you don't have to go with weights or CrossFit, but getting your heart rate up to like 121 3140, you know, safely, that is a very kind of almost like an expunging car wash. When it comes to stress, it mobilizes a lot of things that can kind of, what we like to say is palliate or calm down some of the driven up, revved up stuff from just chronic adrenaline, fear, rush, cortisol, stuff working out helps that process. There's no question. And number two is anything that taps into the system that fights stress. So stress is what's called sympathetic, that's your system. That's flight or fight. The opposite is parasympathetic, and the way you do that is what was called the vagal nerve, and just calming stimulation, believe it or not, cold showers, like where you're pretty cold, immediately taps into your parasympathetic system. So I'm not a fan of cold showers, but I've learned to do it every morning, because it taps into that vagal nerve and parasympathetic system the other things that you can do, that's why I want to meditate. I'm probably somebody that needs to more than anyone else, but it also helps drive down the sympathetic system and increase the parasympathetic and these are things that are very easy, that even if you do it 10 minutes, the walking, the stairs, doing the push ups, but every couple of hours go a really long way when you're thinking over your entire life, rather than, Oh, I need an hour to do that three times a Week, just do it. You know, scattered throughout you just heard Dr junay Just say that exercise is a great way to manage anxiety or prevent it in the first place. To add to that, Dr David rosmarin is a professor at Harvard Medical School and founded their center for anxiety, and he says exercise releases endorphins, which counteract anxiety. Second, exercise leads to better sleep, and studies show better sleep leads to less anxiety. On top of that, Dr rosmer says working out makes us more resilient. He says the best way to manage anxiety is by confronting it and learning to tolerate the way it makes us feel and because exercise can make us feel uncomfortable, it increases our tolerance of discomfort, so it teaches our bodies to be more resilient and less reactive when we feel anxious. And the Journal of Affective Disorders found that exercising three times a week erases anxiety by 40% here's an email I received at Connie at intelligence for your health.com. It comes from Hannah Pitts, who writes, I saw a video online that said, drinking alcohol can protect against food poisoning. Is that true? Hannah? There is a tiny shred of truth to it, one small study from the journal at. Epidemiology cited a salmonella outbreak at a large banquet, about a third of the people there became ill after consuming contaminated tuna salad, but those who said they had three or more drinks at the banquet were nearly half as likely to become ill as those who didn't drink at all. Donald Schaffner is a professor of Food Science at Rutgers University, and he says alcohol can kill bacteria, that's why it's used in hand sanitizer and disinfectants. But no study has proven that alcohol prevents food poisoning. There are just loose correlations, and in an outbreak of people sicken from shellfish on a cruise, only those who did drink alcohol were infected. Plus, studies from Harvard show that if you drink too much alcohol, it can make your intestine more susceptible to infections. The only way to avoid food borne illness is to only eat food that is thoroughly cooked. But it's hard to know when something is contaminated and drinking alcohol is not a solid solution. Thank you for your email. Hannah, I hope this helps. Okay, listen to this. Here's a little trick to improve your concentration. Turn on a fan. According to the Journal of cognitive neuroscience, the soft hum of a fan helps you commit new information to memory. That's because it's a form of white noise that triggers a surge of dopamine, which helps you learn faster Be careful walking your dog. Johns Hopkins, university researchers have found that over the past 20 years, dog walking related injuries have been on the rise. The most common injuries are fractures, sprains and head trauma, and one of the biggest reasons more dog walking injuries are happening is cell phones, but women in particular, need to watch out. 75% of dog walking injury patients were women, and most of them were between the ages of 40 and 64 and those are just emergency room visits. There are probably a lot more that have not been reported. One of the most common occurrences is running with a leashed dog, no matter how well trained you think your dog is. And another hazard is walking your dog on a street with no sidewalks that can easily lead to one or both of you getting hit by a car. And retractable leashes are a bad idea because you have less control of the dog. The best thing is to use a no pull harness, where the leash clips in front, rather than on their back, that gives the person walking their dog more control and puts less strain on the dog, more intelligence for your health. From Oncologist Dr Sanjay June, and one of his passions in life is to encourage all of us to register as a bone marrow donor, since bone marrow transplants are currently the most effective way to treat leukemia and some lymphomas, so I asked Dr Juneja to tell us more about where to register and why bone marrow registries are important when You have leukemia and some of the scary blood disorders, we can do a good job of putting it into a temporary remission, but the problem is that thing will fester and take over again, unless you take the bone marrow of a donor, and now they don't do it through your, you know, back or spine or anything. They just do it through your arm, like an IV. It's, you know, it takes out your stem cells and gives them to someone, and oftentimes a child, to save their life. And the problem is, it's not something that's in your necessarily your grandparent or your uncle. You could have a match down in southern Louisiana, where I'm from, with, you know, someone from Germany, like I've had a German one. I've had one from Switzerland, and another patient, and it's all because somebody just took the time to swap. It's a pretty low risk, I mean, very low risk procedure for the donor, but it actually is the only buyout to stay alive in this world before that cancer comes back, and they don't have a long period of time to keep it under control. Anyone listening to this, for the most part, that's kind of an age cut off but, but anyone listening if they just type bone marrow registry by doing that swab and sending it off, you're not you're not committed, but somebody may get that notification that there's somebody that will keep them alive in this world. Once again, if you'd like to register as a bone marrow donor, either Google the term bone marrow registry or check out sites like be the match.org in many cases, you'll be sent a free kit in the mail, and the process is as simple as swabbing the inside of your cheek. 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.