125. Best of Mental Health: The Foundation of Brain and Whole Body Health

Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained in board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system no longer focused on disease management but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span. Mental health is shaped by far more than thoughts or emotions. It actually reflects how well the brain produces energy, how regulated your nervous system is, and how resilient our metabolism remains under stress in the brain. It also can tell you how we are training our own minds to things like emotional traumas, adaptations to new situations, and so much more. When any of these systems begin to break down, symptoms often show up and these symptoms happen long before a formal diagnosis. Symptoms like brain fog, anxiety, emotional dysregulation, or even just fatigue. These can all be early indicators of a problem down the line. In this special Best of episode of Extend, I've curated key clips over the last year from insights that I've gained from conversations with leaders exploring mental health. These leaders include Jay Shetty, Dr. Chris Palmer, Jim Quick, Maya Raychura, and Gabby Bernstein. These moments were selected to highlight the patterns I see repeatedly in practice long before mental health struggles are labeled or treated in isolation with pharmaceuticals. Across these conversations, we examine why mental health cannot be separated from the body, how metabolic dysfunction and chronic stress actually impair your brain energy, and why feeling safe in the nervous system is foundational to healing. We're also going to talk about how attention, focus, and emotional resilience can be trained rather than forced. You're going to hear why distraction and burnout are often physiological, not psychological, and how visualization and mindset can shape neural pathways, and why meaning, regulation, and consistency matter more than quick fixes. If you want a deeper understanding of what truly supports long-term mental well-being and how to intervene early by strengthening the systems that regulate the brain rather than reacting when systems start escalating, this episode is going to bring together the best science, the most profound perspectives, and practical insights needed to take ownership of your own mental health. Let's get into it. So first, I wanted to explore mental health from a perspective we don't often talk about in medicine, meaning values and inner alignment. My conversation with Jay Shetty reframed stress, vulnerability, and balance in a way that's both practical and deeply grounding. Here's what he has to say. This is so monumental for me to have you on the show. For my audience who's really listening to this for health and wellness, you literally are the linchpin of bringing in for me in the show the whole aspect of mental and spiritual well-being. I'm so excited for this conversation because of that, because I feel like it's a topic that I know for sure Western medicine has ignored for the entire history of Western medicine, which was a big driver for me to switch my entire career into focusing on health rather than sickness, because I really believe that a lot of sickness comes from where we are mentally, where we are spiritually. This is where I wanted to take the question and start with, what do you think is the biggest mistake or one of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to their own mental health and their own mental well-being? What are some of your thoughts around that? That's such a great question. I'd say that there's three mistakes that I think people make when it comes to their mental health. The first is we don't even consider it. So true. It isn't a factor in how we think about our well-being. For example, if you sprained your ankle, you'll be thinking about it, you'll be talking about it. If you hurt yourself, just randomly, even just poked your knee on the side of a table, you'd be rubbing it and trying to look at it and make sure that you're feeling okay. And again, if you had any sort of injury while working out or you went and did some water sports on vacation and you picked up a little injury, it's something you're going to talk about. And I think what happens with mental health is that sometimes we're not aware, but it doesn't even make it into our conversations. We're not talking about it. We're not expressing it to someone because we think, oh, it's just this little thing. It will go away. And sure, that's fine if you stub your toe, but as the pain gets deeper, as the pain gets harder to bear, it has to be something we address. So I think the first thing is we almost act like it doesn't exist. So do you. Now, let's say you do act like it does exist. What do you do with it? I think, again, what we often do is we resort to family and friends. And again, we don't necessarily go to experts. We don't necessarily go to teachers. We don't necessarily go to coaches, therapists, guides. We're not necessarily going to the right person. I remember when I first came and saw you, I got a different experience seeing someone who was an expert both in taking alternate ideas, traditional ideas, Eastern ideas, Western ideas, all of it together than I ever would have if I went to someone who was just my mate. When I go to me, you know what? I've just been feeling like my gut's not great or this is not great. What kind of a response am I going to get? So am I going to the sources of wisdom and insight for my mind? That's the second thing. And the third thing I think we're doing is that we kind of feel like if I feel OK and I'm doing OK, then I don't need to do anything about it. There's a sense of complacency. There's a sense of being relaxed, of, hey, if I'm feeling all right mentally right now, I don't need to put in the work. And I always say to people that when things are bad, work hard, but when things are good, work harder, right? When things feel good, when your mind feels sharp, when your mind feels present, that's the time to go all in. So the three mistakes we make are not necessarily, I mean, I could definitely go into practical things we do wrong, but I actually think they start up here in how we perceive our mental health as very different to how we deal with our physical health. Our physical health, we get checked up, we get data, we look at results, we look at how we feel, we talk about it. Our mental health, we see it as this weird kind of cloud of information that we don't necessarily decipher or dissect from. In this next segment, we're going to examine the biological side of mental health and why Dr. Chris Palmer argues that brain function is deeply connected to your metabolic health. This is a game changing concept in psychology. I truly wish that psychologists and medical doctors can work together to address mental health issues both above the neck and below the neck in your overall metabolic health. It's very important to get his perspective. Here's what he has to say. Can you answer the question, what is the current status of mental health in the Western world? So the unfortunate news is that we do have a mental health epidemic for people who may not know that. The latest estimates are about one billion people on the planet suffer from a mental disorder in any given year. That represents about 13 percent of the world's population. In Western countries, the rates are higher. It's about one in five people, 20 percent of people will suffer from a mental disorder in any one given year. If you look at lifetime prevalence, it's about 50 percent. One in two people will meet criteria for a mental disorder at some point or another during their life. Now, sometimes those are easily understood situations. You break up with the love of your life and you get depressed for more than two weeks, not rocket science. People when they're in college might actually meet criteria for a substance use disorder. They're binge drinking multiple times a week because they're partying. Technically, they meet criteria for a substance use disorder. Do they think of themselves as having a mental illness or a mental health condition? The reality is that the rates have been dramatically escalating for the last several decades. So in the last 20 years, the rates of autism have quadrupled. The rates of ADHD have tripled. The rates of major depression have reached an all-time ever-recorded high, both in terms of current prevalence and lifetime prevalence. The rates of eating disorders in the UK, where we have good statistics on this, the rate of hospitalization for life-threatening eating disorders is up five-fold. In the last 20 years, the rates of opioid overdose deaths massively up, a five-fold increased risk. So the rates of bipolar disorder in adults, largely thought to be a genetic disorder, the rates of bipolar disorder in adults have doubled in the last 20 years and in children and adolescents, they're up through the roof. So there's a broad range of mental health conditions, depression, anxiety, substance use, eating disorders, psychotic disorders, they're all going up. And right now, most people are kind of skeptical of all of that. And I think the skepticism falls into a few different categories. So some people will say, it's because we're just recognizing it more. Everybody's talking about mental health. Everybody's coming out of the woodwork, talking about their symptoms, and we're just recognizing it. And so we're accurately diagnosing these disorders that have clearly been there all along. Others will say, this can't possibly be true. This is nonsense. Everybody's whiny and lazy and everybody wants a diagnosis. Everybody wants to be special. They all want pills because the pills are supposedly going to make you feel better and who doesn't want an edge. So everybody wants pills. And although both of those things may have some truth in them, the reality is if you talk to the researchers doing this research, if you talk to emergency room doctors, if you talk to school teachers who've been teaching for more than 30 years, they are all unequivocal in their answers. The rates of mental disorders are skyrocketing and they are frustrated, alarmed, brokenhearted. What is happening to the people that we are seeing? Because they know I wasn't missing this 30 years ago. Something is wrong in the world and we have a massive mental health epidemic. So I struggle with this myself, not just mental health, but also physiological health, because I feel like we're about the same age. We saw this train wreck happening throughout the course of our lives. I'm a huge history buff, so I kind of read a lot about what was life like before I was born, maybe 1920s, 30s, 40s. This was not an issue back then. There were mental words and then those mental words kind of emptied out with the advent of some of the medications that were invented probably in the post-World War Two era. But then something switched in post-World War Two America and the world, where obesity rates, diabetes rates, autoimmune rates all just started skyrocketing. And mental health disorders, as you just said, was part of that history. And so what do you think it was that kind of sparked this fire? You know, that is... So most people don't even realize that those things are related that you just said. They don't understand that they're like, what are you talking about? Obesity and diabetes have nothing to do with mental health. But as I think you know, I believe they are very much related. And that obesity is a sign or symptom of metabolic dysfunction. Diabetes is a symptom or sign of metabolic dysfunction. And mental illness is too, but it just is specific to the brain. And you know, the first thing that some people have trouble getting over is the obesity thing. Because not all people with mental illness are obese or overweight. Some are actually emaciated. They're thin. They have anorexia nervosa or they're alcoholics and they're drinking themselves to death. They're homeless and they're emaciated on the street and they clearly have a mental disorder. So you can have metabolic dysfunction in your brain and be thin. You can have metabolic dysfunction in your brain and be normal weight. You can have metabolic dysfunction in your brain and be overweight or obese. So metabolic dysfunction doesn't equate with obesity yet. The fact that the rates of obesity are skyrocketing tells us that the rates of metabolic dysfunction are skyrocketing and it is not a coincidence that the brain is being impacted. The question of what causes it, the reality is, you know, rates of those things were even increasing prior to World War II because Hitler, for example, was consumed with this scourge, the skyrocketing rates of this thing called cancer, which is also related to all of this. It's related to obesity and diabetes. And although the rates back then pale in comparison to what they are now, as societies have westernized across the board, this is for centuries, as societies westernize, we get these diseases of affluence. And the diseases of affluence largely are obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. And oh, by the way, as a side note, mental health conditions. And that as societies westernize, that's what happens. And so there's clearly something about westernization that is driving disease in humans. This broad range of diseases. There's no doubt in my mind that ultra processed foods are playing a large role in this. And the processing of foods and what we're consuming really began around the time that you described in the 1950s or so that we really started. And everybody thought it was just a miracle breakthrough that we have these shelf stable, long lasting foods that can be packaged in plastic and last for months on a shelf. And stay fresh and no bacteria, no mold, no nothing. And we thought that this was great. It turns out maybe it's not so great and we can get into that. But at the same time, westernization is also associated with environmental toxins. As factories come in, you get air pollution and more importantly, you get contamination of the water. So these factories back in the old days were producing all sorts of harmful chemicals, many that are banned now that we now know, oh, those were actually poisoned. Well, what were those factories doing with those chemicals after they were done with them? Don't pick them in the water. Put it right in the river. Why not? Why not? Why not? That's an easy way to dispose of those things. And of course, that then gets into the well water. That gets into the water system for the city, the town. Yeah. And so I think in my mind, those are kind of the two most likely culprits. Food supply and environmental toxins. Right. In this next segment, I'm going to explore with Jim Quick, why so many people feel mentally exhausted and how approaches that Jim uses helps their brain health through training, habits and daily performance. Here's what he has to say. I remember when I was a kid, we have to remember phone numbers. Like if you didn't remember somebody's phone number, you couldn't talk to them because there's no device that you had all your phone numbers in. Maybe a piece of paper, but that was a pain in the butt to pull out a piece of paper, all the phone numbers. I don't think I've memorized a phone number in 20 years. I open limitless with the four because I think in order to change something, you need awareness. It's hard to change something unless you know it's there. And there's these four invisible forces that are driven by technology. It amplifies it. It didn't cause it, but it definitely has magnified it. So the four horsemen, I call it of the mental apocalypse, and they all have health consequences in no specific order. Digital deluge, which is my term for information overload, what we talked about earlier. The amount of information is doubling at dizzying speed, AI, Moore's law, but how we learn it hasn't changed at all. So that growing gap creates a lot of stress and information fatigue syndrome because everything is a syndrome. So that's why we teach speed reading and accelerated learning to close that gap. Can I just, I want to go over all four of these in a little bit more detail. So with information overload, digital deluge, I feel a lot of people feel that if they disconnect, they'll miss out on some information. And in reality, I keep referring to the good old days, but sometimes all the information you had was maybe a shelf of five books, and that was your information. Now there's this constant urge to continually take in more information that's constantly changing. How do you tell people that they're not going to miss out on all this information? Yeah. I mean, okay, so the information is always ever growing. So we're never going to be able to keep up with all of it. I think it's very important to have outcome-based learning, as opposed to checking every email or having goals that, and aligning your activities and your learning around certain outcomes that you want to be able to achieve and filtering. Because we could do anything, but I don't, we can't do everything. So it's not even about managing our time. Certainly that's important, but it's not time management as much as mind management. It's about priority management. The most important thing is to keep the most important things, the most important things. And really, and so even when it comes to information, and really prioritizing, because the fastest way to read something might be not reading at all, if that information is not relevant to you. So you have digital deluge, and then the second one you have is digital distraction, and a whirl full of rings and pings and dings and app notifications, social media alerts, every like, share, comment, cat video, you get this dopamine hit, and we're driven to distraction. I really feel like distraction and focus is a muscle. Yet so many of us are flexing our distraction muscles, and we wonder why we can't focus with our kids or at work, because we flex those muscles, maybe first thing in the morning with, by grabbing our device or something like that. And so that's why we teach a lot on, we of course, is on focus and the whole chapter is on focus. And it's such a critical, like, focus will help you remember names, focus will help you to be more present and we'll be able to see opportunity. And then the third one, besides digital deluge and digital distraction, is digital dementia, which you're referring to. It's like, these devices are remembering things for us. And if your, if your memory is like a muscle, it's user or lose it. And I mean, yeah, you mentioned phone numbers. I mean, how you remember all your, all the phone numbers growing up. And so did I. How many phone numbers I'm talking to everyone listening right now, how many phone numbers you know, right now, current numbers. And most people, they could count on one hand. Right. And not that I want to memorize a thousand phone numbers, but it should be very concerning. We've lost stability. Remember one or pin number or seed phrase or something we just read. I believe two of the most costly words in life, certainly in business, I forgot. I mean, just think about the consequence of saying or thinking, I forgot to do it. I forgot to go to that meeting. I forgot what I was going to say. I forgot that conversation, what was said to me. I forgot that person's name. Every single time we think that then we lose time, we lose credibility. We could have a reputation, we could lose a sale. On the other side, I think memory is a magnifier. Memory, let's take business, memory, we, with entrepreneurs, we were having a conversation before we started filming, YPO and memory can make you money. Think about the benefit and the advantage you have a superpower when you could easily remember client information, product information, facts, figures, give speeches without notes, right? Everything gets so much easier. And you look, because we live in the expert economy. And so you even, you have so much value and you stand out. If you could go into a room and meet 20 strangers, leave saying goodbye to every one of them by name. I mean, who are they all going to remember? They're going to remember you. So digital dementia is a term that says the high reliance on technology to remember things for us. We don't have, because these devices, it remembers your schedule, it remembers your to-dos, it remembers the phone numbers, goes on and on. And here's the thing, it's like if I put my arm in a cast for a year, would it grow stronger? A sling? No, it wouldn't even stay the same, right? You know that it's going to atrophy. That's digital dementia. And then the last one, and that's why the largest chapter in the book is memory, is on memory. And the last horseman of the mental pod clubs, you have digital distraction, digital deluge, digital dementia is a term I coined digital deduction. And similar to digital dementia, it's the high reliance on technology that even think for us. And I'm very pro technology. Very, very. I'm very excited about where AI is going. In fact, in the new expanded version of limitless, I talk about the chapter, how to use AI to enhance your AI, your human intelligence. Because I don't see AI is so much artificial intelligence, it's more for me, augmented intelligence, right? It's augmenting and supporting you. It's a tool, right? But here's the thing with technology. Technology is a tool for us to use, but if the technology is using us, then who becomes the tool, right? Then we become the tool. So digital deduction is where technology is thinking for us through algorithms, through, I mean, think about what it took for us to get from here to there before there was like GPS in our phones, right? You would have to build our visual, spatial intelligence, right? Let's study done in London with London cab drivers. They would analyze different parts of their brain and that part of memory, the hippocampus, there was this dense connections because they would have to study all the streets and the turns and the roads and the landmarks. And now we don't have to do that. Right. And again, it's not, it's like technology is like, for example, if your office or your apartment was on the fifth floor, an elevator is a form of technology. Right. It's very convenient. Right. And yet what it does is because it's so convenient, you don't have to take the stairs and get that physical exercise. It's like you have to go to the bank, it's eight blocks away. And if you drive or take a lift to go there, then it's very convenient, but you're not getting your steps. Right. And so for me, it's a way of, there's a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher and he says, life is the letter C between the letters B and D. B is birth, D is death, life, C, choice. Wow. Every moment we're making choices. Right. And I believe these difficult times, they can distract you or these difficult times can diminish you or these difficult times they could develop you. We decide. And there's only four decisions you can make in terms of changing something. You either, and this is oversimplified, but I think like simplicity, like when you make something simple, it amplifies things. Right. Sometimes when you subtract, you actually multiply. Exactly. You take certain people out of your life or certain opportunities or whatever and then just you magnify, multiply. I got through medical school by taking notes, simplifying those notes into half the number of pages. Yes. And taking those notes and simplifying them into index cards. And then the last thing I did was take all the index cards from all my notes and put them on one piece of paper. That's amazing. And the process of doing that is so powerful. It's so powerful. So there's four choices we can make. You've got to either stop something, you could start something, you could do less of something, or you could do more of something. Sure. So you could stop smoking, you could start meditating, you could do less binge watching something, you could do more movement. Right. And it's really that simple. Going back to technology, I'm very optimistic. Technology allows this to happen. Sure. Right. It allows us to do our online academy. It allows us to do all these things. And I'm so very fond of technology. It's just making a choice when to engage with it and being healthy about it. Sure. Right. And it's different for every single person. Who am I to say, like, how many hours somebody should be spending or not spending on their phone. But I think having part of being limitless is actually limiting yourself, having borders or boundaries, having guardrails around the things that are important, your time, your emotions, your relationships, your wellness, your mental health, all of that. It works for all of it, for sure. This episode was brought to you by Next Health, a health optimization and longevity clinic located in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and soon to be opening in Montecito, Nashville, Miami, and many other cities in the United States and Canada. Next Health is the Apple store of wellness, where you can optimize your health span and lifespan using cutting edge technology. I actually founded Next Health eight years ago to give my patients a place to go get extensive biomarker testing done and provide them with all the tools that I used to get my health in order. The longevity circuit in Next Health using hyperbaric oxygen, sauna, cryotherapy, and LED light is a game changer. In addition, the doctors at Next Health measure thousands of biomarkers and put into place a longevity optimization plan using advanced tools like ozone, plasma exchange, and peptides. Go to www.next.health to check it out. In this next segment, we're going to explore how training the mind can create measurable changes in the brain and why Maya Raychura believes visualization is a core mental fitness skill. Ever since my conversation with Maya, I've been using her techniques of visualization and I can tell you without a doubt they work. I highly encourage you to listen to that full episode. It is a game changer. Here's what Maya has to say. One of the things on neuroplasticity that I find fascinating is that an event doesn't have to happen in reality for neurons to get wired towards that reality. You can just think of an event, imagine an event, and this goes to your process visualization too. Imagining you making that basket and every motion your hand is going to take towards the basket will wire your neurons to making that happen. It's almost like you've done a thousand reps, but you've only maybe done a hundred in the gym and 900 in your mind. It has the same benefit as far as actual connections between the neurons go. Absolutely. They've shown this right with piano experiments when you'd be able to learn how to play it. In fact, let's do something really small. If you just want to close your eyes for me. Okay, and just imagine that you are in your kitchen and you walk over to the fridge and you open the fridge and you feel that cold waft of air and now on the shelf there's half a lemon and you just hold it in your hand. It's quite cold. It's got that tough skin. And now start smelling it. Smell the fragrance of this lemon. Okay, now take the lemon and I want you to start squeezing it drop by drop into your mouth as it touches your tongue. It's so sour, so tangy, so citrusy, really tasty. Keep squeezing it. Maybe your cheeks are starting to tingle, your saliva is getting a bit active, maybe a pip is in there and it's a bit bitter. Go really squeeze it all of it. Okay, and gently open the eyes. Okay, so did you find that maybe your cheeks were a bit weird or you could like taste it quite a bit? Yeah, my mouth got drier. Exactly, so I always do this just those 30 seconds to show you that you're obviously not holding a lemon, but yet your brain and your body react like you're doing it. And I think what a lot of people don't realize is whilst when you are visualizing, yes, it activates nearly identical neural pathways, which is amazing. Your mirror neurons are also really fascinating, because mirror neurons are when you are watching someone else do something, your brain can also mimic it. And that's why I'll also tell a lot of athletes to either rewatch their performances or watch people who are better than them so that they can also start to light up areas where they see themselves playing better. So interesting. But now look at social media. We are literally mirroring ideas, philosophies, people's behaviors, whether it's reality TV. And then we ask ourselves, oh, why am I a bit more aggressive? Or why am I acting up in my relationship? Because you are constantly mirroring the people around you, the TVs you watch. And that's why it's so important to know what you're feeding your brain. So one of it, one part of it is yes, the neurons you are wiring. But another part is just recognizing that you are mirroring a lot of what you see around you. And that's why I think it's interesting when, if you grew up in a household, you may find that you react similar to, let's say, how your parents reacted to stress or in arguments. We kind of embody the same traits. And it's a similar sort of thing because they are learning how to do that. Wow. I find that the stoicism or the negative visualization is super powerful too. It's kind of like the opposite of this, which is imagining the negative aspect of what you're something you want to avoid. But then you think through your brain and you wire the pathways about how to avoid that outcome so that you are stoic towards it. It's not scary to you anymore. And that's really interesting as a kind of a flip side of the coin to this. Exactly. And that is like a manifesto's worst nightmare, right? To see the worst case scenario. But yeah, so I really learned this from Bob Bowman, who was Michael Phelps's coach. And he would really instill in Michael to see every possibility that could go wrong or right. And Ronaldo is very similar. He will do a similar thing where he'll see, let's say, him losing the ball and how he'd then recover, things like that. And you really do go into the detail of it. You feel the stress of it. You feel the anxiety of it. But then because you've shown your brain, this is how I'm going to react. And this is how I'll respond when you are there in the situation. It's muscle memory. So you don't have to panic. Now, I wouldn't suggest doing this that frequently. I would do it enough times where you feel ready and prepared, but not where it's a daily thing. The other place I've seen it really work quite well is, so I used to work with this. He was a VP at Techfirm and very high performing, but he had this one habit which was smoking, especially when he was stressed. And so initially, in our sessions, I tried to use positive visualizations, so outcome and process, where we were seeing him healthy and really inspiring him to be this version. It didn't work. So I was like, okay, let's bring some other guns out here. So we did negative visualization. And this time I asked him to imagine five years from now, if you were smoking a pack a day, I want you to imagine what your health would be like. You going to hospital quite a bit. Maybe your kid's not talking to you. And in that visualization, he was sweating. He was so scared of it. And since then, for two and a half years, that fear has resulted in him not smoking for two and a half years. So it can give you that perspective as well. Right. Absolutely. You mentioned emotional visualization. Can we dive into that a little bit more, because that's something new to me. Yeah. So this really comes from the idea that a lot of us get our emotions a bit wrong. So so many of us think emotions are the language of the mind. And we try and intellectualize them. Yes. You know, we start trying to think, well, why am I feeling this? Or why am I feeling anxious? And how can I get rid of it? Emotions are the language of the body, because it's energy in motion. It's literally just energy here. And really, so studies from doctors like Dr. Caroline Leif has shown that you only really need 90 seconds to feel and release an emotion. But as soon as our stories come or our judgments come or stress comes in, it can stay in your body for years, for years. And so creative visualization is a way to basically see your anxiety or stress or sadness, anger as an image or character or a shape. So I don't know if you've seen the film Inside Out. I have kids. I've seen it like 30 times. Right. And Inside Out too. Exactly. Very good movies. Exactly. And that's kind of the inspiration. So you would, let's say, see anxiety as this like red fire in your belly. Yes. And it's like super hot. Now, instead of just trying to suppress it or run away from it, or even question, why is it here? What we would do is with your mind, you start pouring some water on it. You let it cool down. Because again, it's just energy in motion and you are telling your brain now, hey, I'm acknowledging it, but we're now releasing it, we're regulating it. And this has been amazing to watch the impact of this one because whether it's like a five year old or 10 year old, it's super fun for them. Whether it's pain or injury for athletes, I use it with, but also in my events, you see people who are like, you know, they're holding so much anger from something that happened years ago, or even just today. But by them maybe seeing it as this lion or this devil or like a sad blue ball, they're able to not be scared of it and actually feel it and then release it. And that is everything because it actually does regulate your body and your nervous system. And finally, I want to end this episode with one of my favorite people, Gabby Bernstein. And what might be the most overlooked component of mental health and longevity is the concept of safety. My conversation with Gabby explores why nervous system regulation is foundational to healing, resilience, and long term health. And why the balance of your parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system is extraordinarily important. She has an incredible method that I've been using since I met her, which I use to regulate my emotions. And what it does in a side effect, or another great effect of it, is actually help regulate my emotional health and my parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system balance. And I see this in the measurement called HRV. Here's what Gabby Bernstein has to say about this. Okay, let's think about it. Let's unpack this a little bit more. Okay. So you've got a patient, they've got their chronic IBS, they're not sleeping. They've got, you know, all these different imbalances, their biomarkers look like shit. Okay, you're addressing all these issues, they're probably hormonal or this thing in age or whatever. But you're also going to ask, okay, what are you feeling on a day to day basis? Or you might say to the patient, are there any patterns or extreme behaviors that are kind of, you know, running the show in your life? And you can even get them in examples, like, are you controlling things? Are you, you know, working too hard? Or maybe are you numbing out with, with, with, you know, YouTuber? What are the ways that you might be running? Yeah, like what's extreme for you? And they may say, oh, well, sometimes I'm like this, or sometimes this, this happens to me. And then you can say, okay, well, you know, let's get a little curious about that. How long has that been around? And what do you know about it? And you're just dialoguing, right? What do you know about it? And so what is that part of you need to feel a little bit calmer? What does it need? And maybe they'll say, well, maybe I, maybe they'll be a little freaked out, or maybe they'll just, if it's casual conversation, you speak, well, I kind of need to just, you know, let myself off the hook or, you know, kind of need to, to, to rest more. And then you can say, okay, you know, maybe you could just put your hand on your heart and just let that part of yourself know that you're going to look into it a little bit more and take a deep breath with that part of yourself. And they'll do it. And then you might say, okay, how do you feel? And they might say, I feel a little bit more calm. And you might say, do you feel a little bit more clarity about that, that belief or that energy that might be running the show here? Yeah, I feel a little bit more clarity, doctor, or do I have a little bit of compassion? You know, you've been working really hard to, to keep things together. And I just want to, you know, extend, you can extend as, as the leader in that conversation, your own self energy, that compassion, you know, even your curiosity, your curiosity to the patient is self energy. Yes. Just saying, you know, what's, what's running the show in your life right now? Right. What beliefs or patterns are working their ass off in the background for you? That question, who asks people that? It's almost never, never, never to someone taking down that pathway. Right. Unless it's a therapist. Right. Right. And even I feel like, you know, I've seen therapists before. So first of all, I want to just take a step back and you gave me chills with this entire process because I'm thinking about what are my protectors right now and why do they exist? What are the traumas that created these protectors? And then while you were talking to me, I was quiet because I was putting myself through this mental exercise about the protector, why it was there. And then when you got to the end of that fourth step, I did feel better. I did feel more of a sense of self come out, you know. And so, you know, I shared with you last night during dinner that I was bullied a lot in school, like extreme amounts of bullying. And I've never sat down and unpacked that trauma because I've repressed it. And you know, I'm typical guy, like I just rather leave it repressed than... Typical human actually. Yeah. Typical human. And repressed is exiled. Those are exiled parts. You're shutting the door on it. Yeah. Go on. Exactly. And so, you know, I do live in this state of constantly running, like you're saying. And for me, being on this podcast is... I told you last night how much I love it, right? It's because when I'm sitting in this chair, I feel relaxed. I feel my parasympathetic. You know, this is what I love to do is have these conversations, feel connected. But it's the only time I get to do that. There's times when I'm with my children, I also feel that way. But I would love to live my day in this state. I want you to live your day in this state. And I'll tell you why. And it's going to make me emotional because you helped me so much with my health that if there's anything I can do would be to teach you more of this, to introduce you to Dick, to get you hooked up in this. Because for yourself first, right? Because when you start to feel what you feel in this moment more often, self begets more self. So you start to want more of that. And you're going to say, I'm going to go do a self-help check-in meditation. Or I'm going to go for a walk with that little boy that feels bullied. And I'm going to go just let him walk with me. Or I'm going to do some journaling with him. And the more it starts to expand and expand and expand and expand, the things that you want to create in this world, which I know I'm looking at a man who's creating big things in this world, they become far less effort and more effortless. And you do less and you attract more. And most importantly, you just feel good. You're never going to stop. The part of you that's working, this is a beautiful thing. There's no bad parts. This is what Dick says. So the parts that are working so hard, the part of you that's hustling and working and going and moving, it is a protector. But it's also doing extraordinary work. My controller wrote 11 books in 14 years. We're not going to say that we don't want to shut that down. But what we want to do is help the part be less extreme. So this work does not get rid of the part. It helps that part of you get back to its natural state, which is that childlike wonder. So imagine you were doing everything that you're doing in your life right now, but just in a state of childlike wonder, in a state of just purity and freedom unburdened from the bullying. Exactly. It will take everything that you're creating as a father, as a husband, and as an entrepreneur, and as a healer in the world, and it will just skyrocket. Yeah. I truly hope you enjoyed this powerful episode, Bringing Together the Best Mines in Mental Health that I've interviewed over the last year. Of course, if you want any more information from any of these guests, please look back and listen to the full episode. They're all game changers. I also interviewed many other people this year in 2025 that really changed my perspective on medicine, really added to my knowledge base, and I highly encourage all of you to go back and look at all the episodes and pick some favorites. There's some really good gems in there. Next year, I promise to bring you even more incredible content from these guests that you've heard from and also from many more pioneers in our field. I look forward to an incredibly productive game changing 2026 with all of you. Thank you for listening this year to the Extend podcast. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and is always important to seek their guidance.