“The brain and the gut work like a key and a lock. One cannot function without the other.”
Dr. Edison de Mello
Dr. Edison de Mello is a Board-Certified Integrative Physician and a licensed psychotherapist.
He’s also the founder and chief medical officer of The Akasha Center in Santa Monica, CA where he treats patients using his signature East-meets-West approach. As he’s mentioned in previous interviews together, unlike many doctors in the traditional medical system, he doesn’t treat diseases or symptoms first, he treats the patient first. Today’s conversation centers around his new book Bloated? How to Reclaim Your Gut Health and Eat Without Pain.
If you commonly experience bouts of brain fog, the inability to focus, lethargy and chronic fatigue, or even a lack of creativity and motivation, you might be surprised to learn how much your gut health (or lack thereof) could be responsible. Dr. De Mello’s expertise on how our gut impacts our physical, mental, and even emotional health will leave you with a better understanding of what’s really going on under the hood and provide you with practical, simple steps to start healing from the inside out.
You’ll learn how the body has its own language and in Dr. de Mello’s words, that “language is symptoms.” Beyond discussing common digestion problems like bloating, stomach pain, and gas, we also dig a lot deeper into the emotional issues that often stem from the gut like depression. And even cooler we discuss how you can strengthen your intuition and ability to “follow your gut” simply by improving your digestion. Pretty cool eh? Oh yeah…we talk about farts too. I have no doubt you’ll love this light-hearted conversation that will not only provide you with a wealth of information regarding how to start assessing and addressing your gut health today, but will also have you laughing along the way.
Dr. Edison de Mello, MD, PhD, is a board certified Integrative Physician by the American Board of Integrative Medicine and a licensed psychotherapist by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. He practiced psychotherapy for 13 years before entering medical training and now practices and teaches evidenced- based integrative medicine.
Dr. de Mello’s PhD dissertation, entitled “Gut Feelings – A Psychosocial Approach to Gastrointestinal Illness,” inspired his conception of a center where psychology would be combined and fully integrated with Western and Eastern medicines. The de Mello Institute was formed in 1996 with the goal of employing safe and complementary approaches to healthcare while also addressing a person’s emotional and spiritual health and safe ed treatment. Fully committed to these goals, Dr. de Mello entered residency in 1999 at the prestigious Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center Urban Family Residency program in New York City, including training at the Manhattan-based Center for Health and Healing. His training utilized a biopsychosocial model and offered innovative experiences in the integration of complementary medicine into the practice of Family Medicine. Upon completing his medical training, Dr. de Mello expanded the de Mello Institute and founded the Akasha Center for Integrative Medicine.
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Zack Arnold: My guest today is Dr. Edison de Mello, who's a board certified integrative physician and a licensed psychotherapist. He's also the founder and the Chief Medical Officer of the Akasha Center in Santa Monica, California, where he treats patients using his signature East meets West approach, including me as I've mentioned many many times on past interviews with Dr. de Mello. He has literally saved my life more than once. And as he has also mentioned in our previous interviews together, unlike many doctors in the traditional medical system, Dr. D does not treat diseases or symptoms first, he treats the patient first. And today's conversation centers around his new book, which is called Bloated? How to Reclaim Your Gut Health and Eat Without Pain. Now, if you commonly experienced bouts of brain fog, the inability to focus, lethargy and chronic fatigue, or you even just kind of have a lack of creativity or motivation, you might be surprised to learn how much your gut health or your lack thereof could be responsible. Dr. de Mello's expertise on how our gut impacts our physical or mental and even our emotional health will leave you with a better understanding of what's really going on under the hood and provide you with practical simple steps to start healing from the inside out. You're gonna learn how the body has its own language and in Dr. de Mello's words that language is symptoms. Now beyond discussing just common digestion problems like bloating or stomach pain or gas, we also dig a lot deeper into the emotional issues that often stem from the gut like depression. And even cooler, we discuss how you can strengthen your intuition and your ability to quote unquote, follow your gut simply by improving your digestion. Pretty cool, right? Oh, yeah, we talk about farts too. I have no doubt that you're gonna love this light hearted conversation. This is not only going to provide you with a wealth of information regarding how to start assessing and addressing your gut health. But you're also going to have a laugh or two along the way. All right. Without further ado, my conversation with Dr. Edison de Mello. To access the show notes for this episode with all the bonus links and resources discussed today, as well as to subscribe, leave a review and more simply visit zackarnold.com/episode188. I am here today with Dr. Edison de Mello, who is a board certified integrative physician and you are also a licensed psychotherapist, you are the founder and Chief Medical Officer of the Akasha Center in Santa Monica. And you also happen to be probably the number one person responsible the magician behind the curtain for everything that I teach and have learned over my many years about self optimization and optimizing my health and my creativity. And frankly, I'm just basically still alive because of you. So on that note, welcome back to the show, my friend.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Thank you for having me back. I so appreciate the invitation.
Zack Arnold: Yes, you and I have had many, many very involved and in depth discussions in the past about health and lifestyle and integrative medicine and traditional medicine. And for anybody that has not been exposed to our conversations before, I want to make sure that we put in the shownotes links to all of our previous conversations, if there's a little bit of overlap, introducing people to your approach, and how it's different to the Western medical approach. I'm certainly fine with some of that overlap. But at the same time, I want to make sure that for the majority of this conversation, we get right to the heart of the topic, which is talking all about your new book. So on that note, we are going to start there and it's probably going to dovetail into some more general conversations about integrative medicine and otherwise, but your new book is called bloated with this amazing little graphic of a big old fat be you I remember you telling me about how you got so excited for the idea of the cover for this book before you even had it in the big bloated be as part of the belly. And it's how to reclaim your gut health and eat without pain. And the first question that I have for you is frankly, your first question in the book so I'm using your words not mine. Why in the world write a book about Pope
Dr. Edison de Mello: my son would love that too. He used to call me the poop doctor when he was delayed or his downline team, basically, because of bloating has and grown to such epidemic proportions and the US and certainly all over the country all over the world. In my travels. I see one common complaint when it comes to gastrointestinal health is I eat and it doesn't feel good. I eat and I'm bloated, I eat it and I can stop passing gas. And there is a stigma to elimination in our culture. We can talk about sweating. We can talk about crying. We can talk about skin brushing, letting go have dead skin but God forbid we talk about poop. People get embarrassed people run away as if it was, you know a monster and something this can get you or it's going into embarrassed you and I wanted to dismythify, this whole thing about elimination. And now, poop is store body of what an exhaust pipe is to a car, no matter how expensive your car is, if you're driving a gas vehicle, if you don't have a proper exhaust system, your function, your car's not going to function as effectively as you could otherwise. Poop is is what tells us in the world of medicine, and specifically in gastrointestinal medicine, what's happening inside our microbiome? You look at it and when I tell people sometimes what's the color of your poop? What is the consistency of your poop? Is it well formed? Because I want to know what's happening inside. And the other reason why I wrote this book, a lot of people feel that they are alone in this, they feel that, you know, they're the only ones suffering from this specifically, if you are a woman, you know, for guys, for us. When we were in high school, when we in college passing as having you know, who, who farts the louder edge, it's kind of a competition for guys. But for women, it can be very embarrassing. And for guys sometimes can be embarrassed as well, it almost has this connotation that they something dirty about you that you're not taking care of yourself that you are a slug. And I wanted to tell my leaders that in, you know, 20 plus years of experience in doing this going into three decades, actually, that pooping issues, it happens across all spectrums of society, it's an equal opportunity issue. You don't have to be to belong to a particular socio economic background, or a particular race, or have a particular gender to deal with this. To be having poop issues, bloating issues, it's an equal opportunities. And so the tendency of all of us when we are sick, when we feel embarrassed is to retrieve because we feel alone, we feel that, you know, nobody else is standing with us. And so there's a tendency to suffer quietly. And even with my patients in my office, sometimes it takes a little bit to get them to express to me what's really happening in their lives, and that's in their health goals. And to get to the house they want, they come in with fear, really clear ideas. But there's something when it comes to elimination that, you know, prevents them from really expressing what's happening out there. And they felt that if I could tell stories, real stories of real people who have gone through this across the spectrum of the population, and if I could add a little humor to it, that people could perhaps, with this with different lenses, hear the story with different ears and read with different eyes. And so that's the reason why I wrote it.
Zack Arnold: Well, I can't speak for all podcasts across the spectrum for which there are many, but I can't speak for this one. And in almost 300 episodes, you've definitely broken the record for the number of times we mentioned the word poop in the introduction. So very excited about that. And the reason I bring that to light is that we're laughing about something that can be very serious. But the tone we're taking now is very much the tone of your book, which I think is really appreciated, because you're not the first person to ever write about gut issues, or the GI tract or the microbiome. And I feel like that's becoming a more common subject for doctors and other influencers, so to speak, to write about, but a lot of times, you just get so deep into the weeds of all these details and biochemicals and this and that. And one of the things that I appreciate about your book is that you clearly know what you're talking about. But you're talking to your patients and not to other fellow doctors or other experts. So it's much easier to follow. And it's just kind of funny, like I said, I mean that the first phrase of your first chapter is why am I talking about poop? Right? And I think that that's it's important to bring that to light. And I guess where I want to start is just kind of baseline. So if we're just gonna get the you know, the the magical words out of the way, we've got poop, you've mentioned the farts, I of course, don't fart, but for all the other people that do we're talking a perfectly healthy person, not including myself, like, what should we expect as a healthy looking, you know, as you say, like exhaust system on a daily basis.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Okay, so that's a great question. You know, we all poop even if you're the queen of England, as I said in my book, you pass a wind, right?
Zack Arnold: I'm sure she appreciates that, by the way. I hope you got that cleared by the kingdom.
Dr. Edison de Mello: I'm trying to send the book to her I haven't been successful. So So passing gas is part of health. In fact, if somebody comes to my office, and I asked them how many times a day to pass gas, if they're having gastro intestinal issues, if they say not very often, I know there is a problem. Because the idea of gas is the food needs to be fermented before they get eliminated. That's a whole process fermenting of foods in the process of fermenting of food, you're creating gas. And that's part of the process of the metabolic process of elimination. The problem is not passing gas, the problem is passing too much gas, and passing what I refer to as ticking bombs, right, the sticky bombs that can clear the room, and the sticking bombs that make you feel on welcome or to feel that you are not being welcome in a situation. So the average person should pass anywhere from 10 to gas from 10 to 14 times a day. Now, it doesn't mean that it's allowed, you know, gas that you pass thing, but silent, the silent gases that we all do, we all know this, sometimes you see somebody walking down the street, and you see that he left the rat, like the right leg a little bit. To come out, we will see this, and it's the end. And it's part of being healthy. It's part of the normal metabolic process. Now, if you're passing gas, nonstop, if you guys are very stinky, right? Because you're having increased methane gas in your body in your excretion, then there is a problem. And that's where the book addresses.
Zack Arnold: But one of the things that I found interesting, and I want to make sure that we go deep into some of the challenges and problems with digestive issues, just I think most of it is going to be more related to stress than anything because stress is such a huge cause of you know, both the physical maladies. And we'll get into even how this affects the the mental side of things. And so I want to go there later. But at least for now, one of the things that I want to have you shed a little bit more light on that was even really interesting to me. And again, I don't personally fart. So it wasn't personally something that applied to to my own life. But that there are a lot of reasons that you can pass gas on a regular basis on a normal day, just by chewing gum, or drinking carbonated water or even just the way that you talk. Like I find sometimes when I get really animated, and I talk and I do a podcast or I do coaching a little gassy afterwards. And I realize it's just because I'm sucking in a lot of air. So talk through just some of the things that we shouldn't be worried about that are causing gas. So then we can focus most of the time on red flags and understanding how the system really works.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Okay, so that's an excellent question again, Zack, if you're passing gas on a regular basis, if it's not too stinky, if you're not feeling bloated, then you need to be grateful to your gases, because it's telling you that you're healthy. So that's the number one message that I want your readers or your listeners to understand it's a normal part of being healthy is to pass the gas because the food needs to be fermented, meaning broken down before you're going to eliminate them. Now there are there ways in life in our everyday lifestyle that we do without knowing that can increase gas production. For instance, drinking from a straw. You sucking air right when you put a straw in your drink is my drink. If I were to put a straw here and stuck it, I'm not only psyching the drink and themselves, but I'm also psyching air. And when you when you said when you're overly excited about your incredible podcast, then get excited and you swallow air you pass gas, right? So drinking carbonated water, here's a perfect example. Right? I mean, I love my carbonated water. Right I love getting a little can of good carbonated water and putting a little teaspoon of orange juice in and then I have my orange soda. That's what I told my to I taught my children to do when they were little to tell a child not to drink soda. And by not offering an alternative. It's not gonna go well as you know, as a father yourself. So I had to figure it out how to tell them no, this is not good soda, but you can do this. But carbonated water is is increased fermentation with ferment the water rhyming, and so of course it's going to increase the amount of gas that you pass. So if you have a problem passing too much gas, number one, let's look at the gas producing foods and how they're being cooked. Beans, as you know is a big one. It's a big culprit out there. But
Zack Arnold: they're the musical fruit after all.
Dr. Edison de Mello: That's right But if you learn how to, you know, take the acidity Out of Your Beings before you cook it, then of course, you're decreasing the amount of fermentation and the water and the juice of the beings and therefore you're going to be passed to less gas. So learning how to do that in the book I talk about using a pressure cooker in that if you if you use a pressure cooker, it cooks so fast that it there's no time for the for the fermentation to really happen so fastly even before you put your your beans in a pressure cooker, you can also live in there without the top lyrical console, the foam comes up to the surface we have seen being cooked, that foam is over fermentation, that foam is indeed what will make your pass more gas, it's the acidity. So you remove that. You take that with this bachelor, and then you procure being so learning what the what foods cause increased gas, if you pass too much gas, it's imperative for you feeling less embarrassed.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I wouldn't say that food, I'm not the doctor, you're the doctor. But from having been in the the entertainment industry for 20 years and having a lot of friends that talk about constantly having GI issues. They say all the time. Oh, I've you know, I've got self diagnosed IBD irritable bowel or IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. I've got a couple of friends that legit have Crohn's that have been sent to the emergency room and whatnot. And I would say a large portion of this, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, but a large portion of this is just horrible lifestyles, living on pizza eating in front of your desk. So let's talk about how just kind of the 24/7 always on the go. Grabbing fast food lifestyle is contributing to some of the major digestive issues that so many people have nowadays.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Well, yeah, again, another great questions that call you need to do is see what has happened in the last century, you know, and slowly been creeping up, right, we've become overly industrialized, especially first world countries and developing country. So with that, we have had less time to cook at home, we've become more dependent in fast foods, or going to restaurants where we cannot control the quality of the food, no matter how good the restaurant is, you can control the quality. And so and you will go back in the last 40 years, for example, with this whole idea of Supersize Me of the more food you put in front of a customer, the more the customer is going to come back to the same restaurant. This whole all this kind of martech marketing tactics have have led us into this rabbit hole, where, you know, we eat a lot of pizza, we eat a lot of carbonated, we drink a lot of carbonator juice, or water or drinks, we eat on the go, you know, the idea of having a drive thru where you go get your food and you're eating while you're driving city. It is just incredibly crazy, in my understanding, in my mind, as a physician who understands the physiology of the body, you know, eating is more it needs to be you need to dedicate your time to eating, you need to be able to use sitting, that you're not overly swelling air, that you're not drinking a lot of water before or soon after. And they you're saying to yourself, This is time, my eating is so important that I I must dedicate time specific time to be focused on how what I need to do to nurture my body. And so I think our lifestyles have shown us everything, but how to eat correctly. You know, how many times do we put Do we go home with enough time to sit at a table with our families with our kids with our spouses and then let's have a meal. It's usually one person eat before the other the other person eats after the other somebody eats right before they go to bed because of the busy life that we have created. So the first step is to let go of this concept that one is to be independently wealthy, not have work have you know chefs at home have people basically manage your life so they can cook correctly. That's not true. In fact, forgive me for being blunt. That's more an excuse. That's true than it is truth
Zack Arnold: Or you could say excuse me for being blunt. But that's bullshit. No pun intended.
Dr. Edison de Mello: There you go. So, right it is an excuse in our recently I was lecturing to a group of teachers The teach low income kids and one of the teachers really incredible, very dedicated teacher said, Oh, you don't understand my kids, you know, I have to eat with $5 a day. And I said, well try me again, I was one of those kids at one time in the past. So you can go to McDonald's and look at the menu and still make a healthier decision. Right, you can go in there and say, Okay, I'm going to eat an open face sandwich, I'm not going to eat the the bread, or I'm going to try to use their salads instead of French fries. So the idea of eating correctly is more a decision that you make, you make the decision, and you let go of the excuses. And you'll permit yourself to fall off the wagon sometimes when there is no other way but to go eat the pizza. But you are conscious of the choices that you're making. So that eating habits doesn't become a prison to you.
Zack Arnold: Everything that you just mentioned to me. Sounds fantastic. We're talking about lifestyle changes, better dietary choices, I'm sure we could talk more about the importance of movement and exercise and sleep. All that sounds great. I'm just too busy. So the good news is that there are antacids and pills and prescriptions, you can fix all this for me. Right, right.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Wrong. Why not?
Zack Arnold: That's what the TV tells me,
Dr. Edison de Mello: Of course, that if he wants it to buy their products, okay, you need we need to look under the under the hood, Zack, you can either put a BandAid on a bleeding wound, hoping that it's going to stop bleeding. But you know, it hasn't stopped. Or you can say why is it bleeding. And so if you want to have an optimized health, if you want to be able to have be vital, to grow, and, you know, to age beautifully and graciously, to have a totality in your life, to have enough energy to exercise to sleep well, you need to listen to what your body is telling, you know, your body has the language. And you and I have talked about this for the last two decades. Many times the language of your body is called symptoms. And again, let's go back to our you know, our experience as fathers when our children are crying and telling us in their own cry that they something wrong. You just don't give them a pacifier and hope that they will go to bed. Right? If you notice something,
Zack Arnold: maybe I might be guilty of that once or twice. But yeah, so I understand.
Dr. Edison de Mello: If you know there's something wrong going on, because a kid is going to be satisfied with a pacifier for what 1015 minutes is going to stop. It's going to start crying again. That's how your body does. Your body is your firstborn, as corny as it sounds, as you know, new agey as it may sound to some. But when you stop to think about the font of our bodies, the relationship that we have with them, there's a time in our lives that we become the father or the mother to our bodies. Because we put we put it to bed, we fit it, we make sure that it doesn't hit by a car, right? That's the function of a father or mother. The other function is to listen and to understand what this body is trying to tell you. So yes, you can go get there and do the home remedies. But I'm telling you, unless you go to the root cause it's going to be a temporary solution that's going to make you even more first rated 15 minutes later, 30 minutes later, when you realize it's back. Darn it, what are the what else do I need to do I tell you where you need to do you need to listen, you need to say if my body had a verbal language, instead of the symptom that is a language. But if you could tell me what's going out, what would it say? And I tell you, it's like multiple choice questions. We all have had the experience of taking a multiple choice test. We've also had the experience of not knowing the answers. And so you guess but all experts says Do your best guess and don't go back. And so I tell my patients make a guess listen to your body and says okay, is it the food that I'm eating? Is it how I'm sleeping? Right even that sometimes, right? Is there harm sleeping if you sleep on a flat stomach, you know, gravity is going to push things down on you and the tendency will be they will be more bloated in there right? So sleeping on the side for instance can be better. Let me talk to my doctor let me talk to her my practitioner to see what can I do in terms of my lifestyle or lifestyle wise, they can get rid of it in our country. Three in the first world, you know, economies, we want something now and we want it, you know, fixed quickly and we want what's called immediate gratification. That doesn't work for the body. Right? If you go get a dessert, yeah, there's immediate gratification, the Sugar Rush. But later on, if you're not meant to eat that dessert right now, because it's not good for you, you're gonna suffer. So that five minutes of pleasure turns into 12 hours of misery. And so the idea is, how do I listen to what my body needs? And it doesn't have to, you don't have to have a very long dialogue with your body it just to be curious. Okay, I'm curious. I got up this morning, and I was fine. Suddenly, I'm bloated. Suddenly, I'm gassy. I'm curious what could be happening, and just be open. And when I said about the multiple choice questions that if you're open to an answer, the answer will come, it may not be the right the right answer, but it'd be an answer that's gonna lead you in the right direction to find the right answer. And so that's why I said wrong. Right? For the anti acid, if you want immediate gratification and a real, maybe a resolution of the issues for 15 minutes to half an hour, but it's not going to last much longer. And you're going to be even more bloated and more frustrated after that.
Zack Arnold: You've tasted Krispy Kremes is that right?
Dr. Edison de Mello: I have. I know. I'm, Zack, in New York, believe me when I was in residency, and I want a good treat that was it. You know,
Zack Arnold: yeah, Krispy Kremes are my crack cocaine, absolutely love them. And I always pay for it afterwards. And I pay for it, not just in gastrointestinal distress. But I pay for it in other ways that are a lot longer term. And now I really want to kind of dig into some of the cooler science about this. Because I think that we could easily spend the entire rest of the podcast just talking about how lifestyle can improve gut health and gut function, et cetera, et cetera. But all that having been said about this idea of sugar causing the gastrointestinal distress. And you know, I had a friend of mine once, I'm not going to name any names, but he listens. And he'll smile. He told me that after one sitting with Krispy Kremes, he had 32 Krispy Kremes, at once, and I can't even imagine what that did to his gastrointestinal system and don't want to hear that story. And again, could beat a dead horse incessantly about lifestyle, sleep dietary choices. What I'm really interested in, however, is my audience better understanding the three brains, and how the gut is really like a second brain, because I know that if I were to have a Krispy Kreme, or six or 32, it's not just that I would get digestion issues. I'm going to feel slow, and lethargic, and frankly, depressed for days afterwards. And that's not just a coincidence. So for anybody that's never heard this concept of how the gut can actually be a second brain. And we'll get to the third brain eventually. But talk to me about the importance of the gut beyond the fact that it just digests our food.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Yeah, that's, that's one of my most favorite questions, actually, when I'm lecturing, is that it's to explain to people, the brain X, the brain, gut access, right? Your brain is heavily connected, intrinsically connected to your gut. How do we know we're hungry? We know our hangry because our brain needs glucose. And it thinks and sends a signal down to your gut down to your, to your stomach down to your, you know, to your gastrointestinal system that says, hey, prepare for landing. Right? What does that mean? Well, food is coming and foods going to have to land. So you're gonna have to start releasing those digestive enzymes through your pancreas, you're gonna have to release those, you know, incredible acids through your stomach, you're gonna have to have peristalsis, bringing the food down. So eating is one of the most taxing things that your body goes through. Let me repeat it repeat that because it's really interesting when people get it. Eating is one of the most taxing one of the most difficult to perform task that your body goes through. Because imagine what what the food has to do to be able to travel 30 plus feet of get inside of you. Yeah, you heard me correctly. 30 feet. How is that possible? Well, I have a telephone cord here on my desk and I can show you here's the telephone cord and here how it looks right? It's our entangled. Right here it is, this is your guide. And so in every part Have your gut, right? Every part of your gut, those little lines here, they're called crevices, they perform a function. So imagine the food have to travel to travel, the length of about 30 feet to be able to do what it needs to do. And all the medical metabolic processes that happen, then must happen for that to occur. They have to really sound like yes, events, if you have to have hydrochloric acid, you have to have peristalsis, you have to have water, even when you're drinking, you're not drinking water, the body needs water to be able to metabolize to process those foods. And so all of that happens in your brain. That's why when we say somebody's brain dead, the body stops functioning. That right there is an example. You've all heard this, somebody's brain dead, many, he or she can no longer function, even though the body is not your liver, your kidneys, your heart, everything may be working. But if your brain dead, there's no signal. So the brain and the gut work like a key on the lock. One has no function without the other. If I were to give you 15 keys right now, and I've known you for a long time, and when I give Zack Arnold the gift, he's shifting keys, you're gonna say, Dr. D, what do I do with this, but if I suddenly give you locks in, then you're gonna understand that I'm giving you the keys to go with the law. And that's what the body does. For every particular metabolic action. They say, that is an action that requires a receptor. And that's the brain of the gut how it works. So that's, that's why it's called the brain gut axis. In fact, somebody asked me a very interesting question the other day sort of grants through Grand Rounds. And he said the following. So does that mean we can ever see a gut a complete gut transplant? He said, Dr. de Mello, we are in medicine has advanced or to the extent where we are transplanting everything, face, we translate people's face, right, and fingers and nails and people's genitals you name it. And I said, not in our lifetime, I don't know what's going to happen. Several, you know, several decades from now, before a brain for God to be transplanted and work effectively, the work of connecting all the nerve endings, to that guy would be so intensely complex, they wouldn't work. So you'd have to bring the brain and they got to get there so that you know that that's not possible today. So that's why, when you have, let's say, colitis, or cancer in your colon, in your somewhere in your gut, we have to cut one end, we cut the other and we are nice to Moses, meaning that the particular part there was diseases gone. Because they innervation, the contact, the connection with the brain is no longer there. So that's why we refer to the guy as really someplace some literature we first read as your second brain, the Chinese literature of their old, incredible wisdom of Chinese medicine, enter your Vedic medicine in India, refers to it as your first brain.
Because without that gut, there is no metabolic action that can occur in your brain. And without the brain. There's no metabolic action that can occur in your gut. So
Zack Arnold: so what I'm curious about now is going a little bit deeper, specifically into the mental health side of things. Because one of the really big kind of aha moments that I had working with you years ago, and even rereading in your book kind of reminded me that the neurotransmitter serotonin in your brain is basically in your gut, which is why you don't feel happy, and you feel depressed and you feel sluggish, if you're putting crap in your gut, isn't that case,
Dr. Edison de Mello: it's beautifully sad, I could not have said any better. And if you go back to neuro linguistics, right, which I personally love, because it says a lot. You know, I'm lucky to be able to speak a couple of languages. And so when they look at languages, I'm very interested to see why do we say what we say? Most of us, you know, don't think about it. But for instance, let's look at it the connection between your heart which in your emotions and your gut, right? In English, we say what's your gut feeling? Meaning What's your intuition? That's what it mean. That's an emotional intuition. That's a psychological intuition. If you hurt somebody hurts you, you say the following. That hurts so much. I feel it feels like I got kicked in my stomach. Right that pain relating to your gastrointestinal system. By the way, serotonin is also a pain mediator, in addition to being the happy one Remote, it mediates pain, right? When you're nervous is the guy to feel so nervous, I feel like I have butterflies in my stomach. And I can go on and on and on in explaining the connection between the mind the language that we use to describe psychological processes in our body. You're correct. So toner is both produced and metabolized in your gut by about 90%. Some research says at some say nine, your let's say between 80 and 90% of all serotonin is either is both produced and metabolized in you, okay? With a message from your brain. Remember, the brain is the hard drive, no different than my computer, if I'm here talking to you, and I need to send a message. That message needs the hard drive to be able to send it to any interpet. Well, that's the brain function. So the brain is the hard drive of all your metabolic systems. So when somebody comes to my office feeling bloated, feeling depressed, feeling anxious, and they want to Prozac, I will say, can we have a conversation about this? First, let's talk about why you are unhappy? Because the answer is not the Prozac bandaid unless you have a clinical depression, meaning that you are not able to cope to make and metabolize serotonin, there is a clinical either mutation or genetic predisposition that leads you to not be able to produce this hormone in the quantity that you need for most of us are not clinically depressed when we are depressed. We are circumstantially depressed, is a circumstance that lead to it. In the patients that I see, it's usually they are unhappy with their bodies, they're happy with your sex life because they feel they don't feel sexy, they don't feel desirable. They're bloated. They're unable to feel comfortable sitting on an airplane. You see in the book, the stories that I wrote, can you imagine sitting in an airplane and the person next door to you knows that the sticking the sticking bombs are coming from you? And so, of course, he would lead you to be depressed because of your circumstance. And then I will work with them in terms of Okay, so what do we need to do to clean up yoga to see what's under the hood? So yeah, serotonin is one of those really incredible hormones, they can tell us a lot about what's happening in your GI system, not only in your brain, where mostly comes from the brain, but know, mostly what's happening in gastrointestinal system. So when people taking Prozac, or taking any of the antidepressants come in, and they want me to increase it, obviously, not until we look at the guy, because remember the analogy that I gave you about giving a 15 law without the keys, yeah, serotonin is there being released from other parts in your body, not as many not as much as in your gut. But if the receptor is blocked with inflammation, right, with a lot of this unhealthy seems to lead to our body being completely depleted of good nutrient is action won't happen. So you're taking something and you're waiting for the result, but the main piece of the receptor, the need is blocked.
Zack Arnold: What I want to go even deeper into now is this idea of what else is super, super important in the gut that people don't realize. And I know that a huge buzzword right now, specifically in the gastrointestinal tract community, if there is one, and there's a lot of people talking about the gut and writing books about it, and whatnot. But it's this idea of good bacteria and bad bacteria. And I don't want to go too deep into this because you literally write about it for chapters and chapters. But I think it's really important for people that don't even understand there is such a thing as good bacteria, how we need to protect it and how antibiotics are essentially destroying the our modern health in our modern society. So let's go a little bit deeper and understanding bacteria because just knowing the basics about this, and the basics about neurotransmitters, those are the things that really kicked me into gear and realizing I just can't live off the crap all day long because of what it's really doing to my body as a whole.
Dr. Edison de Mello: And that's a great question. There's a chapter in the book that I call bacteria Friend or Foe right? And let's let's take a step back you know, why do we get pneumonia why do we get heart disease why do we get a lot of the maladies they can lead to our lives being compromised because of bacteria bacteria causes disease bacteria makes you feel you know, a challenge the immune system and everything that the nzme itis is bacteria. So you have sinusitis you have pharyngitis you have no bursitis so it does in medicine means inflammation, inflammation usually is secondary to either muscular skeletal torsion, or in some kind of case, in case of in case of colitis, for instance, an imbalance of bacteria. So bacteria can definitely kill you. So why would you go in this country alone and spend over $6 billion a year taking probiotics, which is bacteria. Right? What is what is? What's the function of this? What is the parole message that we're giving here? It's about balance. So everything in life is about balance. So what you're actually talking about is the buzzword out there, which is called microbiome. Right? And we are we have a lot of research into the microbiome, the microbiome, you've never seen a microbiome. I've never seen a microbiome unless you're doing an autopsy. And even then you would have to do it on the microscope, and looking at the person's gastrointestinal lining to see what's there. But most of us have seen a beehive whether in person or on TV, or in a magazine. So the microbiome is to us where the beehive is to honey. Let me take a little further, what is a bee hives, millions and millions of bacteria working for one single function once you go on purpose, and that is to make honey. And in order to do that, it needs good pollination, which is food, it's got a good water source, it needs a perfect temperature. And it needs a beekeeper that understand that to take care of that beehive is to give him everything that he needs the water, the food, they're good love without poking it. That's your microbiome. Let's look at the microbiome. What does your gut need to be able to operate properly, so that you can have good, good metabolism, you can poop, you can go to the bed or without feeling bloated. You need good food, you need water that's not very cold or very hot, like we were talking before. You need to be able to give a good you know, good temperature as well. And you need to be able to take care of it without poking. If you get the beehive when you see there's something wrong, there's flies around the beehive, and you spray that beehive with pesticide, you're gonna kill the whole hive. If you get into your gut, and you spray your gut with antibiotics, when you don't need it, then you're gonna kill the whole microbiome, meaning the balance of the good and bad bacteria is off there good bacteria, the bacteria that's gonna help you break down foods, no different than the bacteria that we use to make wine to make cheese. Right? To make fermented foods make kombucha it's the same thing. But if you go in there, and you start poking that behind your gut, whereas antibiotics, you sneeze, you get after biotics, right, you have a headache again, antibiotic, not only are you stopping the proliferation of the good bacteria, because you're telling it stop producing bacteria, antibiotics is not selective. It's gonna kill every bacteria that is in front of it. So and I'm not speaking against antibiotics, I want you to know that a very supportive
Zack Arnold: Pro antibiotic, which can be very paradoxical but proactive.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Well, I'm really pro I'm grateful that it exists. Sure. I like that. I'm grateful that is their antibiotic save the world. I mean, we are here because of penicillin. Right? That's where you were the world the here, but what happened is something called Marketing. And when turning on TV, how many times this is somebody that have you talk to your doctor about this medication? Have? Are you feeling this? Are you feeling that? How about your doctor about this? And so you come into a medical system that is completely overwhelmed. The doctors do not have the time or the compensation needed to be able to really look at patients in the eye. It's and you're gonna say, Dr. de Mello. I feel like my ears are hurting a little bit. And I feel like I have something brewing may be an ear infection, can I can I get it, the antibiotic? And you're gonna say, Well, how about if we do that now? No, no, I have no time for that. And you only have five minutes for that patient at the most. So what are you going to do in this healthcare system that is broken, you're going to give the patient the antibiotic because you have another patient waiting for you. And that's the problem. The problem is not only that, doctors are over prescribing, but patients are not educated enough and the dangers of it. So if you're coming to my office and you have a wound in your hand, that is hot, that's losing and you have a fever. I'm never going to talk to you about a coupon I'm sure without talking to you about antibiotics as well. But if you came into my office and says I have a little sore throat pain, and it's been bothering me a little bit to have a fever now, are you sweating now? Do you have anything else going? No, no, it's just that pain. Why don't we try this, this, this, let's give the body a chance to be challenged. And then let's speak in a couple of days to see well, where we are at. That's the right approach. Our medical system doesn't allow that. So you have doctors want to get the patients out of the office, and you want patients not having the patience to wait for the body to do it's been trained to do since the conception, which is to fight disease. So that's where the problem is.
Zack Arnold: And I want to make sure to really emphasize with all the importance in the world, when you talked about this idea of the broken medical system. This is something you and I talked about at length ad nauseam for a long time in one of our earlier podcasts. So once again, if somebody is thinking, Wait, what is he talking about? What does that mean? I don't want to go down that path. Again, because we've done it, we're going to make sure to link to it in the show notes. And I want to kind of stay on the right path here. But that is something that both you and I have been very, very passionate about talking about for years, because frankly, I found you because the traditional medical system failed me. And I was looking around for any kind of alleviation of the symptoms I was having from depression, and massive anxiety, what ended up turning out to be adult onset ADHD, not knowing any of it, it was just a matter of take this pill, take that pill and I didn't understand any of it. And then all of a sudden you schedule a session for like 90 minutes and like 90 minutes, like, Who is this guy. And then you actually like care about my life and my partner and what I'm eating and what I'm doing and what I think about my job and my co workers. And you know, I don't think you've ever prescribed me an antibiotic. Frankly, I don't think you've ever needed one since we've known each other. But the point being that we could talk about this because we both have giant soap boxes, but we already have it on the recording. So that being said, I want to I want to stay on task. And I want to get to what for me is really the heart of the conversation where I'm the most interested in. And it's something that you don't tap into a whole lot in the book, you kind of open the conversation, but you're doing a nice little general overview of everything. And I want to keep digging down into this idea of gut instinct. Because what you do as a creative professional, is you have to learn how to follow your gut. If I'm a mathematician, I have the numbers. Math is right, or math is wrong. There's certainly a lot of complex equations and complex problem solving. And you're still creative, but it's a different part of the brain. When you are a creative person, you have to follow your gut instinct. And one of the things that I talked to my students about is if you are faced with what could be a quote unquote, opportunity. And you're thinking yourself, let's say I'm either debating between two opportunities, or one has come my way. And I'm not sure if it's the right fit. There's an exercise that I take them through and I want you to help me, first of all, identify if I'm crazy or not with this exercise, but maybe even help me elaborate or make it better. Well, what I asked them is they say when you think about going into this job really visualize sitting in that desk working with these people, whether down the hall, email, Slack, whatever it is, what is the first gut feeling that you get? Do you feel nervous? Or do you feel anxious? And they always look at me? And they say, I don't get it? What's the difference? Aren't they the same thing? And the way that I explained it to them, as they say, if you if you really feel in your gut, is it butterflies? Or is it like this big giant black pit of a weight that's weighing you down? That makes you feel miserable? And then they're like, oh, yeah, I kind of get that. And then they can better ascertain, is this making me feel really anxious, and then my negative about it, or? It's scary, and it's unknown, and it's going to be hard, but it's more butterflies? So I've always explained that. But why does that actually have meaning? Because we're talking about gut instinct, what's actually happening,
Dr. Edison de Mello: What's happening is that you're your heart. And now we're talking about heart.
Zack Arnold: Which is a third brain, I want to make sure what's the third brain our there.
Dr. Edison de Mello: It's your heart, your heart and your brain together is invincible. I mean, think about it. If you are if you're operating from this is incredible, this high drive, this high drive main purpose is to protect you
is to feed you is to keep you alive. So somebody else fire your, your peers are gonna get really small so that you can focus blood is going to brush all the way to down to your legs so that you can run so that you're not now on the fight or flight response. So your brain main focus is to keep you alive is to feed you give you signals for food and to protect you. That's what the brain does. Your heart So keep your eye open is to keep you curious when we are involved in that for wanting to be open enough to understand the difference between those three between those three brain. So looking at your heart, and I'm not talking about your physical heart, when we do autopsies or her surgery and reopen open heart surgery, you're not going to see intuition in the heart. I'm talking about your personal heart. I'm not I'm talking about your spiritual heart. I'm talking about your emotional heart. I'm talking about the same heart that says, oh my god, I'm so in love with that person. I'm so in love with this project. I'm so in awe of this book that I'm reading, when you connect their heart, their function of their heart with your gut. And you say to your students, no, I'm not talking about fear. One is fear. When you're talking about that, feeling that pit in your gut, it's fear. And fear has a lot of messages for you. When you're talking about excitement, wow. Whoo, I have the butterfly. It's an exciting thing for you to engage in that excitement leads to curiosity. That excitement leads to wow, what if, you know, what do I need to do to succeed to jump into that meeting and be the best I can do? And I think you're doing a brilliant job, Zack in teaching people that I wouldn't add anything but the following. You know, where you're telling them is that everything happens twice. Right? I'm here with this phone. Right? I'm looking at the phone buzzing here. Right Steve Jobs, this phone happening his head before he gave it to somebody to execute? So how many times is the phone happened? Twice? Right? I'm looking at this stethoscope. Here. Somebody designed a stethoscope that has this particular had that this particular piece. And this, I think was a sheep. She designed that in her head. She said, What if the head is like this, it has like that, when you're writing a script, for your shows or for your the movies that you are editing, you are creating an image in your head before you execute it. Well, that's life. And if you put that in practice, if you can realize that this is where it happens in your hard drive. But now without doubt, if there is a doubt come in, instead of pushing I can't believe I'm doubting my knowledge. I'm doubting my skills. Be curious, go Wow. I wonder why I'm doubting that. And so it's a conversation to be had with your mind and the doubt. So I think what you're doing is actually incredibly inspiring, because you're telling people in so many words to be present with your feelings. And when you press them with their feelings when the heart, the third brain when their heart jumps in, you are invincible. And of course, I get excited about this because I could only do medicine the way I do it for me with deep knowledge in psychology first. Because out of all the people that I see in my office, inevitably 50 to 60%, I'm going to repeat that 50 to 60% of our every disease have a psychological factor to it. I'm not saying that it's all in people's head. Not I'm saying that if you can just wish that this is out, it's gonna go away. But I'm saying that there is a connection. I don't know which came first, which is that your God so anxious that you got diseased? Or you said that you got disease, and then you got so anxious? I don't know, all I know, going back to neuro linguistics is when you, when you look at the radical at the formation of the word, it's called this ease. You're not at ease. And that alone tells you a lot. When you're diseased, you're not at ease. So I tell people, okay, let's take this out of the disease. And tell me what do you need to do to feel at ease in your life, I will take care of you. We will refer you to surgery, we'll refer you to have a deep evaluation in whatever else your eyes are bothering. But before we do that, what else in your life is making you uneasy so that we can take this out of disease and see what's next?
Zack Arnold: Oh, not only does it make sense, but I mean, we're just tapping into like the deepest reasons that I created all this to begin with really having no idea what I was doing at the time and still kind of sort of don't. But really the the hypothesis that I had 15 plus years ago largely thanks to you and working with you is that in order from Need to be the best creative professional, the best editor, the best director, the best writer, whatever the craft is, I can't just put my nose to the grindstone and shut the blinds and work in the dark and just power through, I have to treat myself like a high performance machine, which is why I've learned so much about how to eat better, how to sleep better, how to move more, or how to exercise. And for me, the hypothesis was that what I do for a living, the reason that people pay me money, the money that supports my family, and make sure that my kids have a roof is my ability to make decisions. It all comes down to that I make 1000s of decisions per day, as an editor or writer, anybody that's creative has to make a decision. Should I do it this way? Should I do it that way? A composer says, should this be a B sharp? Or Should this be a D flat or whatever, they're everybody's making all these micro decisions. And if you're creative, especially those decisions require intuition. And intuition is physically coming partially from your gut brain, and partially from your heart brain. And you're not mindful or aware of those sensations. Because you're putting garbage into your body and you're not moving, then you're eliminating or drastically reducing your ability to be creative. So what you're putting into it and how you're moving, it is actually making you worse at what you do.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Well, I can personally attest to why your program keeps growing, keeps growing and growing and growing. My own personal experience of sending patients to your optimize yourself, is that inevitably, all these people come back with one way of describing you, which is his authentic. He talks about himself not separate from all of us, but like part of one of us. And or you could be one of us, right? So the truth is, when we walk down the street, and you see a homeless person sitting there, you you probably a few steps away from becoming that you're not very far away from becoming that we think there's miles of distance between me and that person. And that's the illusion, the illusion is there. What will be like for me to enter this person's life right now. And I talk about homelessness, homelessness, because it's one of the things that I am very passionate about in our country is that talking about broken system, we have to do something about it. But the idea with your case, and I think that's the reason why I also wanted to write the book is because we are no different than the person sitting here. It's like effectiveness happens when you enter that person's space. And we know that again, talking about children, to be an effective parent is to be able to enter the child's fantasy world and see what's happening there. Otherwise, you're missing the boat, you're missing the biggest developmental stage and tired hood, which is fantasy. And tell me who don't who which one of us and I have a fantasy that we want to live by, that wants that wish something would happen, that wish that something could be different. And I think for me, when I know about your work is that authenticity that says to people, Hey, I've been there, I've taken the antidepressant, I've been miserable. I've done this, let me tell you what I did. And so it makes the your suggestion palpable, because it's not coming from a place of, oh, this is a well, there's a brilliant guy well studied, who have some suggestion to us, it brings down to the personal level. And that's why the book has all the stories. I wanted to take it from the scientific evidence. And as you said, In the beginning, I don't need to write to doctors, or to other practitioners, they know what I needed to write to is for my patients and give them some stories that they can identify with. Why do we spend billions and billions of dollars making movies, writing books, entertaining people, because we all want to hear stories. We all win and connect to stories. We all want to cries, with stories or laughs with stories. And so why do you do and are praising you I think is phenomenal because of the authenticity. And the book, I believe, is going to make a mark in people because it's also a safe deck because I talk about my own story. My own struggles as a 12 year old boy living in the outskirts of Rio, having to rush to the bathroom, which by the way, had no door just occurred and going like what the heck's going on with my gut. And I didn't have the language to understand the pathophysiology, the mechanism of action that was happening with disease in my gut, but no one thing was connected to the world we're seeing out there to the violence, the shooting, whatever it is, to the relationship between my parents. I knew there was a connection. I just couldn't tell at the point where I didn't I'll have to make those connections, how to translate the connection in language that I could be used. So yeah, connecting with people look at them in their eyes telling them I've been there is what makes our work different.
Zack Arnold: Well, I can tell you one thing that was very unexpected about reading your book was the fact that not only does it talk about the microbiome and bacteria and digestion and all the things that you learn from it, but it was actually a really inspirational story about this young kid from the barrio and Rio and you know, from South America, the figures out how do I come to America and make something of myself and learn the language and just happens to become one of the world's foremost experts on integrative medicine. I didn't see that coming. I didn't see that part coming. I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna learn something about digestion. And maybe you know why I fart when I eat beans and what I can do to improve my diet. I'm like, there's just there's a lot of stuff that even knowing you for almost 20 years, I still didn't know. And like, I had no idea that happened, you and what an amazing story. So you're basically what you're doing very similar to what I do, which is I'm trying to hide all the really important education in the form of entertainment. So I'm tricking you do what you're going to enjoy it. But you better learn something anyways, right. And I think just to first, first of all, I appreciate all the praise. And it's very nice of you to say, but what I believe makes a great coach, or in your case, a great practitioner, or doctor or anything else. Obviously, the knowledge helps. And for years, I had this horrible impostor syndrome thinking, Who am I to be writing and talking about this stuff, like, I'm not an expert, I don't have degrees, I don't have certifications, I haven't gone to secondary school to cover all these things. But what I realized, and I know this is one of the hugest components of your practice, and the reason I want to bring it up, is that I have found what makes me a really good coach. And what makes you a really good doctor is empathy. If you learn how to authentically convey empathy, and empathy is different than sympathy, because you need to be sympathetic to but if you can convey empathy, that's when you can really affect change. Because I believe that's when people start to trust you.
Dr. Edison de Mello: You're so right. So somebody asked me the other day, why empathy is so important in one's life. And I said, Because empathy makes you feel heard. Empathy makes you feel seen, you don't have to say much to be empathetic. In fact, sometimes the more you say, the more the less sympathetic you become, because you've tried too hard. And I gave the example of a dog, you know, for those of us who are animal lovers, and I am you come home tired, your life has been busy, you haven't eaten, you haven't been able to have, you haven't had time to go to the bathroom as often as you need to. And you go is rushing to pee. And then your dog comes in, and what does that dog wants? First one is to welcome you home. So your excitement, and then he or she wants to be seen. So you looked at dog, the dog is sitting there wagging the tail, you put their hands, hey guy or Hagar and do that. And then the dog goes out. So happy, is now has been touched, is being acknowledged. And he's been saying, well, that's us. We want to be seen, we want to be touched by people's love and story. And we want to be acknowledged. And so when you do that, and I know how well you do that. The end result is that people listen, people understand and go, wow, this person really cares about me.
Zack Arnold: Well, just via osmosis, you've been a very good teacher in that respect. Just by you know, being being in your chair many, many, many times over the years, I have, you know, picked up a thing or two or dare I say stolen a technique or two. But if I'd done my best to to learn how to listen. And like you always say, you don't treat symptoms, you treat patients, which is the absolute ass backwards way of the way that our Western medical system is designed, which again, not getting it on that soapbox, because we have. But in conclusion, just because we're running a little bit over time, and I want to be very respectful of yours because it is so valuable. For somebody that's listening to this that relates to just chronic gut issues now, like I've got a stomach ache, but man, I'm just chronically bloated. And I just feel like doesn't matter what I eat. I feel like crap, and I'm always tired. And I'm frankly, I can't be too far away from a bathroom. I can't travel long distances, other than the obvious, which is buy your book. Where do you suggest they start? What are some simple action steps just to get them started and get them 1% Better than they are today?
Dr. Edison de Mello: That's That's a great question, Zack, the first step is for them to assess the severity of the condition. Is that something that came out of nowhere maybe you went out to a barbecue party? When you go out to a vacation in a foreign country and you came back and you're having those symptoms now there is a cause and effect. And that is most patients right? In most cases you go on vacation you go to a foreign terrain, you eat different foods or you over drink or you go for eat, you have symptoms, assessing the severity, meaning and my equipted right now to make the decision what I need alone, or do I need help. So I think that's the first step. And it doesn't have to be a medical doctor. It can be a nutrition date with trust, it can be a naturopathic doctor that you can have a conversation to, sometimes people whose primary care providers are the chiropractors, but somebody they can reflect back to you Oh, hold on a second is that this is very acute. Okay, so we have a cause and effect, there was your trip. This has been creeping up for a little while. Maybe before we do anything in terms of treatment. Let's do an imaging study. Let's look at your last one ultrasound, because very later, most insurance covers, but it can tell you do you have fatty liver? Do you have you know, stone somewhere that is causing this? No gallstones, liver stone, do a blood test? Are you anemic? Right? Is there a place in your body that is vitamin deficient or mineral deficient? So what I want to instill upon people is a severity of the symptoms is going to drive who you're going to speak with. If you go to Mexico, if you go to Brazil, where you go to a place and you come back with traveler's diarrhea, we have a cause and effect. So you can speak can read the book, you can look online, you can talk to a friend. But if you think creeping up slowly, I urge all of our listeners to please take better care of yourself. So your body they love their wish our dogs and our cat and go talk to somebody. So assuming that you go talk to somebody, there's nothing metabolically wrong, or physically wrong. The first step is to take back and say, if my body had the language, what would you say about this bloating? And trust? The answer? Now, I as I say, my kid to my kids again? Are you ready to hear the answer? Ha, can I go to the mouth? Or hold on a sec? It's 10 o'clock at night? Are you ready to use and to hear the answer? And be comfortable with it? So the bar is the same thing. If you're going to ask a question, I wonder what this is coming from? Be clear that you're ready to listen there to hear the answer. And I find it because the answer may be Zack, you're working freaking too much.
Zack, you know, you're working out if I'm working working out too much. You're giving your body no chance to rest. Or you're not sleeping enough. Or, hey, Zack, maybe a little bit too angry. At the world, maybe the world is not here for you to fight it anymore. You've arrived. Right? So go to this first brain, index the question, and then look at your lifestyle. I think lifestyle has a lot to do, right? How do I eat my foods? I sit down sometimes at restaurants and I'm, I'm actually very curious to see people sitting there taking an hour to eat the food's in the next table, you know, the food is gone in five minutes. Now that just I used to? Are you really chewing a food? How? What's your relationship to water? Are you the one that you know? Every time if they combine your drink half glass of water, a glass of water you're gonna blow? Right? Especially if you're drinking if you're eating pasta, so breads, you're gonna blow? So understanding the cause and effect? A lot of us one the answer is given to us, right? In the old days, you'd come to the doctor and they would say, Oh, I don't know. You're the doctor. I see here that some time. I asked sometimes. Hey, John, Mary Peter, rising is saying you're bloated. I don't know if I knew I wouldn't be here. You're the doctor. Right? Well, I may be the doctor. But your body does have talked to me. He talks to you. I'm the interpreter of your symptom. I'm your symptoms whisperer, but it's going to talk to you. So educating your clients, your audience, that your body talks to you. It's called symptoms and you listen and you may not know how to interpret that language. But when you go to a practitioner practitioner says, Hey, Zack, hey, Edison, why are you having the symptom? I think it's food related. That puts you in control. So now you have the condition without it having you. And we repeat it again, because it's very, very important together. You either can have a disease, or the disease can have you. When diseases have see you, you're a prisoner to it. I don't know. You're the doctor. So now you're in the prisoner. When you say you know what, I don't know why, but Let's figure out together. Now you are in control. Now you have it without having. So I think the first step is to do a self assessment. And to look at your gut health, in terms of your habits, to be able to listen, and to be able to look for to ask for the help for help, if you feel help is needed at the time, my grandmother who in the book, I dedicated a book to her. She was my Brazilian grandmother, she was illiterate. And he had been the most brilliant woman I always I've ever met. She would always teach me as I was growing up, you know, be careful when what you're asked for, are you ready to listen? And when you listen, are you able to listen with the two years that were given to you? And I tried to speak with them one mouth, they were given should say, Why do you have two years ago, only one mouth, because you should be listening more than talking. And so listen to your body. And when you want to stop, take a deep breath and say, Okay, tell me more. And that's I think it's the wisdom, for lack of a better word that I'd like to steal upon the audience out there. Listen, more, talk less. Listen, more give to less excuse my God, it was so many excuses. Just the other day I got home and I was a little nauseated, you won't believe what the story is. And my mind was telling me. Oh, it's this, instead of saying, as soon as your body will teach this stuff, so I did, I said, Hey, buddy, why are we must create it and the answer. I had drunk a lot of kombucha that day. A lot of kombucha and I didn't have a lot of time to eat, but I have kombucha in the fridge. It's a little natural sugar is fermented. It's refreshing. I'm not used to drinking three a day. And I did. There was the answer right there. It was too much. And so with water, for example, you can either be dehydrated, or you can be overly hydrated. The answer is neither or the answer is to balance. So listen more to your body give less excuse.
Zack Arnold: I would say that is an amazing answer. And I can attest firsthand to the both psychological and physiological effect of that single question. Because I remember the first time you asked that of me years ago, and it literally like using one of your phrases in the book is like a punch in the gut. Because you realize how authentically true that question is. And you usually know the answer, but you just don't want to listen to it. Right? Like years ago, why? What would your body be telling you because you feel so stressed out or heavy or lethargic? It's like, well, I treat myself like crap, I work way too much. And I'm working with toxic people that don't respect me. But I don't want to hear myself telling me that because those are all decisions that I've made. And I put myself in that position. So oh, well, it just it, it must be that you have a pill just right. So I've been through that experience. And I would imagine that you've had more than one person when you ask them that point blank that they just stare and then break into tears.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Yes, yes. And they that's so good that your brother I probably happened today twice. And people Sure. People say to me, there's something in this office that makes me cry. And even though it will be a pleasure for me to think that it's true, that it's a magic in my office, we all know it's not true. The magic is you the magic stop me because as long as you have a place that you can go to feel emotional to deal with your feelings, then you still in the process, that I have to go there. And I say that's so lovely for you. It's not me, it's you. I just ask the right question. And so, you right, you know, most of us are sometimes project our fears project or angers or we are in denial. And by the way, in terms of psychological processes, those are called defense mechanisms. Projection is a defense mechanism. What is the defense mechanisms, those mechanism that our mind uses to protect us? If you didn't have defense mechanism, you would be Joe Schmo screaming out loud in the middle of the street, that God has been bad to you. That's the difference between us, so called psychologically intact. And the people out there that can be psychological broken temporarily, is that we have something called defense mechanisms of which projection and denial are part of it. But again, like everything else is moderation. Am I too much in denial about this? am I projecting my anger my sandwich too much into work? It's all about work. If I were if I only had my dream job, you If I only had the last angry boss, it's not there. If we think it's other people, then we are cutting ourselves short is how we react to other people, is how we react to the situation. So, so happy you asked that question.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think that it's it's vitally important for people to think about it beyond like you said, Well, I go to the doctor's office, they're wearing the white coat, and therefore whatever they told me to do, I should do. I definitely don't advise that approach. And again, we could talk about it a whole lot more, but I want to be very respectful of your time. So for anybody that has listened to our conversation today, that realizes that this is something they want to address, where can they find the book? And where can they find you?
Dr. Edison de Mello: Oh, thank you. So the book, there's a website for the book it's called bloatedbook.com. Very difficult,
Zack Arnold: which is ironic, because it's actually quite tight and small and easy to read. So the book itself is not bloated. But bloatedbookcom.
Dr. Edison de Mello: As somebody pointed out the other day, I don't know if you can see this, that B can also be seen as a toilet in very nice. Words, unintentional by your words,
Zack Arnold: I bet subconsciously it was
Dr. Edison de Mello: maybe I want that I told the designer, the book designer, that that the graphic needs to be about pregnant beach. So anyway, so the book is available on Amazon, you just say Bloated by Dr. Edison de Mello. It's available on Barnes and Noble. And if you want to see what else is available, so that you're not out there searching online, you can just go to the website called bloatedbook.com. And it's going to give you a little synopsis of the book, and also tell you, it tells you where you can buy to find me, it's just go to akashacenter.com is the name of the clinic that I run, that I founded, it's Akasha is spelled as A K A S, H A. So akashacenter.com.
Zack Arnold: Excellent. Well, we're gonna make sure to put links to all those in the show notes. So anybody that's listening, whether they're driving, or reading or exercising, whatever, they just look at their phone or their device, and there's the link and we can send them right to where they need to go. But on that note, as always, just an immense, tremendous pleasure to have this conversation. I can't believe I get to learn all this from you for free. This is such a scam as such a great way for me to get my, you know, my unofficial medical degree from one of the best and do it for free. So I appreciate the value of your time and your expertise
Dr. Edison de Mello: and the ripple effect that you use with this thing that you learn from me. It's music to my heart so well i very very dear to my heart.
Zack Arnold: And thank you so much. I appreciate everything that you have done to impact my life and those around me positively.
Dr. Edison de Mello: Thanks, Zack. It's a pleasure to be with you in this space again.
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.
The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).
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