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The Wellness Blueprint: With Dr. Caleb Davis
Welcome to The Wellness Blueprint with Dr. Caleb Davis, where we uncover the secrets to living a long, active, and pain-free life. Hosted by Dr. Caleb Davis, an orthopedic surgeon and fitness enthusiast, this podcast is your ultimate guide to musculoskeletal health, injury prevention, and wellness.
Dr. Davis combines his expertise as a shoulder and elbow specialist with a passion for empowering people to take charge of their health. From deep dives into cutting-edge restorative medicine to practical tips on avoiding surgery and optimizing recovery, The Wellness Blueprint offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to preserve their body and thrive at every stage of life.
Join us each week for professional guidance, fascinating medical discussions, and actionable strategies that help you move better, feel stronger, and stay functional for years to come. Whether you're an athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone looking to age gracefully, The Wellness Blueprint provides the tools to design a healthier you.
The Wellness Blueprint: With Dr. Caleb Davis
Episode 7: How Stress and Pessimism Make You Sick: The Science of a Positive Mindset for Better Health
Can chronic stress really alter your physical health or even increase your cancer risk? We tackle this pressing question and unravel the intricate relationship between mental well-being and physical health. We explore the often underestimated power of emotions, like anxiety and sadness, as natural parts of life, and why distinguishing them from clinical diagnoses is crucial for your health. Learn how prolonged stress can have tangible health consequences and discover strategies to enhance your mental state for overall better physical health.
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Hey everybody and welcome back to the Dr Big Guy podcast, a place to discuss injury prevention, optimizing health and living a better life. My name is Dr Caleb Davis, but you can call me Dr Big Guy. As an orthopedic surgeon, I love to fix people after an injury, but my true passion lies in helping you stay healthy, fit and out of the operating room. I am really excited for today's episode because it's a topic that I've wanted to cover ever since we started the Dr Big Guy podcast, and that's how mental health affects our physical health. Today I am once again joined by Nicole Davis, my favorite guest, and she's a big mental health enthusiast, so I know she's going to be a great contribution to the discussion.
Speaker 3:Today we're going to cover topics like chronic stress and how that might affect your immune system and even your risks of cancer. We're also going to talk about how anxiety might change the way you perceive pain and experience pain. We're also going to talk about how your mood and outlook on life may change your health outcomes. But never fear, because if you stick around for the whole episode, we're going to be discussing different strategies that you can employ to improve your health outcomes by improving your mental health and outlook on life. I really hope that you all enjoy listening and watching to this podcast episode as much as I enjoyed recording it. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:The information shared on this podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. The content of this podcast should not be considered medical advice, nor is it a substitute for professional consultation with a qualified physician. The views on this podcast do not necessarily represent the views of Dr Davis's medical practice group.
Speaker 3:If you have health concerns or conditions, it is recommended that you seek the advice of your own physician, who knows your medical history and can offer you personalized recommendations so, nicole, we're going to talk about the link between physical health and mental health today, which is a topic that I've been wanting to tackle ever since I conceived of the dr big guy podcast, but I always knew it was going to be kind of a tricky one to handle yeah, well, I think it's an excellent topic, and I don't really think most people understand or appreciate the significant link there is between mental well-being and physical well-being.
Speaker 1:I do think that there's a growing body of research, though, that discusses that link and gives us scientific evidence for what people have been saying for millennia.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just like you said, I think that everyone on some level intuitively knows that their mental health affects their physical health, but maybe we don't always appreciate just how profound that effect can be and myself personally sometimes I lack the sort of actual scientific literature to back up that claim. But for this episode I did a little bit of a dive into the literature and, as I suspected, just because we're dealing with psychology, sometimes some of the topics can be difficult to define. You know, we're going to talk about pessimism and optimism and anxiety and depression today, and sometimes it can be difficult to nail down exactly what that means.
Speaker 1:Sure Well, and we should also make note of the difference between clinical depression and what I will call, without any, what I'll call garden variety depression.
Speaker 3:No, I know what you're saying. You're saying that everyone experiences some level of anxiety or depression in their life, but then there are severities or durations of these symptoms that would fall into an actual clinical diagnosis.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think that's fair to say. And it's also important to try to be sensitive to people, because everyone experiences a broad spectrum of human emotion. But some of us might experience more severe swings of those emotion, or I should say not swings, but like permanent states of certain undesirable emotions.
Speaker 1:Right and I know the way in psychology we talk about it is if there is a clinically significant impairment in the person's life, that's typically when it can progress into a clinical diagnosis. And then of course, depending on the diagnosis, there are multiple symptoms that essentially have to be checked off before you can consider something a clinical diagnosis.
Speaker 3:So I think that's a good caveat for us to go into this with that understanding that we're not always going to be talking about clinical anxiety or clinical depression. We're going to just be talking about the normal spectrum of human emotion and how it can affect your health, although if we talk about severe cases, that may affect your health even more severely.
Speaker 1:Correct. Well, and I'll also bring up another point, just based on what you said, which is this is a normal spectrum of human emotion. You said, which is this is a normal spectrum of human emotion, just the idea that anybody can have anxiety or sadness, or even joy or grief. And just because you experience these emotions does not necessarily mean there's something wrong with you. So we want to make that clear as well, that everybody, at some point in their lives, experiences those emotions.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm really thankful that you're on the podcast because you have such a way with words that everybody at some point in their lives experiences those emotions. Yes, I'm really thankful that you're on the podcast because you have such a way with words and sensitivity about these topics and you have a great amount of empathy to help people feel like they're not abnormal or that they can't talk about their feelings. So I really appreciate that you brought all that up. So, with all that being said, I'm going to go ahead and jump into how anxiety and depression can affect things like cortisol levels and how that could actually, in theory, lead to increased risk of cancer. Now that probably has everyone's attention because they think, wow, can stress and depression and anxiety actually increase my risks of cancer? The short answer is yes, although I'm not really looking to make an alarmist statement where, oh, if you're stressed out, you're going to get cancer. We're talking about studies that have looked at thousands of people over the span of 30 years who might have increased levels of stress in their life and that may, over that immense amount of time, theoretically increase the chance of being diagnosed with cancer over a small amount. But I did look at a few studies that did look at, exactly as I said, 1000 people over a 20 to 30 year period, and they were able to divide them into groups of people who seem to experience high amounts of stress versus low amounts of stress, and did show that there was a significant difference in people being diagnosed with cancer in the higher stress group. As I said before, it's hard to define stress right. I mean, how much? How do you quantify stress? How do you say I'm more stressed than the next person, and there are a few different ways that that's done over these studies. But one of the things that they looked at is elevated cortisol levels.
Speaker 3:Now, in the very first episode of the Dr Big Guy podcast, we did talk about stress hormones and cortisol a little bit, and it's interesting. After I wrote this episode and did the show notes, I was listening to a podcast called the Docs who Lift Podcast. It's two doctors who talk about this and they actually just came out with an episode about cortisol, which it was a great episode. I don't know these two doctors personally, but I do enjoy their podcast. They were talking about how cortisol plays an important role in the body. I think you hear cortisol and you think, oh, stress, that's a bad hormone, but it's actually a really important hormone and serves its function. It has a physiologic purpose and if you don't have cortisone, you can actually have big health problems also.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about that for just a second. So when you say that, I immediately think, okay, if I'm a person living in the wilderness and a giant bear is wanting to chase after me, or if I just go camping or whatever, then I think, ooh, physiologically my cortisol levels should raise, because that should get my body in fight or flight mode and that should enable me to run away faster and with more adrenaline than if I were just like super cool, normal chill, nicole. So is that what you mean by cortisol having a physiological purpose?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself. That's great. You have a way through cutting through the doctories and getting straight to the point. So that's exactly right. Cortisol is a stress hormone. When you need stress, even bouts of intense exercise can raise your cortisol levels, but it's supposed to. But, as we talked about in the sleep episode, cortisol levels are supposed to start to decrease as the day goes on, as you're getting ready to wind down for sleep. They should be at a very low level. So if you can imagine people who have increased stress in their life that's never being resolved, or if they're not having good sleep habits, this can lead to chronically elevated cortisol levels and these chronically elevated cortisol levels can actually lead to a decreased immune function. Now the thing about the immune system. I think when most people think immune system, what do you think that the immune system does? If you had to say one thing, what does it do?
Speaker 1:Prevent illness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it fights bacterial infections, viral infections, right. One of the things the immune system actually does, though, is actually tries to weed out bad cells that have gone into potentially cancerous cells, cells that are damaged or that aren't needed anymore. They can eventually morph into cancer cells. The immune system is actually responsible for getting rid of those cells out of the body, so if you have an impaired immune system, you can actually be at theoretical high risk for cancer, and that's what most of these studies focused on. Nicole, do you know what time it is?
Speaker 1:Is it chocolate time?
Speaker 3:Well, we could have chocolate later, but no, it's time for Fractured Facts. The best part of the show and, from what I hear, a lot of people really love it, and once again, the whole idea was Nicole's, so give her credit where it's due fractured facts. Time for some useless orthopedic trivia. Nicole, do you know what the tiniest bone in the body is?
Speaker 1:well, pinky toe maybe. There's probably something in the neck, though you know, that's a great guess.
Speaker 3:There's actually a bone in the neck called the hyoid bone.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But that's not it.
Speaker 1:Isn't that what people snap when they want to assassinate you? I watch a lot of action movies.
Speaker 3:The hyoid bone can be broken when you're being hung or something like that, or being choked, it can. But that's not the smallest bone in the body actually.
Speaker 1:It's a bone called the stapes. Have you heard of the stapes, have you?
Speaker 3:ever heard of the stapes. Oh, there's a clue there. Yep, it's a bone in the inner ear actually. Okay, it's a series of bones. There's a series of bones, um, that help you actually reverberate sound and pick up sound and that helps amplify it and it gets picked up in your ear and it's actually an essential part of hearing. It's the smallest bone in the body and it's a bone most people don't even think about what do you? Spell s-t-a-p-e-s, so stapes, but it's pronounced stapes weird it's all. It's also called the stirrup bone.
Speaker 1:So you have the stirrup, the stirrup like I'm going to texas later and I gotta get, get my stirrups.
Speaker 3:We are going to texas actually actually by the time airs, we'll have already probably gone and come back from Texas, but that's okay.
Speaker 1:Now we're just liars.
Speaker 3:We are going to the American Shoulder and Elbow Society meeting in Texas this weekend and we're very excited. Get to rub shoulders. Get to rub shoulders with all the greats in North America, hopefully some guys, international guys and gals too. So the the tiny bones in the middle ear are called the malleus, which means hammer, the incus, which means anvil, and the stapes, which means stirrup, and it is very tiny.
Speaker 1:I believe it's less than three millimeters that would be like portion of the nail so the the stapes is only three millimeters. It's really, really tiny so is that like the size of an ant?
Speaker 3:uh, you know, no, an ant's probably smaller than three millimeters, but it's very tiny okay, and it helps reverberate that sound and amplify it until that's transmitted, uh, into in the cochlea and the cochlea transmits that into nerve signals that the brain can then translate a sound.
Speaker 1:Every time you say cochlea, I keep thinking of where it is that birds emit there. The cloaca, yeah, yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 3:All right, I can see that that's kind of similar. Yeah, you know, after we get past the whole stapes portion and we're getting into the anatomy of the inner ear. I haven't studied that in a long time, so any ENT doctors, please forgive me, you know I'm I. Hopefully I didn't get into that wrong. I can tell you confidently that the cloaca, though, is not part of the human ear. There's actually some things that can happen where the stapes becomes either too thickened or can become damaged, and you can actually have progressive hearing loss, and that can actually be an orthopedic condition, although I got to be honest with you, orthopedic surgeons are not going to treat anything to do with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that all be audiologists and ear, nose and throat doctors or otolaryngologists as the. Uh, as the doctors say say that one more time Otolaryngologist.
Speaker 1:I don't know how to spell that one E.
Speaker 3:N T. Neither do I Don't tell anybody E N T is a is a much easier.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I had to spell otolaryngologist and I had a gun to my head, I think I could probably do it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to guess there's two O's in there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, probably. If anybody has any other fractured facts, questions or things they want to submit, I'd be more than happy to hear them and feature them on the show. Let's get back to the podcast. Another one of those really intangible topics that I researched for this episode was pessim. Instead of saying oh great, I still have half a glass of water left.
Speaker 1:Things are looking good. You look at it and go oh man, I'm now completely without half of my water. This is terrible.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I think glass half empty, glass half full is probably the most common idiom that people are familiar with and that's probably what most people think of when they think of pessimism. But it can be a little bit more than that most people think of when they think of pessimism. But it can be a little bit more than that. When you look into how do psychologists or clinical researchers look at pessimism, they also look at things like how will things come to pass? It's not just you look at a current situation and say, well, this is a bad situation. It's more of I expect bad things to happen to me.
Speaker 3:Or they also talk about hopelessness and helplessness, meaning I am not able to help myself in this situation, therefore bad things will happen. I'm not able to change the situation I am in and therefore bad things will happen. And ultimately, a lot of this study is that, looked at people who fell into a range of pessimism and, believe it or not, there's actually a rating system for optimism and pessimism in clinical psychological research, because they have to figure out a way to define scales of pessimism and optimism and that can vary from whatever institute you're looking at, whatever scale they choose to use, but I can already feel myself getting into the weeds a little bit on that, so I'm going to back off.
Speaker 1:Well, actually I was going to dive into the weeds a little bit further, if I may.
Speaker 3:Well, that's because you're a psychology nerd, you really love this stuff. Dive into the weeds a little bit further, if I may.
Speaker 1:Well, that's because you're a psychology nerd, you really love this stuff. That's true. Yeah, that's true. But I was going to say that for the more serious spectrum of depression or something like post-traumatic stress disorder, where stress is in the name, I believe that they've shown studies where somebody who has absolutely no control over their environment, perhaps when this trauma is happening so let's say that there's a sexual assault victim and they are unable to fight their way out of it they're actually going to more likely end up being traumatized than somebody who's in a situation where they have hope and they can foresee okay, like I'm, you know, trapped in this building that collapsed, but I see that there's potentially a way out and they're going to fight toward that ending and kind of like dig their way out literally. And so there there have been differences. People have experienced incredibly traumatic experiences, but if they don't see a way out versus potentially a way out, that significantly affects if they're going to come end up with PTSD in the long run.
Speaker 3:You know. I think that actually really illustrates the point I was trying to make really well. So thank you for sharing that, because in the same way, if you have somebody, let's say you're diagnosed with cancer and you have just complete hopelessness oh, my life is ruined, I'm going to die, there's nothing I can do and then I've probably a lot of people who are watching or listening to this podcast right now have probably experienced family members or loved ones or at least friends who they know. Oh man, that person fought, that person really fought cancer. They were optimistic and they were joyful and they had a better outcome versus the person who became depressive and hopeless and then just passed away more quickly. Obviously, just saying that, that's anecdotal, that's not real medical data, but I think a lot of people can relate to that and some of these studies are actually backing up that that does have a tangible physical outcome.
Speaker 3:The people who see a light at the end of the tunnel and believe that they can get better actually do. Now there's a number of different reasons for this. I think some of it's probably linked to that stress cortisol response where if you hope that you'll be better and think that you'll be better, it's actually sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. But on the other ends, researchers have said if you're hopeless, are you going to try really hard to get better, have better sleep, eat healthier, exercise more? If you have no hope that you're going to improve, why would you go through these difficult interventions to make yourself better? And that's what a lot of these studies looked at.
Speaker 3:Let's let's take cancer out of the equation. Let's just say diabetes. Let's say you're diagnosed with diabetes and you're like my life's over, I'm going to be miserable from now on, versus oh, I can do something about this. I am going to change my diet, I'm going to change my lifestyle, I'm going to learn about the disease, I'm going to read up about it, I'm going to own it. And those people are more likely to succeed. Now you might say, well, it's obvious. Of course they are, because they feel motivated to do it. But you can actually train yourself to be less pessimistic and have better outcomes.
Speaker 1:Nice. Well, I also wanted to bring up something else about stress that just reminded me. I believe the Surgeon General just came out with a warning in the United States about the level of stress in parents these days. Have you seen or read anything about that?
Speaker 3:You know, I feel like I've heard little blurbs about it. I can't say that I've gone really deep into that. So why don't you share what you've seen?
Speaker 1:Yeah about it. I can't say that I've gone really deep into that. So why don't you share what you've seen? Yeah, but from what I recall seeing, it was a very significant amount. Like over 50% of parents feel that they have significant amounts of stress in their lives, and to me that's not surprising. But it's also a little bit alarming, because if parents are this stressed constantly and that is what you are displaying to your children, I think children excuse me, pick up on that and that is something that they learn just by being in your presence and they can almost feel especially if they're an empathetic or sensitive kid they can feel that energy coming from you and if that energy is constant stress, then they're not going to know how to remain calm as easily.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is something that I've observed. When a parent comes to my office with a child who has an injury, you can sort of tell, you can sort of read the room the really high, tense, stressful parent and family dynamic versus the one who's are, who are super relaxed and chill. I can't I'm not blaming any parents for the way they behave or the way they feel about their child being injured. Obviously it's understandable. You break, break a bone, you bring them to the doctor.
Speaker 3:It's normal to be a little bit stressed and anxious about that. But there's a tangible difference when I walk in the room versus the kid is like really crying and really in a lot of pain and feeling really anxious about it and you could tell what the parents are are mirroring that, or vice versa, versus the parents like, oh, you're going to be fine, everything's fine, it's not a big deal, and they sort of don't treat it like it's a big thing and those, those kids, tend to have less pain. Interesting and again, anecdotal, right, that's just me saying something that doesn't mean it's real data or real clinical evidence, but there are. There is some link to anxiety and having a higher perception of pain, so that is something that has been shown in clinical data.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in psychology we call it co occurring diagnoses, so there is a very large link. Or if somebody has major depressive disorder, they tend to also have a generalized anxiety disorder or a similar anxiety-based disorder.
Speaker 3:Getting back to the optimism versus pessimism, there are a couple studies that sort of mirror what I talked about with pessimism, where if you are an optimistic person you tend to have lower cancer rates, lower cardiovascular disease, lower blood pressure and also just lower generalized inflammation If you draw that CRP marker that we talked about.
Speaker 1:Say what that means again.
Speaker 3:C-reactive protein. It's sort of a generalized marker for inflammation in your body, very nonspecific. It can be elevated if you have an infection. It can be elevated with autoimmune disease. It can be elevated if you're in a car accident or even if you have a. If you run a marathon, you know your CRP will be elevated. But if you just have, if you're at rest in a calm state and your CRP is elevated, that would indicate that there's some sort of generalized inflammatory process going on.
Speaker 1:All right. So why don't we talk about how people can determine if they even think that they're on the pessimistic scale or if they look at life with a little bit more stress and anxiety?
Speaker 3:You know I was going to touch on how do you become optimistic. I find that a lot of people who are pessimistic sort of already know they are. Have you ever seen that People are like well, I'm just a pessimist, so that's just how I am.
Speaker 1:Sure, I've seen that, but some people might not really know how to take inventory of themselves.
Speaker 3:Well, that's a great. I think that's a great segue and I would love to hear your expertise on that Because, to be honest with you, I talked I, when I was making the show notes. I was thinking, all right, I'm going to try to help people. How can they switch from pessimist to optimist, and there are strategies for this, but I didn't so much think about how can you identify that in yourself. So give me your thoughts.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, my first thought is how often do you actually sit in a room by yourself with quiet? And a lot of people might be laughing because they're thinking I have children. That's not possible and I'd say, yeah, that probably is way more challenging for you if you have a situation like that, but whatever moments out of the day you can steal, even if it's honestly just going to the bathroom a lot of us are, are you know? Maybe, maybe we are toilet texters.
Speaker 3:Can I can I add to that? What you're describing is a practice called mindfulness, and that's actually a growing movement, which is it's sort of ironic, because a hundred years ago we probably didn't even need a word for this.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I actually saw a comedian the other day who is a mindfulness practicing. Mindfulness that used to mean mean going to have a bowel movement on the toilet, which I know you're already getting to. I think I've stole your thunder. But, like, seriously, now we have. We're all on Instagram and Twitter and TikTok or, I'm sorry, x and and we're just scrolling and texting all the time. So even when we're on the toilet now, we don't have a quiet moment of mindfulness to reflect and think about our thoughts in the day.
Speaker 1:Right, like how often do you travel in your vehicle or your mode of transportation without having earphones, headphones in, or listening to a podcast, or listening to music or whatever?
Speaker 3:So I'm super guilty of this and I have to force myself to not do this, because if I'm working out or if I'm going for a walk or if I'm in the car, I'm listening to podcasts almost always, and my excuse is oh, I'm trying to edify myself, I'm trying to learn, and it's true, there's a lot of really cool information and a lot of really interesting things to learn.
Speaker 3:But I think that the practice of mindfulness is really important, and something that's been really helpful for me is that Nicole and I have been getting up and taking a walk most mornings and even if we're not talking to each other, it's just a moment of quiet contemplation. The other time where I really like to do it is in the sauna, because it gets too hot for the phone, you can't really use it and, um, that's just a good place to sort of sit and sweat and and think about the day, and you'll be surprised if you're not distracted by all of these other stimuli, the sort of things that you can work through just just by doing that. It's really remarkable.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, one of the things I like to do and we'll probably get to this a little later are breathing exercises. So I try to take inventory of my thoughts and my feelings just from giving myself a moment or a few moments to actually reflect and think well, what am I feeling? Why am I maybe feeling more tense in my body? Why am I a little more snappy than usual? If you know, caleb comes home and leaves the toilet seat up, you know what is it that's driving that?
Speaker 3:I would never do that. I've never done that, ever right, yeah sure you have a lot of great qualities. My love but that's not necessarily okay. All right, you think with five women go in the house growing up I would have learned, but I guess not. You know, we really just need to get a urinal installed in the house only if we can also get a bidet deal, all right.
Speaker 1:so, um, I do like to suggest, uh, that I I just think and talk to myself and then taking an actual written inventory as well of my thoughts. Sometimes your thoughts pass you by and you just don't really even know what to think about it, and it's just so commonplace and you're just used to it that you don't even realize how negative it is. But if you write down what you're thinking and you go back and review it and go, oh man, like I was really cranky about this this morning, or like I had an incident of road rage or something, then you kind of understand where your mind's at most of the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's something that everyone could benefit from us, and I could definitely benefit, even though I'm working on it. I could do a lot more of it. I just find myself so busy all the time and it's easy to get away from you, but that's just an excuse. You know, I'm not hopeless and I'm not helpless, and I can better myself that way, so that's right. So, even if you don't think that you're pessimistic, this would probably be good practice to sort of reflect on this and see if there's maybe some things that you're not working through really well.
Speaker 1:Sure, well, and also, even if you are, um, there, there are seasons of life where your stress levels might be higher. Or perhaps you just experienced some sort of horrible event, like a loved one passing away and now you have to deal with the very real issue of sorting through their belongings or, uh, going through their will, or dealing with funeral arrangements, or dealing with holidays with family after the passing of that person. Like everybody has gone through loss or will go through loss at some point in their lives, and that's a big. I've noticed that in our friends and family. When they lose someone, their stress and their ability to cope with life their stress increases and their ability to cope with life, uh, their stress increases and their ability to cope decreases significantly. So just be aware that you might maybe you're super optimistic right now. Maybe you're pessimistic because it's uh, you know it's starting to turn into the fall or winter and perhaps the um, the seasonal affective disorder, is starting to get to you. But just take inventory every so often so that you know, because you're constantly changing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think mindfulness is never a bad idea for anybody and you can tackle this from multiple perspectives. If you're religious and you feel more comfortable doing something like mindful prayer, I think that can be a very good option for you. If the idea of meditation maybe makes you uncomfortable with what for whatever reason, if you have some sort of affiliation with that. But meditation doesn't have to be a spiritual practice. It can really just be you focusing on your inner thoughts and monologue and trying to work through some complicated thoughts and feelings that you're having. Another study that practice that I read about was called body scanning. Have you ever heard of this?
Speaker 1:Yes, that's something I've experienced, probably in yoga most often.
Speaker 3:Yeah, body scanning and you can feel free to jump in if you don't think my definition is very good, because I'm really. This is more of a new concept to me, where you literally just sort of picture every part of your body. You move from the top of your head down the neck to the chest and the arms. You sort of visualize every part of your body and connect to it. It's like am I having pain, am I having tension and stress in these areas? It's a way of focusing inward rather than being distracted by all the excess stimuli of the world, and it not only helps you connect to your physical pain and where you might be having stress or pain. It can also help you connect to your mind and inner psyche.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's also a little strange if you're not used to it. I was actually telling an example of breathing to some people that I was working with, and when I was in college, I took this acting class and one of the things we had to do was lie on our backs and breathe deeply and put our hands on our bellies and as we inhaled, our abdomen should be expanding because the breath should be coming throughout our lung capacity, and so it should be coming throughout our entire torso. But what I realized was that I pretty much only ever did chest breathing, so my lungs were just here breathing and I could never make my belly expand when breathing, and so that was. That was kind of an example of like wow, I'm really not aware of my body at all.
Speaker 3:I'm sure yoga has been really helpful for you to be a little bit more aware of what's going on when you're wearing a lifting belt or whether you're not having to fully use your diaphragm to fully belly, breathe and create that brace so you can squat heavier. Deadlift heavy is really crucial. You have to be really connected to every inch of your body to be able to perform those high intensity lifts, and so that's where it helped me. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about how do we practice becoming more optimistic. Can you tell me a little bit about cognitive behavioral therapy?
Speaker 1:Sure, it's also referred to as CBT.
Speaker 1:So this is a tool that a lot of therapists will use where they're focusing more on your current or present circumstances and they are asking you to mindfully think about your cognitive distortions which is a fancy way of saying the negative thoughts that kind of get you down, that maybe keep you in, stuck in certain thought patterns, and they are asking you to deconstruct them along with them.
Speaker 1:And then you, you learn coping skills and coping mechanisms so that next time, that intrusive thought or that negative thing that makes you feel, oh, I can't do that, like I'm not capable of doing that, and then your countenance falls and you're not able to complete whatever your goal is, you instead stop and think, okay, well, why am I thinking that and what can I do to kind of counter that?
Speaker 1:And once you counter it a lot of times, you'll find that you get another negative thought, that sort of interjects like oh well, I can't lift that, you know 120 pound, you know deadlift, because I'm just super weak. And it's like, oh well, well, why am I this weak? Well, because I'm a girl. And it's like well, okay, but is that actually true? Because there are plenty of examples of super, super awesome women who can lift 120 pounds or far more than that for a barbell. So, like, what is it that's getting you down? And then you start to kind of understand these distortions and fight them. And the more you have the distortion, the more quickly you're able to fight it.
Speaker 3:I really have to admit that if you talked to me 15 years ago, I think I would have been like this is a bunch of nonsense, this is all silly. Just just pick yourself up by your bootstraps and and do do good and stop making excuses for yourself. But as I've became a doctor, worked with all sorts of different people in my life, I've learned that everyone can get to that place with different goals and different methods, and for some people it really takes a lot of this sort of careful introspection, sometimes talk therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation and mindfulness and it, and people have had different experiences in their life and some people have barriers in their life that I have never experienced and obstacles that I've never experienced, and some people are going to require a little bit more intensive care and focus to be able to overcome those boundaries.
Speaker 1:You know what I would call that, caleb? I would just call that maturity and emotional intelligence, and I think that you have it in spades. I think a lot of people, unfortunately, in this world have neither.
Speaker 3:But it keeps me humble at the same time, because I know I used to think that way, right, and I'm able to say, okay, I learned all these things over time. So I, at the same time, I have empathy towards the people who don't understand it and I know why they don't understand it and I have faith that they can if they're exposed to the right people and learn the right things, which, hopefully, is the Dr Big Guy podcast. I would be really remiss if I did not mention that physical exercise can have a huge impact on mental health. Obviously, we all know, okay, exercise, lose body weight, gain muscle. We all know that. We all know that it can theoretically reduce the risk of diabetes and blood pressure. But it can actually help your mood, which can, as we've sort of covered already at this point, reduce risks of all sorts of chronic diseases, including cancer.
Speaker 3:Now I will say I think I mentioned this before that if you took a blood test right after intensive exercise, your inflammatory markers and cortisol are actually elevated, but that's, that's a temporary thing and overall you lead to lower inflammation and lower negative health markers over time. So just kind of to summarize training yourself to be optimistic. We talked about cognitive restructuring right. So with cognitive behavioral therapy, you're taking those negative thoughts and you're turning them into positive, realistic interpretations, rather than these overly pessimistic, negative ones. We didn't talk about this too much, but I did want to talk about visualization and goal setting. Setting yourself realistic goals and achieving them bit by bit usually encourages optimism. When you see that you were, you were able to achieve something that you thought was difficult or maybe even impossible to achieve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think having a measure of where you were and where you are now is really important. You see it in anything from fitness and nutrition, with weight loss or inches loss all the way up to, you know, setting your goals at work and career advancement, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Right and I think being able to see that progress, even if you feel it is very slow and short increments, is really valuable. Positive self-talk is something that a lot of people employ. They they are reinforcing. I think a lot of people kind of think of those self-help tapes when they think about this. Like you are a strong, independent, confident man, you know you know like you do not need to smoke.
Speaker 3:That's a. That's a friend's reference. I think we'll have to ask Wes he knows that one. Um, but it's a real. It's a friend's reference. I think We'll have to ask Wes, he knows that one, but it's a real thing. You have to remind yourself. If you have all of these intrusive negative thoughts, you can counter them with positive thoughts and remind yourself about true things that are good about yourself and your life and the people around you. To build up off of that, I think surrounding yourself with positive people is also very important. I think we probably all experience that is also very important. I think we probably all experienced that at some point in our life. Somebody who is always negative, complaining, gossiping, saying bad things about if not you, then the people around you and it just leads this to this really negative environment.
Speaker 1:Negative, negative Nancy's.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Getting you down.
Speaker 3:So I'd say it's really important to try to foster a community around you of people who are positive, but also remember that you could be that negative person in their life and you try to always be affirming and positive and kind to people so that you can be part of that community. Here's a topic that I think is really, really important and I think there I'm going to combine two topics into one and I'm going to call that contentment and gratitude.
Speaker 1:So gratitude Do you want to combine it into one contentment and gratitude. So gratitude, you want to combine it into one so is.
Speaker 3:It can grab my tooth to say that again can turn my gratitude yeah, yeah, I don't know that one's gonna really stick, but we can sidetrack. Let's start with contentment. So what does contentment mean to you?
Speaker 1:uh, it's being satisfied with where I am at with, without any need to increase or decrease my lifestyle mood, finances, whatever it's, I'm good just the way I am.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's a pretty succinct way to answer, and that's that sums it up pretty well, especially in our country. I think it's, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, everyone you're fulfilling the American dream right. You just look around and you say, well, this person has better clothes, better car, better job than I do. So I need to do better to the new iPhones out. I need to get the new iPhone, even though my iPhone is more powerful than all of NASA's computers 10 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know you know, one, one thing that you said to me. That was really really profound. I said yeah, you said something profound nice yeah right, uh, you're like, you know there's, there's, there are always going to be people who are looking to spend your money always. And I was like, and that's my wife just kidding but, um, I just thought that was really profound because with you know, have you heard the phrase more money, more problems One more time More money, more problems. That's right yeah.
Speaker 1:So I feel like, as we have aged into perfection, Like a fine wine, like a fine wine, and as your career has advanced, we we have gone from, you know, like very, very modest lifestyle to, you know we have more means now, and so it's been interesting, because, no matter how much money you amass, you still find a way to spend it, or you still find people who are trying to convince you to spend it in particular ways, or you still find people who are trying to convince you to spend it in particular ways, and so if you don't keep a grasp on what contentment is, you can very easily fall into the oh no, but my life is incomplete unless I upgrade my iPhone to the latest one or whatever line of thinking.
Speaker 3:I need the full cable satellite sports package. I need to have the unlimited data plan. I need to have the newest model of the whatever car like all those things Like.
Speaker 1:at some point we had like seven TV streaming services and I was like there aren't enough hours in the day for us to even watch all of these.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. Besides, you should really be watching podcasts anyway. But those are all really good points and we're kind of getting down to the philosophical realm. But on the health realm, if you're constantly discontent, malcontent, uncontent, I think, discontent.
Speaker 1:I think discontent yes.
Speaker 3:Now is the winter of our discontent, that's right.
Speaker 1:There it is. Wow, that was smart yeah.
Speaker 3:It sounded smart, but I don't actually know where that's from. Is that Dostoevsky? I don't know. But you guys stop talking, we're gonna have to take a break here. Okay, so discontentment can lead to chronic stress and, uh, if you're always worried about what you don't have, it leads to stress which we're not going to circle back on cover everything that that that that can entail, cause I think we've already hashed that out. So we're going to move on from that before Nicole gets too excited. Gratitude Now, nicole. Yes, Gratitude.
Speaker 1:I believe you already employ one throughout my life and then I've gone through phases where I will make a very concerted effort to write five things a day that I'm grateful for, and then maybe I'll go a few months and do that very faithfully, and then I'll kind of fall off the map and then I'll do it again. So right now I'm in one of my like I'm definitely doing this because I think it's a fantastic exercise and essentially I think of anything, no matter how small it is, that I feel grateful for. So it might be just the love and support of my husband that's a big thing. It might be just that I have a warm house as the nights are getting colder. It might be that I love snuggling my cats it's a little thing to you, it's a huge thing to me. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, one of your cats isn't so little.
Speaker 1:Don't you make fun of my big fluffy boy.
Speaker 3:No, but you've already hit it on the head. The gratitude journal is just a way for somebody to personally mark things that they're grateful for, and it counteracts that pessimism or that discontentment. You're like oh, don't think about all the bad things that are in your life and don't think about all the things that you don't have. Take stock of what you do have and why you're grateful for it and why it's significant to you. It may seem like a trite exercise, but I think it's really important and that's why here on the Dr Big Guy podcast, we are going to be grateful for something. Every episode we're going to say what we're grateful for.
Speaker 1:Ooh, I love that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's going to be one of our new kind of sign off things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially as we get closer to Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I want to do it every week and I think it's something that's a good exercise.
Speaker 1:Well, we should also talk about gratitude in the face of trials, because I think, even when someone is suffering, struggling with their mental health, physical health, for a variety of things and ailments that happen in the human population, I still think there are always ways to find gratitude. Your life doesn't have to be perfect in order for you to find that, and so, if you know I hope this doesn't apply to any of you, but if it does if you're experiencing something like cancer, then perhaps what you could be grateful for are the people who help care for you, the people who drive you to your chemo sessions, the nurses who make your day a little brighter, the fact that you have access to chemotherapy when so many people don't. So there are always ways to find light in the darkness, and so that is what I would recommend is, even if you can't start off with five things in your day, just start off with one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we learned with our episodes with Rachel Nurse Rachel how important that emotional connection is that people have with their caregivers and how that can have physical manifestations in health too. When people feel connected, this all sort of comes full circle, showing the tangible benefits people have. And there are actually some studies that kind of back this up that show increased cancer survival rates in people who practice gratitude, improved heart rate variability, lower blood pressure, lower inflammatory markers. So this is all backed up in studies. So to sum that up, the gratitude how do we train ourselves to be more grateful? Gratitude journal is one way to do it. That's super easy.
Speaker 3:Expressing gratitude to others Now, this is a weird one. For some reason in our culture it's it's more acceptable to insult people and make fun of them when they're your friends, and that's I get it. That's that's part of part of friendship, and culture is ribbing each other and making fun of them when they're your friends, and that's I get it. That's that's part of part of friendship, and culture is ribbing each other and making fun of them. But I think people feel more awkward when you give them a compliment and say thank you and express genuine gratitude for whatever reason. But I've there are.
Speaker 3:Every now and then you'll meet someone in your life who says I really appreciate you, I really love you and your friendship means a lot to me. And every now and then it's like whoa, where'd that come from? Do you know what I'm talking about? I got to give a shout out to Donnie Wallace for this one. Donnie Wallace is the owner of the jujitsu gym where I train, and he will. He'll give me a hug and say I love you, man, and like I, really you, like you mean the world to me and genuine too.
Speaker 3:He's just such a genuine guy and most especially in men just don't feel comfortable opening up about. They don't feel comfortable opening up that way and I got to tell you, I got to tell you it means a lot to me. When someone does that for me and shows that vulnerability and shows gratitude in a very genuine way, just it always lifts my spirits.
Speaker 1:Sure, oh, and I've also heard of the whole theory of the five love languages that was I don't remember the author who coined that, do you?
Speaker 3:I don't. Oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1:It's very famous.
Speaker 3:Most people have heard of the love languages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very famous. Uh, most people have heard of the love languages, yeah, yeah, and so one of them is words of affirmation, which just means that you either give you you take pleasure in giving encourage words of encouragement to others, or you can take pleasure in receiving words of encouragement, and so that's something interesting that caleb uh, definitely, definitely, uh does well if I provide him with words of encouragement, that is one way that he feels very valued and very loved.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can attest to that. You know I don't want to get too much in the weeds in the love languages because everyone sort of gravitates towards one more than the other, but when you affirm me and say nice things to me, it definitely does make me feel encouraged. Yeah, that's for sure. I've seen that play out many times. So one of the last things I wanted to cover was humility, and if you've been listening to the Dr Big Guy podcast at all, you know my sign off is be humble, be happy, be healthy.
Speaker 3:And I'm starting to come full circle with this whole thing because all from the get go, when I first started the show, I wanted to focus on how diet and lifestyle can change your health, how sleep can change your health and how mental health and community and friendship and family can improve your health.
Speaker 3:So the meaning of the whole phrase be humble, be happy, be healthy is sort of a progression Humility leads to health, happiness and surrounding yourself with optimism and a social support group leads to health, and that ultimately the sign off be healthy. So the reason that I end every episode with be humble, be happy, be healthy is because I want to help remind everyone who's listening that these are the keys to becoming healthy. The health is multifaceted, obviously. Diet and exercise and sleep all play a role, but I wanted to reinforce, after this episode, how important mental health is to finishing that big picture. So I looked up studies that looked at humility and that's a little bit harder to find than depression and anxiety and pessimism and optimism, as you can imagine, because humility probably means a lot of humility and a practice of humility can lead to improved relationships and better psychological flexibility and making you more. Really it just makes you easier to get along with, which leads to better and deeper relationships when you're more flexible and not such a pain in the butt to deal with.
Speaker 1:Really, I think we need to define humility a little bit, though, because I think it could mean different things to different people and certainly in different cultures as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think defining humility is probably important for this exercise. What I'll say is, when I'm talking about humility, I mean having an a realistic expectation of your abilities or your intelligence or your strength, or your really your ability to achieve anything. You know people who have these grandiose ideas of what they can achieve, or how intelligent they are or how handsome they are or anything these are. It can all be aspects of arrogance. Obviously, you can be very talented and confident in something, but even confident people can be humble, realizing what their limitations are and fully embracing that.
Speaker 3:And even though there's not really a lot of studies that I found that look directly at, oh, the more humble you are, the more healthy you are, I do think it contributes and is synergistic to all the things that we talked about today having deeper and better relationships with people and also being more content and grateful when you're humble, because when you're humble, you understand all of the things that people do for you because you're not capable of doing them yourself, and then you're grateful for the people who provide these things in your life that you couldn't on your own, where there's a lot of people who think, well, I don't need you, I can do anything.
Speaker 3:I don't need your support. I don't need your help. I can achieve everything on my own without any assistance, and that, to me, would be a sign of arrogance. So things that I do to try to help deepen and improve my humility would be I practice reflection, part of that mindfulness exercise thinking about, okay, where did I make a mistake today, what could I have improved, what can I do to be better next time. And you acknowledge your weakness and you also acknowledge your strengths. You say, okay, I did this really well, I can build on this. Or you can say I didn't do such a good job on that, I can improve it. And constantly having to face these weaknesses is humbling.
Speaker 1:I would say that, um, I don't, I don't have any any areas of weakness at all, so, um, I'm actually perfectly perfect, just in every way so well, I'd be inclined to agree I was gonna say it's challenging to be married to somebody so humble because, uh, every once in a while I will lodge a complaint against this, this man, this lovely specimen of a man, and um, and then he'll, he'll immediately come to me and be like oh well, you know, you know what could I have done better? Let me know, and I'll, I'll make it better, I, I'll I'll do better, and I'm just like no, let me complain, would you like?
Speaker 3:uh, yeah, so next time I will tell you you're wrong and you have no right to complain. No, that already gets to. The next one, which is a big model for me is seek feedback. You know I, I ask people okay, what could I have done better? What was wrong here, what can I do better next time? And you can overdo this and, believe me, I have, I've overdone it. Maybe over there, I don't know, Sounds like she's a little irritated with me for being so perfect.
Speaker 3:But I constantly seek feedback from others when the time is appropriate, when it feels organic In most settings in my life from my patients, from my colleagues, from my patients, from my colleagues, from my mentors, from my spouse. These are all people I go to and say what could I have done better? Then I think another really important thing to practice humility is to serve other people, and this can be really hard because it takes a lot of time out of your day. It doesn't necessarily get you anything tangible, but a lot of times when you seek other people to serve, that will go a long way to humbling you because you're having to practice humility, saying I'm giving up my time to help somebody. It can also really help reinforce that gratitude that we talked about.
Speaker 1:I also wonder if an element of humility is the ability to apologize and mean it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so. I think people who are very proud and arrogant would have a hard time admitting that they were ever wrong about something. So I think that's definitely, that something comes into play.
Speaker 1:I think it's something that a lot of people deal with, even if they don't consider themselves to be, at baseline, proud or arrogant. I don't know a lot of people who baseline consider themselves that, but, for instance, caleb and I will apologize to each other all the time for things like that, and frequently, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So here's a really cool topic that I found fascinating and this is a little bit more relevant to my field because I am a surgeon and this is how does mental health affect physical outcomes after surgery? So this was a really interesting one and there is a lot of published data on this and it mostly looks at depression and anxiety. So, the impact of post-surgical recovery with people who are depressed. There was an article in the Journal of American Medical Association, or JAMA, in 2017 that showed that patients with clinical depression had a 1.5 to 2 times more likely chance to experience post-operative complications. They also had longer stays in the hospital after surgery and had a higher chance of having to be readmitted back to the hospital after surgery.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. I know this doesn't have to do with the same journal, but I do know that for folks who have maybe suicidal ideation or who have attempted suicide in the past, they are more likely to have a relapse and to attempt again in the future. So it's sort of like once you get to that point, it's almost easier for the negativity to take over.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can see that as sort of a vicious cycle. I've even seen papers where it shows that, you know, cortisol leads to higher stress and higher weight gain, and then higher levels of what they call peripheral fat, meaning fat stores throughout the body, can then lead to higher levels of cortisol and it becomes this vicious cycle. And so same thing for depression, I think can lead to all these physical ailments. The physical ailments make you more depressed and then just worsen the symptoms and it can be a really hard spiral to break out of. There's also some studies that looked at people with depression being linked to impaired wound healing. So whatever surgical incision that you had, you have a higher chance of it healing slower or having an infection or even what we call a dehiscence, where the wound opens up, and this has been linked to impaired immune function due to depression Dehiscence Dehiscence when you know someone might say the wound busted open.
Speaker 1:Okay, there you go. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3:Here's one I thought was super interesting, nicole, and that's anxiety and perceived pain.
Speaker 1:You said my name. That makes me feel like this is targeted.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, it's not targeted towards you at all. I'm just, I'm just excited.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm just excited.
Speaker 3:So I'm speaking to you, nicole, very emphatically and directly.
Speaker 1:Okay, Caleb yes, dr Big guy, yes, thank you.
Speaker 3:Give me some respect, thank you. People who have a preexisting diagnosis of anxiety, or at least have higher perceived levels of anxiety, will often have increased perception of pain, and pain is tricky. Pain is really tricky because what you feel and what I feel may not be the same, even if we had the exact same injury. How do you measure pain? Now, there's a number of ways to measure pain, but it's ultimately it's pretty much all subjective meaning it's your word against mine how we feel, and I've seen people with their leg cut off and say I'm fine, and I've had people with a splinter in their toe who are screaming, but I don't know what that person's experiencing. So take all this with a grain of salt. Anytime you do pain, it's hard to measure, but there have been reports that people who are diagnosis of anxiety have higher levels of perceived pain after surgery. The same thing goes for higher increase of opioid use after surgery.
Speaker 3:So think oxycodone, hydrocodone, things like addictive opioid-style drugs, which is a huge problem in our country, unfortunately. Pain pills yeah, pain pills, addictive pain pills. We're not talking anti-inflammatories like Advil, we're talking addictive opioid pain medicine. So you have a higher chance of becoming addicted because you're having to use more of these pain pills to control your pain, which is increased with anxiety. The other thing that we see is people who have a diagnosis of depression. Studies have shown that they're more likely to sway from post-operative rehab protocols. So let's say, I do a shoulder replacement on somebody. They're not as likely to adhere to the restrictions I give them or adhere to the post-operative rehab with physical therapists.
Speaker 1:So are we talking about clinical depression in this?
Speaker 3:In this particular study that I looked at in JBJS, the journal of bone and joint surgery. Yes, we're talking about clinical depression.
Speaker 1:Okay, I can totally see that though, because somebody with major depressive disorder they're gonna have most likely very low self-esteem.
Speaker 1:They're going to have, um, an inhibited ability to feel, feel things outside of sadness and depression. Um, and they're also going to um. If they, if they don't value their life as much, then they're not going to value their bodies in the same way as someone who's not depressed, because they, you know, most of the time they're not even capable of getting out of bed to go take a shower. So what? What makes you think that they're going to be able to complete wound care?
Speaker 3:Uh, you know, if they're just that, I don't want to say down in the dumps, but if they're that depressed, yeah, and it's also if they feel like these things that I'm doing, that are hard and painful, will not help me. It's that pessimism comes back again. Oh, that that hurts, it's hard, it's not worth it, I'm not going to do it. And then they have poor outcomes, unfortunately, and this is not me assigning blame to anybody, it's really just more of an observation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So let's talk a little bit about on the brighter side of how do we counteract these problems that we just talked about in surgery, so that there are ways and there are studies that have shown that people who participate in cognitive behavioral therapy or mindfulness exercises can actually have improvement.
Speaker 1:They actually Are you actually telling doing what I say, which is everybody needs therapy?
Speaker 3:I didn't say everyone needs therapy. I said everyone who needs surgery needs therapy.
Speaker 1:Everybody in your life needs therapy.
Speaker 3:Well, probably everyone in the medical field needs therapy of some sort. We're all a little bit crazy to have agreed to do this what we do. So that's probably true, but there are a couple of studies that I read that looked at cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness therapy. You had groups who participated in it and people who didn't, and they reported better pain outcomes, faster recovery and even faster wound healing in some instances. So even this, this non-tangible stuff, can actually affect our physical bodies, and that's been played out in the literature.
Speaker 1:I want to also mention a book that is very near and dear to my heart, and so there are two very significant books in my life, and it's the Bible, and then it's this book, and so this book is called the Body Keeps the Score. Hopefully some of you have heard about it. It was a New York Times bestseller for a very long time, but it is written by Bessel van der Kolk. I hopefully I said his name properly. That's pretty good, yeah, yeah, I mean I think.
Speaker 3:So I've never met the guy. Nice, okay, it just seemed like it was like you knew what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah, I know what I'm talking about anyway. So he is a uh, trauma uh therapist and researcher and he's written this incredible book and authored many papers and he has like a whole institute on this and it's just really fascinating all of the ways fascinating and horrifying all of the ways that trauma can have a significant impact on people's bodies, and so I encourage you to pick up a copy of that book. It's just very educational and there's all sorts of instances that do a much deeper dive into these topics than what Caleb and I are talking about.
Speaker 3:That's the Body Keeps the Score.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've heard a lot of people talk about this, not just you. I've heard celebrities, podcasters. Lots of people talk about the Body Keeps the Score and what a profound effect it's had on their lives, so I would definitely recommend that you check it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I own several copies to give away as gifts.
Speaker 3:Is that right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we have an Audible version too.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm only a little bit obsessed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sounds like it's been a helpful book for you, though.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's been really helpful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, we didn't even get into what psychological trauma can do to the body, so we just sort of talked about more your garden variety depression, anxiety and pessimism and optimism. You know I try not to get too deep in these podcasts because I want to make it easy and digestible for people, something that they can take and make actionable in their lives. But there is a whole lot that you could dive in on this topic.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we pretty much covered the vast majority of the topics that I wanted to discuss. I think having nicole here as usual is invaluable. She's an excellent co-host. I don't know you. You're coming on the episode so often. I don't know if I can really call you a guest anymore. I think you're really you're.
Speaker 1:You're the co-host do I get a fancy little pin now?
Speaker 3:well, I'm not gonna make it, but if you do, you can Maybe.
Speaker 1:I'll have one of my nieces make it, you know. Yeah, well, you can probably get something on Etsy. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So today I am very grateful this may seem a little bit obvious and on the nose, but I'm very grateful for my wife, nicole, and how kind and empathetic and excellent she is and how she has taught me to be such a more empathetic and caring person and understanding about all of these different mental challenges and difficulties that people experience, and just making me a better person every single day.
Speaker 1:Oh, now I want to hold your hand. That's my love language right there the touch.
Speaker 1:Well, I have many things that I'm grateful for, but definitely one of them is that Caleb is so passionate about sharing his knowledge with people, because, trust me, none of this would happen if it weren't for Caleb. Dr, big Guy, dr, big Guy, dr, big Guy, yeah. So I'm grateful that he takes the time to put this together and research it so thoroughly and learn how to get this information out, hopefully to the masses All 10 of you who are listening.
Speaker 3:Yes, we get it out to the tens of people. Well, I promise that it won't always just be Nicole and I flirting with each other during our Grateful segments. We'll branch out, but I just had to this time. Just a quick summary. We talked about optimism versus pessimism Peptobismol Peptobismol it's great. We talked about optimism versus pessimism Peptobismol Peptobismol it's great. We talked about optimism versus pessimism and how it can affect your health, including cancer and recovering from surgery. We talked about ways that you can practice gratitude and how that can expand into different areas of your life.
Speaker 1:And also recognizing if you need to take note of your mental state.
Speaker 3:That's right. We talked about ways that you can be mindful to diagnose whether or not you have a problem that you could be improving upon. We talked about becoming more humble. We talked about serving others in a way to be more grateful, more humble, and we talked about contentedness and discontentment, and hopefully this has been something that you can all take in your life and take into action and improve yourselves. So, nicole, thanks again for joining us on the Dr Big Guy podcast and remember, be humble, be happy and be healthy. We'll see you next week.
