[00:00]
Welcome to my mommy's podcast.
[00:05]
This episode is brought to you by Element, that's L-M-N-T, and you've probably heard
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me talk about my love of getting enough salt before and how this made a drastic difference
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body's fluid ratios, and this depends on many factors, including the intake and excretion
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You can check out and try Element at drinkelement, that's D-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T, .com, slash wellnessmama.
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This podcast is brought to you by Beam Organics.
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They have a really cool thing called Dream Powder that I've been playing with a lot lately.
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Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast.
[04:19]
I'm Katie from wellnessmama.com.
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In this episode, I love it.
[04:22]
It unites two concepts I've talked about before, and it talks about physical health in relation
[04:27]
to emotions and specifically the physical benefits of letting go with some fascinating
[04:33]
learnings from migraine sufferers that actually relate to all of us.
[04:37]
And I really enjoyed this episode because I've seen firsthand the benefits of some of
[04:41]
the things we talk about in my own life.
[04:44]
And my guest, Diane, is able to explain them in a way I haven't heard united so well before.
[04:49]
Diane Ducarm is the founder and CEO of Nectar Health, which is a company that adds years
[04:53]
to the lives of those suffering with migraine disease.
[04:57]
And her work is absolutely fascinating because it extends to all of us.
[05:00]
And she has an MBA from Harvard.
[05:02]
She's the Fulbright Scholar and an Edmund Hillary Fellow.
[05:05]
She also has a master's in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics, and studied traditional
[05:10]
Chinese medicine in China.
[05:12]
She's now with the Academy of Healing Nutrition, and she speaks seven languages.
[05:17]
So much great information in this podcast.
[05:19]
She really unites the science of how our emotions relate to our physical health through a lens
[05:24]
of migraine sufferers, but also in a way that really truly relates to all of us.
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I cannot wait to share this episode with you.
[05:30]
So let's jump in now.
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Thank you so much for being here today.
[05:36]
Thank you for having me, Katie.
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Well, I'm really excited about the topics we're going to get to talk about.
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But before we jump into those, I also have a note from your bio that you speak seven
[05:45]
languages, which is absolutely mind blowing to me.
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And I'm so curious what languages they are.
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So my mother tongue is French.
[05:53]
And then I learned Dutch, Flemish in Belgium, because you can't get away with it or without
[05:59]
And then I went to London with my family when I was 15 and I learned English.
[06:03]
And then at school, there was no Dutch, so I changed to German, which I picked up decently
[06:09]
And then I thought, wow, the world's so much bigger than just Belgium.
[06:12]
I'm keen to travel.
[06:13]
So I went to Costa Rica to learn Spanish, and I studied in Mexico as well as an exchange
[06:19]
And then I did a month of painting in Italy to do Italian painting, which was really,
[06:26]
And then last but not least, I went to China and I went with a few questions.
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I came back with way more questions and way more interest.
[06:34]
And so I tried to learn Mandarin, which I thought I'd never speak.
[06:36]
And now I speak fluently and my kids speak, you know, as well somewhat.
[06:40]
Wow, that is absolutely incredible.
[06:42]
You might be the only guest I've ever had that can speak so many languages.
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And what a testament.
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I'm just trying to learn Japanese right now, and it's bending my brain in ways I've never
[06:53]
That's absolutely incredible.
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And on top of speaking seven languages, which I feel is a lifetime achievement in and of
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You also have a tremendous amount of knowledge about a lot of topics.
[07:02]
I wish I could just spend all day learning from you.
[07:05]
But the first thing I really want to dive into, I know that you help many, many people
[07:09]
with migraines and especially women.
[07:12]
And in researching for this, some words came up that I immediately was magnetized to, which
[07:16]
was the idea of letting go and especially how this is actually connected to migraines.
[07:21]
Is the book Letting Go life-changing for me?
[07:24]
And since then, I've sort of been on a journey of the emotional side of understanding things.
[07:29]
And you brought in the tie-in to migraines with this, which I think is incredible.
[07:33]
So to start off a little bit broad, maybe walk us through some of the basics of understanding
[07:37]
migraines, because I know many people who suffer from them that I haven't personally,
[07:42]
but also how letting go ties into this concept.
[07:47]
So migraines, look, if you suffer from migraines, you know exactly what they are.
[07:52]
For the part of the audience who doesn't, migraine is a genetic disease.
[07:56]
It is basically not just the head pain, but it's a full body experience.
[08:01]
And a migraine attack is something that can last on paper anywhere between four hours
[08:08]
So think labor pain, labor level pain, giving birth, the highest form of pain you can experience.
[08:14]
And really just three days can be a lifeline.
[08:16]
So some people start to have a migraine and that migraine, you know, never finishes.
[08:21]
And it's very brutal.
[08:22]
It is highly debilitating, so it prevents women in particular, but also men and children
[08:28]
to be active in their social lives, to work, to take care of their loved ones.
[08:32]
And so these migraine attacks are full body experiences in the sense that they encompass
[08:37]
a lot more symptoms than just the head pain, which sometimes may also be silent in rare
[08:44]
These other symptoms can be vomiting, nausea, I've seen dots and prisms in the vision, having
[08:50]
trembling sensations in the hands and arms, numbness, but also bloating, et cetera.
[08:57]
And I know several people personally who seem to experience extremely severe migraines like
[09:02]
you're talking about.
[09:03]
And I know from just interacting with them how helpless they can feel in those moments
[09:07]
and how debilitating, like you said, it is.
[09:10]
And I know from researching you for this interview, it seems like there is actually, there's hope
[09:14]
for migraine sufferers.
[09:15]
Even though it has a genetic component, it seems like people are able to do things that
[09:19]
are helpful for that.
[09:20]
Is that what you experience in your work?
[09:24]
So what society tells these people is that they need to be silent and they need to medicate
[09:28]
and they need to accept.
[09:29]
There are ways to actually using the latest of Western science and the latest of traditional
[09:34]
transmedicine and combining those two to find the root cause of their migraines and to act
[09:41]
on these root causes that sit on top of genetics and completely transform their lives.
[09:46]
And so this is what I've been doing for the last five years.
[09:48]
So you started by asking me, you know, what languages do you speak?
[09:53]
I think the eighth one is a language of migraine.
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A migraine, if anything, is a message from your brain to signal a problem in your body.
[10:03]
And I feel like hopefully not too many people experience severe migraines and I know you
[10:07]
directly help the people who do.
[10:09]
But I feel like when you tie in the concept of letting go, this is actually something
[10:12]
that applies to every single person listening in a very important way.
[10:16]
And so I'm really excited to learn from this on you because like I said, this has been
[10:20]
a part of my personal journey and one I'm really excited to learn more about in our
[10:23]
conversation today.
[10:25]
Before we jump into the how to let go and the benefits of letting go, can you also talk
[10:29]
about the downsides of what happens if we don't let go?
[10:32]
Yeah, if we don't let go, there's a lot of ripple effects.
[10:36]
So basically if you think of letting go of a negative emotion or a toxic relationship
[10:42]
and you hang on to that toxic relationship or you hang on to that negative emotion, of
[10:46]
course it's going to have an impact on your brain.
[10:50]
But it doesn't stop there because you have this beautiful gut-brain axis, it's going
[10:54]
to sooner or later start to impact your gut and all of your main organs.
[10:59]
And so we're going to start to get into a massive domino effect that's going to impact
[11:04]
your overall health.
[11:06]
And I would guess maybe people listening might wonder, like I think a lot of my listeners
[11:11]
are well-versed in that our emotions do of course impact our physiology, but someone
[11:16]
suffering from something like a migraine might wonder like, can the emotional aspect of this,
[11:20]
can letting go of emotions actually have that drastic of an effect that it can actually
[11:23]
help our physiology as well?
[11:26]
And maybe I'll start with a really particular story.
[11:29]
When I started to do this, I first had two Alexandras.
[11:33]
And those two Alexandras were, one was my sister, I helped her to get out of her migraines
[11:37]
with Dr. Jiang that I work with now for the last five years, wonderful human.
[11:42]
And I helped the daughter of a neurologist also get rid of her migraines.
[11:45]
And that was a lot more odd for me.
[11:47]
The dad was recommending a lifetime of medication, including having injections in her brain.
[11:52]
And by asking a lot of questions to her via WhatsApp and exchanging with my doctor with
[11:58]
WeChat, I was able to recommend her food, just food and get rid of her migraines in
[12:04]
Although that was really bizarre because 18% of women have it, it came to my home very
[12:09]
quickly after two friends of friends, one was Jessica and the other one for confidential
[12:14]
matters were going to call her Beatrix.
[12:17]
So Jessica had a lifetime of migraines, they were sporadic, but after a concussion, she
[12:21]
started to have them on a daily basis.
[12:24]
So on a daily, she was suffering from migraines.
[12:26]
She would only be able to concentrate for 10 hours a week.
[12:29]
And Dr. Jiang said, look, medicate, go back to work, take some antidepressants, feel you're
[12:34]
not taking medications enough.
[12:35]
And that's why you're in pain.
[12:36]
And she said, you know, I have so many side effects from the medication, please, there
[12:40]
has to be something wrong with my body.
[12:42]
No, everything's in order.
[12:44]
I get back to work, take antidepressants.
[12:46]
And so I helped her and it took two months.
[12:48]
And so this is an amazing, amazing story.
[12:51]
These women, they start to testify on something called Migraine Heroes Podcast, which is incredible,
[12:57]
the stories of these women.
[12:58]
But then that same day came another woman, and this is where I really want to deep dive
[13:03]
This is another woman and she had migraines for 30 years and she was taking at the time
[13:08]
six triptans a day, five days a week.
[13:11]
If you have migraines, you know how impressive that level of medication is.
[13:15]
And so we started working together and identified her imbalances, there were several, of course.
[13:19]
And so we start working and slowly her body was starting to recover.
[13:22]
So the intensity and frequency of her migraines were disappearing or decreasing in time.
[13:28]
And one day out of the blue, they massively spiked up, massively.
[13:34]
And I really thought, okay, what is it?
[13:36]
You know, I looked at her data, her tracker, I'm like, okay, did I give her something to
[13:40]
eat that was wrong?
[13:41]
You know, am I missing something?
[13:42]
What's the weather like?
[13:43]
I was really, you know, really not understanding that discipline because I collated all of
[13:47]
the data together to be able to help others faster.
[13:51]
And so I called her and I said, look, I'm so sorry, Beatrix, on how you feel.
[13:54]
I'm sorry that you're in so much pain.
[13:57]
And then she interrupts me and she says, my daughter tried to commit suicide.
[14:02]
And I just listened.
[14:04]
This was the last thing I was expecting.
[14:06]
And I listened, I supported her, I did my best and I hung up and I thought, wow, what?
[14:14]
Her pain that she's experiencing is really linked to that really strong emotion that
[14:20]
she's experiencing.
[14:21]
So the pain of her daughter and her empathy and love for her daughter is translating in
[14:26]
her body and her body is not experiencing pain as well.
[14:31]
And it really, really, really struck me.
[14:33]
I thought, oh my God, I so much did not see that coming.
[14:38]
That's incredible.
[14:39]
And it makes sense when you explain it, but it really highlights just how intricately
[14:43]
those things are connected.
[14:44]
And I think often, at least in the US, we often maybe discount how deeply our emotions
[14:50]
can actually really affect our physiology.
[14:52]
And I know I had that experience in a much smaller way, just in resolving some emotional
[14:57]
trauma I had and seeing my body change and it become easier to lose weight and my thyroid
[15:03]
And it really opened my eyes to, wow, this connection is much stronger than perhaps we've
[15:10]
And so what happened is that for the last number of decades, we have taken women out
[15:15]
of clinical trials.
[15:17]
It started in the 60s with a medication called Felidemide that creates a lot of children
[15:21]
being 10,000 kids in Germany alone, born without limbs because of a nausea medication for pregnant
[15:29]
And so it traumatized the whole industry and I thought, oh my God, we have to remove women
[15:32]
from clinical trials because they might be pregnant if they don't tell you they're not
[15:36]
They might be Trump pregnant.
[15:37]
And then there's something a lot more interesting is when you look at lab rats studies, those
[15:42]
are also done on male rats and not for the baby story, but because the data of female
[15:47]
rats are not always explainable.
[15:49]
So beyond the cycle, beyond the feminine cycle, there seems to be other stuff that can't be
[15:53]
explained and therefore we were taken out of the equation thinking, you know, women
[15:57]
don't make quite so much sense.
[16:00]
I know that's been talked about a little bit is how women are largely still excluded from
[16:04]
medical research and almost completely so until 1993.
[16:08]
And I understand that we have more hormone variables and things that make us a little
[16:11]
bit more tough subjects.
[16:13]
But like you're saying, this is also a disservice to women because we are excluded from the
[16:17]
research that might help us the most.
[16:19]
But also I love that you take that root cause approach.
[16:22]
And even if women are being excluded from medicine, looking at the ways with each person
[16:26]
individually that can help resolve their specific issue.
[16:29]
Because I find that I say often here, you know, we're each our own primary healthcare
[16:34]
And while, yes, we might be an end of one study personally, for us, that's the most
[16:38]
important end of one study we could ever do.
[16:41]
You know, like, yeah, absolutely.
[16:43]
I'm just so much with you, so much with you.
[16:46]
And so what was fascinating is that I kept on seeing that pattern in rare occasions.
[16:52]
But whenever I would see something not making sense, I'd pick up the phone.
[16:55]
It would be my son had their first epilepsy crisis.
[16:58]
It would be my husband lost his job.
[17:01]
It could be, you know, I have such a bad and toxic boss.
[17:04]
It could be all of these things happening in their life, or like a retoxic partner or,
[17:10]
you know, in-laws living in the same room.
[17:13]
And so in all of these instances, while we were repairing things in their body, they
[17:18]
would keep on breaking down.
[17:19]
And so this is the moment where I started to think, okay, in addition to all of this
[17:23]
tools that we recommend women, we need to start to teach them how to cope with these
[17:28]
massive negative emotions and tough relationships and how to teach them to let go.
[17:34]
Yeah, I remember that quote, something along the lines of holding on to anger is like drinking
[17:38]
poison and hoping the other person dies.
[17:41]
But it seems like these negative emotions really do actually impact us the most.
[17:46]
And the good news there is that we do have the ability to shift our emotions and our
[17:51]
inner experience, but I don't think that's something that's commonly taught.
[17:54]
So can you walk us through, like, it sounds like a great theory, I'm guessing.
[17:58]
Most people are listening going, yeah, I want to let go of these emotions, but how do we
[18:02]
Because I'm guessing the process is not quite so simple as just deciding to do it either.
[18:10]
So emotions are really positive.
[18:13]
It's just things stuck in a single emotion is actually very dangerous.
[18:18]
So I'll say that one more time because it's really important.
[18:21]
Emotions by and of themselves are positive.
[18:25]
It's staying stuck in a single emotion that is very detrimental.
[18:29]
Now, how do you not stay stuck is you consciously decide to change emotion.
[18:35]
So let's imagine I have that toxic bus.
[18:38]
So I'm feeling very angry about that bus.
[18:40]
What I can decide to do is I'm going to be angry for a certain amount of time.
[18:44]
Then I'm going to decide to change emotion and I'm going to decide to cry.
[18:47]
Crying is a very good opposite emotion to anger.
[18:51]
And so you're going to decide to cry.
[18:53]
The best way is probably Netflix, you know, and you just decide to take a really,
[18:57]
really sad movie on Netflix and you go and you cry.
[19:01]
When you cry, you're going to let go of tears, some of which are going to contain that toxin.
[19:05]
So when you have anger, something needs to come out.
[19:08]
So this is one way to make something come out and completely shift emotion.
[19:13]
You can also decide to go and do cardio and sweat.
[19:17]
If sweating doesn't accentuate dizziness or vertigo for you,
[19:21]
you can also decide to go out and shout.
[19:24]
But crying is a really, really efficient way to let go of the anger.
[19:29]
And then you'll see your anger will dissipate and you might get back into the angry zone,
[19:34]
But then you decide consciously to get out of it again.
[19:38]
Yeah, that's a helpful tip.
[19:39]
And probably for the moms listening, one I think of sometimes to be aware of as a mom,
[19:43]
especially like I can remember instances in my own childhood when I was crying
[19:47]
and was told like, it's okay, don't cry.
[19:50]
And when you explained crying is helping those emotions process,
[19:54]
I've tried with my kids as much as possible and by no means perfectly,
[19:57]
but to not tell them it's okay when they're having a big emotion,
[20:01]
but to try to understand their emotion and give them space to feel it.
[20:05]
Or even things with like two-year-olds and temper tantrums.
[20:07]
I'm like, they're processing rage in their bodies and letting it leave.
[20:11]
And as adults, we learn that skill of packing it all down and keeping it in.
[20:15]
But maybe their response is much healthier.
[20:17]
And I actually even had a therapist one time encourage me to on purpose,
[20:21]
throw a temper tantrum in my bed in a safe place
[20:23]
and just let that process through my body.
[20:26]
And I was shocked how much of a difference I felt
[20:28]
from actually giving that emotion space to exist so that it could leave.
[20:33]
It needs to leave your body.
[20:34]
You're describing it super well.
[20:36]
And so let the anger go free, you know, go free.
[20:41]
There's something in Chinese that says,
[20:43]
it means like go to the ends of your anger, express it, expel it.
[20:48]
And you can really encourage a child to do that.
[20:50]
And if the child wants to cry, just let them cry.
[20:52]
Sometimes it's funny.
[20:53]
My husband says, oh, stop crying.
[20:55]
And I'm like, well, just let it go.
[20:56]
Let's just, you know, cry.
[20:59]
And then once you're cried finished, then we can continue the conversation.
[21:03]
It's completely positive.
[21:05]
Let's talk about stress.
[21:06]
For example, if you're really stressed, really anxious,
[21:09]
you can get angry at something as well.
[21:11]
You can try to find something that really annoys you and get mad at it.
[21:15]
Just make a fuss about something as a mom.
[21:17]
And that's going to get you out of your anxious zone, out of your stress zone.
[21:23]
And it's very positive.
[21:25]
Another one I find really, really good that I personally do.
[21:28]
Sometimes you go through family things that are really difficult.
[21:30]
And I found my way to stand-up comedies.
[21:33]
And you just, you know, take, again, you go on YouTube this time.
[21:36]
Maybe I love Montreux, which is like this French stand-up comedy gathering.
[21:41]
There's like less in the world.
[21:42]
And you find your best stand-up comedian people.
[21:45]
And it's 10 minutes of your time.
[21:47]
And it makes you laugh.
[21:48]
It makes your diaphragm move.
[21:49]
It changes your breathing pattern.
[21:51]
And it allows you to let go of the other emotions you were hanging on to.
[21:56]
Yeah, I love that.
[21:57]
And yeah, like you said, I think maybe kids are inherently a little better about this
[22:01]
until we train them not to be.
[22:02]
And I've even said to my kids at times, like when they're crying, saying like,
[22:05]
oh yeah, sometimes I cry too.
[22:07]
And what big emotions are you feeling right now?
[22:09]
And just giving them a safe space to feel that.
[22:12]
And often maybe that's what adults need as well, like you're talking about.
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And I think you have such a unique combination of knowledge here of that Eastern and
[26:35]
Western traditions in medicine meeting and how they can both be beneficial,
[26:39]
but is there any research or data on either the Western medical side or in Eastern medicine about
[26:45]
how like emotions connect to the body and how letting go actually can help change our physiology?
[26:50]
Yeah, in traditional Chinese medicine, it's omnipresent.
[26:53]
They say you understand the gut-brain axis.
[26:55]
Oh, my God, it's so much, goes much beyond.
[26:56]
Of course, the brain can really kiss the gut, the gut to the brain,
[26:59]
but the emotions will impact the organs and the organs will impact the emotions.
[27:03]
So why that is important, and here I'll drill on traditional Chinese medicine,
[27:07]
is if you feel angry, the more you feel angry, just the way you were describing, Katie,
[27:12]
was it's just like if you had eaten poison.
[27:16]
So your liver level of toxicity massively increased.
[27:21]
From that moment, because the liver system is going to do a ton of other jobs,
[27:25]
there will be consequences to that.
[27:27]
So your liver system in traditional Chinese medicine is in charge of your liver,
[27:32]
your gallbladder, a lot of the parts of your brain, your tendons, all of your
[27:36]
semen hormones, your mood hormones, and it sort of irrigates your entire body of yin and noble liquids.
[27:45]
So when you stock up the energy for anger in a constant manner,
[27:49]
you do not allow for the liver system to get done and get on with its other jobs.
[27:55]
So this is where women are going to start to feel a domino effect of other symptoms
[27:59]
that are completely irrelated in appearance, but are completely related inside.
[28:05]
So she's going to start to have bloating in the extension of the belly area,
[28:09]
and this is the digesting slowing down.
[28:11]
She might have sore breasts.
[28:13]
The toxin is starting to accumulate in her breast because the body is trying to get rid of them.
[28:17]
She might have more migraines, specifically on the temples,
[28:20]
across the eyebrows, on the top of the head.
[28:23]
She might also feel numbness, numbness in the legs, numbness in the arms.
[28:27]
She might have tingling sensation, cramps and spasms.
[28:30]
Because she starts to have all of these sensations, it's quite scary.
[28:34]
And so they all come from there.
[28:36]
So the moment you're going to let go and change emotion,
[28:39]
the more you're going to leave the liver system to rest and do its normal job
[28:44]
that it's supposed to do otherwise,
[28:46]
and get busy with another system that you give a kick to.
[28:51]
There's something else you can do, by the way.
[28:53]
I really want to teach you, and it's really important.
[28:55]
You can also use foods and infusions in order to dissipate an emotion.
[29:01]
For example, if you feel recurringly angry,
[29:05]
one way to get out of it is to have a chamomile infusion with 8 to 10 goji berries.
[29:10]
Goji berries are adaptogens and they're incredible.
[29:13]
So 8 to 10 is just more than enough to have a good dose.
[29:17]
And chamomile will detox and stimulate the liver.
[29:20]
Both will do that.
[29:21]
And so that's going to really help us nourish our liver,
[29:24]
stimulate it and get it going with its other job while detoxing it on the way.
[29:28]
A really important note, do not have that if you are on a FODMAP diet,
[29:32]
and do not have that when you have your menstruation.
[29:35]
Otherwise, you'll bleed more.
[29:36]
If you feel very, very anxious and stressed,
[29:41]
another one which is really, really cool is a black sesame and walnut powder.
[29:46]
So you basically roast 100 grams of black sesame.
[29:50]
You roast 100 grams of walnuts.
[29:52]
You blend them and you store that powder in your fridge.
[29:55]
You have two tablespoons a day.
[29:57]
This is going to massively help, especially around permeables with a ton of hormones,
[30:01]
but also if you start to have a bit of white hair because of stress,
[30:06]
prematurely, it's going to restore and feed your kidney system
[30:10]
and restore the health of your hair if you do that for a couple of months.
[30:15]
So you can also ease your way out of letting go, if that makes sense.
[30:19]
Let go with foods.
[30:20]
Maybe I'll share that one story.
[30:22]
I had a man in the US who, again, was better, better, better, better, better.
[30:26]
And then suddenly he contacts me and says,
[30:28]
I have this massive migraine.
[30:29]
You know, this thing is not working.
[30:31]
And I was like, okay, okay.
[30:33]
I'm looking at your data.
[30:34]
I'm clearly lacking context.
[30:37]
And is there anything I'm not aware of?
[30:39]
And he says, my father just died.
[30:42]
And I look at his data and we have ways to look at the biggest nerve through the data.
[30:47]
And I said to him, look, I don't...
[30:51]
I see more anger and resentment and I don't quite see grief.
[30:54]
And I really want to make sure I calibrate your foods properly.
[30:57]
And he said, look, my relationship with my dad has been horrendous.
[31:00]
I am indeed very angry.
[31:02]
And I've done years of therapy and please don't make me go there.
[31:05]
And I said, it's okay.
[31:06]
Just have these few foods that will detox your liver and help stimulate it.
[31:10]
And that will help the anger dissipate.
[31:12]
And it dissipated in a couple of days.
[31:13]
In a couple of days, his brain was, you know, free to enjoy life again.
[31:18]
I also want to acknowledge you can't always, you know, let go so easily and let respect
[31:23]
foods are helpful.
[31:25]
That's so fascinating.
[31:26]
And the tip about the black sesame and the walnut powder, that's a great tip.
[31:32]
And all these stories really highlight that really intense connection.
[31:35]
And again, I feel like we've lost in the Western world.
[31:38]
And I know there's a flip side to this too.
[31:40]
Like all the positive things that happen when we let go of negative emotions and when we
[31:45]
So I'd love to talk about those some, if you're willing, of what happens physiologically in
[31:49]
the body when those emotions let go.
[31:51]
Like I know I've heard an extreme examples, stories of people who had terminal cancer,
[31:56]
for instance, who chose to laugh a whole lot.
[31:59]
And without the medical treatment, because there was nothing they could do, they've resolved.
[32:03]
And the medical world was kind of shocked by this.
[32:05]
But it seems there's also a tremendous benefit to really like nurturing those positive emotions
[32:10]
like peace and joy and calm.
[32:11]
So what are the physical benefits of letting go and what happens physiologically when we
[32:17]
So let's take the example of that person you were mentioning.
[32:20]
So they're in a state of cancer and they start to laugh.
[32:23]
They start to take some of their emotions out and change emotion.
[32:28]
When you laugh, you're going to make your breathing slightly uneven and you're going
[32:32]
to start to, by there, like start to stimulate your diaphragm.
[32:36]
So your diaphragm is going to start to move up and down in a bit of an unexpected manner.
[32:42]
Now, the system or the organ, which is just below your diaphragm, is your liver.
[32:48]
So the same way as a person has a heartbeat, they also have a liver beat.
[32:52]
And the liver beat is that breathing, is that diaphragm that sits just on top of it.
[32:57]
So not consciously knowing it, that person is stimulating their liver system.
[33:02]
Now, the liver system is going to get so much more energy to get done so much of what it
[33:07]
needs to get done.
[33:09]
And most of all, and once the liver gets really well, it's like a sister and brother with
[33:14]
the kidney system.
[33:15]
Not in the kidney system.
[33:17]
I have the kidneys, the bladder, the adrenals.
[33:19]
I have behind the head.
[33:21]
I have the ability to alveolate, the ability to resist stress, and then the ability to
[33:25]
have to deploy my immune system for these big diseases.
[33:30]
And so from the moment the liver system is going to work much better, the kidney system
[33:35]
is going to have some of its to-do list lifted by the liver system and the kidney system
[33:41]
being much less stressed is going to be able to perform well and do the job that this amazing
[33:49]
body of ours is supposed to do.
[33:51]
The body wants to heal.
[33:53]
That's incredible.
[33:54]
And it makes me wonder, so like if letting go improves some of our organ systems, is
[33:59]
the reverse true as well?
[34:00]
Like if we improve some of our organ systems, does that make it easier to let go?
[34:04]
Like is sometimes it harder to let go if we have physical things that are slowing that
[34:12]
And so it's sometimes, especially with really tough and strong emotions, to take it from
[34:18]
You can take an angle of meditation, yoga, and calming your thoughts down.
[34:22]
You can take it from an angle of letting go by changing emotion.
[34:26]
You can take it from an angle of food.
[34:28]
All of these combined allow you to get out of that vicious circle.
[34:32]
And if you see someone, if you have a loved one who struggles to let go of an emotion,
[34:38]
you can also fabricate, architect an emotion.
[34:41]
So for example, if you have someone who's completely depressed, you can fabricate a
[34:46]
massive reason for them to be really angry.
[34:48]
So you do something really mad at them, then they become super angry.
[34:52]
They're going to get out of that depression feeling.
[34:55]
They're going to come alive.
[34:57]
They were really silent and they were introverted and they were not talking and they were not
[35:02]
Now they're staring you with big eyes and they're shouting.
[35:06]
And so that's going to help them get better.
[35:08]
So yeah, so you can also provoke each other, help each other if you see that happening
[35:14]
That's why sometimes we tend to tease our kids when they're really mad and make a joke,
[35:20]
you crack a joke, you try to change topic.
[35:23]
I think that's also letting go, change topic.
[35:26]
Yeah, that's fascinating.
[35:27]
Then the idea of actually doing it with anger, I could see most people might think like,
[35:31]
OK, kids upset, fabricate laughter or happiness.
[35:34]
But how you just pointed out, even sometimes anger might help the depression and the sadness
[35:40]
It's like that change of mental state.
[35:42]
Yeah, and it's easier to ask for it to a person or to self to go from a negative mental
[35:48]
state to another negative mental state.
[35:52]
At the end of the day, you just want the job done.
[35:56]
I know you have a lot of resources online and that you work with people directly.
[35:59]
I want to make sure we speak to that for anyone who's actually suffering with migraines as
[36:02]
But where can people find you online to keep learning more about this process of letting
[36:06]
And it seems like there is a very individual component to it as well.
[36:09]
But different things work for different people.
[36:13]
My website is MyNectarHealth.com.
[36:16]
Nectar like the flower, like the food.
[36:18]
And you can find us on Instagram at My Nectar Health.
[36:22]
And then what you do is you can take a test.
[36:24]
And that test is quite incredible.
[36:26]
It's like 95, 97 questions that relate to all of the symptoms that you might feel.
[36:32]
And from there, we can really infer the imbalances, the root cause of the imbalances going on
[36:40]
And then we meet and we debrief on that.
[36:42]
And women love this conversation because they're like, finally, my body is actually making
[36:47]
I'm experiencing all of these symptoms and I understand them.
[36:50]
I think understanding is the first process, the first step to recovery.
[36:55]
Well, the stories you share are incredible about people recovering from things.
[36:59]
And I love that that also involves them getting more in tune with their emotions and learning
[37:03]
how to let go of the negative ones.
[37:05]
And I love that you brought the science to this and the Eastern and Western traditions.
[37:09]
And united that in a way that's directly helping people.
[37:12]
So I'll link to your website and also to that questionnaire.
[37:14]
I'll make sure to find a link before this airs, because I think for too long, at least
[37:19]
in the Western world, we've ignored that mind, body and emotional connection.
[37:22]
And I love that you are bringing it back with such hard data and science and really impact
[37:28]
So thank you so much for that work that you do.
[37:31]
And we run like everything like a trinkle trot, like we take data every day.
[37:34]
And I think a big part of me was like, can we just prove that this is existing?
[37:39]
There's a big part of me that just want to do that.
[37:42]
So thank you so much.
[37:43]
And maybe I'll mention the one last one is the Migrant Heroes podcast is amazing.
[37:47]
It's really women who went through the mud and they went through hell and they're coming
[37:53]
They're just coming to you to say, hey, this is the journey I've had.
[37:57]
And this is, you know, the nonsense of my life.
[37:59]
And this is the life I have now.
[38:01]
So they're coming to help other women.
[38:06]
I'll link to that as well.
[38:07]
And also send it to the people I know who are experiencing migraines, and hopefully
[38:11]
it brings them some resolution as well.
[38:13]
Thank you so much for all the work that you do and for being here today.
[38:18]
And thank you for listening.
[38:19]
And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mala podcast.
[38:25]
If you're enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating
[38:29]
or review on iTunes for me?
[38:31]
Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families can
[38:35]
benefit from the information.
[38:36]
I really appreciate your time.
[38:38]
And thanks, as always, for listening.