Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.
Dr. Steven Gundry (00:16):
Welcome to The Dr. Gundry Podcast. What if you could actually hear your brain working and you could feel calmer and happier as a result? Well, this concept might sound pretty far out but it’s actually totally doable and during these uncertain times, taking care of our mental health is probably more important than ever and the good news is my guest today can actually help and I’m actually wearing her device. No, I just didn’t come from the gym working out to pump you up but we’re going to talk to Ariel Garten. She was trained in neuroscience and psychotherapy, founded a clothing company and researched Parkinson’s disease and hippocampal neurogenesis. Why I got that out [shim 00:01:10]. She also has her own podcast Untangle, which is you’re going to see as a great title for her podcast all about mental health.
Dr. Steven Gundry (01:20):
Her biggest claim to fame I think is in co-founding Muse, the brain sensing headband, which I am wearing right now. Today we’re going to talk about more how Muse works and how to meditate. Even for folks who say they can’t and I am kind of number one on the list and boy, we’re going to talk about that. We’ll also discuss why we need help calming our minds right now more than ever. Ariel, it’s great to see you again. Welcome to the program.
Ariel Garten (01:54):
Thank you. It is such a joy and pleasure to be here with you today.
Dr. Steven Gundry (01:56):
You’ve dedicated much of your career to helping people reduce anxiety and get in a better headspace. Is this something that you struggled with personally or how did it start?
Ariel Garten (02:10):
For me, I actually always had what I thought was a very clear headspace. I didn’t have a lot of anxiety or fear and I was able to go forward into the world and do what I wanted. I then had a health consideration a number of years ago and I ended up with more anxiety than I ever realized and meditation became a key factor for me to learn to manage my own brain space and be able to come back to a very calm, clear way of living. I was also practicing psychotherapist so meditation was something that I would always recommend to my patients and I ended up taking a dose of my own medicine.
Dr. Steven Gundry (02:46):
As a practicing psychotherapist, did you actively teach meditation to your patients or did you say go meditate?
Ariel Garten (02:59):
I tried to teach meditation but really my patients would rarely do it. I would try to describe what to do or we try to sit together and do it and they’d go home and they would rarely meditate on their own and they’d come back and typically not be clear about how much meditation they had or hadn’t done and that was actually part of the genesis of Muse, the desire to create something that was going to make meditation more tangible and easy.
Dr. Steven Gundry (03:23):
Is that one of the biggest misconceptions out there that meditation, everybody says we need to meditate but so many people say, Well, I don’t know number one how to do it or even when somebody tells me how to do it, I can’t do it. I don’t know what they’re talking about but I can’t quiet my mind down just to use an example.
Ariel Garten (03:51):
Yeah. One of the biggest misconceptions is that you’re supposed to let your mind go blank. People sit there to try to meditate. They think their mind is supposed to go blank and let me tell you, your mind never does. It’s just as unlikely that you’ll meditate as your mind goes blank for any significant period of time and so that leads to frustration, which causes people to just get up and not meditate because they feel they’re not good at it. We wanted to create a tool that would really show people what goes on in your mind during meditation to literally have a little coach inside your head saying, Yep, you’ve got it. Okay. Your mind has wandered. Come on back. Yep. You’ve got it so that we could dispel the misconceptions of what you’re supposed to be doing.
Dr. Steven Gundry (04:32):
Tell me, since you’ve been in this space for a number of years now, is there, as a general rule before this current pandemic, are people different than they were say 20 years ago in terms of their brain, of their ability to relax as our society in general changed in enough that things are different?
Ariel Garten (05:02):
Well, I would say before the pandemic and for a great period before the pandemic, people were generally the same as they’ve been for the last 50 years. We all live with the general stressors of life. The thoughts of am I not good enough? The thoughts of is my rent going to be late? And the experience of living as a human. Since the pandemic, those thoughts and feelings associated with fear have changed dramatically. People are now concerned about their physical wellbeing. They’re concerned about isolation, they’re concerned about their loved ones and we’re on an emotional roller coaster. All of those sort of vulnerabilities that we had previously about concern for physical safety and comfort and relationships has certainly become magnified.
Dr. Steven Gundry (05:51):
And our brains are probably going at 1000mph in instead of 100mph. Do you see where particularly now that being able to meditate is probably more important than it ever was?
Ariel Garten (06:11):
Absolutely. What meditation allows you to do is to down regulate your amygdala. The amygdala is the part of the brain associated with fear. It’s the part of the brain that’s always scanning for danger and creating thoughts around danger and feelings of scaredness. When you start a meditation practice, what you’re doing is you’re teaching your body to relax physically and you’re teaching your mind to turn away from things that it’s scared of and onto things that are neutral. You’re learning to stay out of your negative wandering thoughts and into a neutral space and then you are strengthening an area of brain called the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the area of your brain associated with planning, organization, attention, all of these higher order skills. You’re actually able to make better decisions, plan more effectively and be significantly calmer in the moment.
Dr. Steven Gundry (07:05):
Okay. Our viewers and listeners are saying, Well that is easy for you to say, Ariel but the rent is due. I no longer have a waitress job and I have three kids trapped in my house and I’m about ready to kick the dog who I love. How that hack am I going to meditate to get in this state?
Ariel Garten (07:31):
Baby steps, small steps, one at a time. Start with just breathing. Our body gets stuck in fight or flight when we are always on high alert and as you take a deep breath into your diaphragm, you trigger something called your vagus nerve, which brings your body out of fight or flight and into rest and digest. Start by taking deep breaths and start to relax your body and then put your attention away from something and onto something neutral. That’s the real key of a focused attention meditation practice. When your mind gets wandering into a thought, you let that thought go and you come back to your breath.
Ariel Garten (08:06):
It can be hard to do but when you do it bit by bit by bit, you find more and more moments of calm in your day and tools like guided meditations that can bring you through relaxing your body, shifting your perspective, moving towards gratitude and tools like Muse that teach you how to take your mind out of the room and the place into something neutral can be really helpful if you don’t really have an existing practice.
Dr. Steven Gundry (08:33):
What about … I’m glad you brought up breathing because during a high risk surgery or where something that you weren’t anticipating happens during a surgery, heart surgery and of this person’s life is in your hand. One of the things that I noticed that I wasn’t actually never taught to do was I would just change my breathing pattern and at a time when your breathing pattern would normally go, the fact that you would slow your breathing is was one of my best coping skills for those times when bad things did happen.
Ariel Garten (09:27):
Breathing is key. The end of your diaphragm is actually mechanically attached to your vagus nerve. As you breathe in, you’re literally pulling on the part of your body that moves you into rest and digest your vagus nerve. Deep, deep breath start to trigger rest and digest and you also have something called the sinusoidal arrhythmia. As you breathe in, your heart rate increases. As you breathe out, your heart rate decreases. As you spend time in a long exhale, like four counts in six or eight counts out, you’re actually spending more time in a system where your body is in slow heartbeat and that again triggers and messages your body to calm right down. Remember, long exhales, deep belly breaths relaxes the body.
Dr. Steven Gundry (10:15):
We have four dogs, three of whom at any one time are sleeping on our bed and one of the things that seems that dogs could teach us is when they’re finally settled down, they do this incredibly long exhale and I think maybe they’re trying to teach us something in this day and age but you’re right, slowing a breathing down and just exhaling is probably one of the best things we can do without a Muse band with us.
Ariel Garten (10:50):
Yes, you can. You can do it anywhere, anytime. I recommend whenever you’re feeling stressed, deep breaths or even set your alarm clock every hour on the hour when you notice, just deep breath, relax the body. Cumulatively it really will help.
Dr. Steven Gundry (11:06):
Tell us all about Muse and how this came about. Tell me how this started because I’ve met you now over the past few years and this is a certainly unique device. This is your newest one, the sport band. Tell me what’s the inspiration, how does it work?
Ariel Garten (11:30):
How it works is Muse gives you real time feedback on your brain while we meditate. We all know that meditation is good for you but it’s hard to do so Muse actually tracks your brain activity during meditation and lets you know when you’re focused and when your mind is wandering and you actually hear the sound of your mind. The metaphor we use is your mind is like the weather. When you’re thinking you’re distracted, you hear it as stormy and as you’re guided to clear, focused attention, it quiets the storm.
Ariel Garten (11:56):
This becomes a very easy way to establish your practice or if you are an expert meditator, to have a new insight into your practice and then after the fact, we have data, there’s charts, scores, graphs, things that show you what your brain was doing and also show you your progress session after session. There’s also sensors for your heart, your breath and your body to teach you how to relax your breathing, to get into a slower heart rate and to find stillness in your body and so this whole experience was something that creation of Muse was something that started over a decade ago in the lab of Dr. Steve Mann in Toronto, he’s one of the inventors of the wearable computer and we were using an early brain computer interface to allow people to actually hear what was going on inside their brain and we recognize that if we applied this technology to meditation, we would be able to do something that was going to be really valuable, teach more people to meditate.
Dr. Steven Gundry (12:52):
Let’s step back a second. You’re saying that this device, I can actually listen to my brain how is it help our viewers and listeners, how is this listening to my brain? What are you actually recording with this?
Ariel Garten (13:11):
There’re EEG sensors on the forehead so it’s the same kind of system that you’d have in a hospital or a research lab and the EEG is tracking just your state of focused versus mind wandering. We’re not listening to anything else. We can’t detect anything else. It’s quite crude in a lot of ways but what we can detect is powerful, which is when you’re focused or you’re in your meditation state, when your mind is wandering, when you’re in your ruminative thoughts and we send that data to your phone and that’s been translated into guiding sounds, that cue you in your mind is focused and when your mind has wandered and really show you how to start or enhance your practice.
Dr. Steven Gundry (13:49):
Just for our listeners and viewers so she uses one of the programs is a gentle rain. Now, very calming and when your mind wanders and correct me if I’m wrong, you get kind of a thunderstorm, the rain gets harder and so help me because you’re going to help our listeners and viewers, tell us how I’m listening to my gentle rain and I’m doing a wonderful thing and then all of a sudden the thunderstorm comes up and I’ll give you an example. This morning I did it and I was 76% general rain and at 24% I think thunderstorms and it told me I did a great job but come on, I’ve got a lot of thunderstorms going on. How do I quiet those thunderstorms down?
Ariel Garten (14:45):
First of all, thunderstorms are okay. Those are thoughts and what we’re learning here is this-
Dr. Steven Gundry (14:49):
Oh, thank goodness.
Ariel Garten (14:49):
… Yeah. It’s okay to have a stormy mind. What we’re learning here is the ability to take your mind out of the storm and put it onto something neutral. In a meditation practice, your mind wanders onto a thought. It’s then your job to notice that, Hey, I’m in a wandering thought right now, I’m thinking about something and to then make the choice to say, Hey, I’m going to let go of that thought and come back to my breath and actually the choice is very simple. All it is is like, Oh thunderstorms. That’s your cue that your mind is wandering, back to my breath and then you put your attention on your breath quiets down again. Eventually a thought pops up because that’s what we do. We think we’re humans that thunderstorms go, that’s your cue, that your mind has wandered somewhere and then immediately back to my breath.
Ariel Garten (15:31):
It becomes this way of really quickly queuing you about when you’re in your thoughts, reminding you that what you’re learning now is taking yourself out of your thoughts and onto your breath and then rewarding you for being in the neutral state of being on your breath and so what I’ve just described there is the attentional loop and that’s kind of like the bench press rep of meditation, noticing your mind is wandering and returning and this allows you to do many bench press reps and intentional loop practices throughout your 5 or 10 minute meditation. It really strengthens your prefrontal cortex, strengthens your attention and strengthens your ability to stay out of your thoughts and be rewarded for staying in the moment in something that is neutral like your breath.
Dr. Steven Gundry (16:14):
How does Muse and I get it. How does Muse help you, a person who’s trying to learn to meditate? How does that enhance the process? How does it cut through a lot of the pain and agony of learning to meditate.
Ariel Garten (16:34):
Most people learning to meditate, just sit there kind of wondering what’s supposed to happen. If you have no idea, Muse literally shows you, it tells you exactly what to do. Your mind is wandered, come back, stay in focus. We’re rewarding you for being in focus and then you can actually see what your brain was doing. You’re like, Oh, this is when I was meditating. That works. This is when I was distracted. That doesn’t work. If you are an experienced meditator, this then gives you a whole new insight into your meditation practice.
Ariel Garten (17:01):
Now, if you’re somebody who has meditated several times, you’ve got to practice but maybe you’re not great at it. Well, Muse really cues you immediately when your mind has wandered and so it gets you to be hyper aware of your thoughts. It builds a skill of metacognition, the ability to watch your thoughts rather than beat inside of them and so it allows you to do more of those ‘bench press reps’ within your 10 minute meditation.
Ariel Garten (17:26):
Now, if you’re somebody who doesn’t love meditating because when you sit there, your thoughts are anxious and frustrated and you just get more anxious, Muse helps with that too because there is a sound during the meditation, it takes your mind out of the content of your thoughts and so you are building the skill of the awareness of your thoughts but you’re not caught in the anxiousness of the thoughts themselves. For somebody learning to meditate works on multiple fronts.
Dr. Steven Gundry (17:55):
Okay, let’s get back to our original premise. Everybody’s anxious, everybody’s distracted. Give us the reason why other than the obvious calming practice, why meditation right now is just so critical. Why should we bother to do this? Because I’m so distracted, I don’t have time.
Ariel Garten (18:24):
Our amygdala is the part of our brain that is supposed to warn us of things that are dangerous, are all on hyper-drive right now. We have constant thoughts about the concerns of the world and it really doesn’t serve us to have that happening to our mind or our body. As we are in States of stress and fight or flight, it actually decreases our immune systems. The things that we’re trying to build right now, stress increases cortisol, which then actually depresses your immune system function.
Ariel Garten (18:54):
Now most of us kind of feel like, Okay, I’m stressed, I’m supposed to feel like this because there’s something big happening but actually your brain is just constantly representing the same danger over and over and over and over again and it’s not helpful. It’s not useful to you. When you begin a practice that allows you to shift your thoughts and a practice that allows you to calm your body, you are more able to spend time in a calm and peaceful state and that’s able to have lots of benefits to your body as well as your mind improved decision making, improved emotional control, improved physiology, improved immune system, et cetera.
Ariel Garten (19:32):
It also makes life just a lot more pleasant for the people who are around you. If you have kids that are really frustrating because you’re trying to work from home, a tool that allows you to focus before work is really helpful, tool that allows you to calm down. Meditation being the tool. Meditation, allowing you to calm down so that you can be more present for your kids and not snap at them or snap at your partner is incredibly valuable right now. Don’t get caught up thinking I’m supposed to be this way. Know that you can have a choice about how you’re going to be. You’re going to have a lot of emotions and that’s okay but you can learn the techniques that will allow you to exist with a little bit more grace during this time.
Dr. Steven Gundry (20:14):
Is there a better time to meditate? Has that been looked into?
Ariel Garten (20:20):
This is a question I commonly get and actually the best time to meditate is when you’re actually going to do it. People have conceptions around, you should meditate first thing in the morning because they’ve seen it on Instagram with somebody meditating to a sunrise, it really doesn’t matter when you meditate. The key to a meditation practice is establishing something that is going to be helpful for you to do every day. If that’s when you’re in bed first thing in the morning, great. If that’s the five minutes you have during your kid’s tablet time, awesome. If that’s before you fall asleep, fine. Whenever it is that works for you and you want to try to do it at the same time every day to build a habit that’s not always possible so don’t worry about that fact but the more you’re able to build consistency and regularity, the more likely it is that you actually do that thing every day.
Dr. Steven Gundry (21:12):
What do you tell all the stay at home parents with the stay at home kids? That it’s not only okay to have 5 minutes for yourself or 10 minutes for yourself. It may actually be essential for you to be there the rest of the time for your kids. Is that saying what you would say?
Ariel Garten (21:38):
Absolutely. I am a mom who’s at home with a three year old and you know what I’d really say is you can only do what you can do. My three year old is currently watching his tablet because we need to have that period of time every day because he’s stuck in the house and I need to get work done and so does dad and that is absolutely okay. Do not feel bad about any of this and the more you can take some amount of time to ground your style, stay calm, stay present, make everything as okay ish as possible for them, the better life is going to be in the house for everyone and the more joyful moments you’re going to be able to have and identify and the more you are able to be fun and creative with them in the little moments that you have. Take the time for yourself. Everybody will appreciate it.
Dr. Steven Gundry (22:27):
Yeah. Great advice. Speaking of advice, the other thing that my patients tell me is really affected during this time is if it wasn’t effective before is sleep. Many people are entering, they’ve just watched the news, it’s all grim and sleep is not coming naturally. People seem to be waking up at all hours of the night. My wife can’t wait to see the morning news, find out the grim details of the day, not really but so con can this band actually help with sleep as well?
Ariel Garten (23:14):
Yes. That’s actually part of why we designed it. One of the things that we noticed was people were using Muse to meditate before they went to bed in order to improve sleep and so when we built Muse S, which is the device that you are wearing, we built it specifically to help people fall asleep and it’s a really beautiful experience. Muse S gives you a beautiful guided meditation along with a soundtrack that’s actually built for your body that’s designed to entrain you into sleep.
Ariel Garten (23:45):
You’re hearing the sound that is generated from your own heart, your breath, your body. It’s really beautiful. You hear it as lapping waves and crickets and as your heart slows down, as you fall asleep so does the music and then the music slows a little bit more in training your heart to slow down even further to guide you into sleep. What we’ve discovered is it’s really been incredibly effective at teaching people to quiet their mind so they’re not in there ruminating thoughts that are keeping them from sleeping, quiet and calm their bodies so they’re in a lower cortisol level throughout the night and help them fall asleep faster.
Dr. Steven Gundry (24:23):
Actually I have to tell you a hilarious story and it’s not using your band but this past year we did a mission work for charity water in Ethiopia and we were camping out in tents drilling wells for people and people had told us who had done this before, that the hyena noises at night were very disturbing. My wife, Penny, got some ear buds from a company that made … you could choose rain sounds and she was assured that she wouldn’t hear the hyenas and so my wife used these and we were in tents and she kept waking up at night saying, “It’s pouring rain, it’s pouring rain.” And I’m going, “What are you talking about?” Well, it’s her earbuds but you’re right. I mean, she didn’t hear the hyenas.
Ariel Garten (25:26):
Muse shuts off. You don’t have to worry about that. It doesn’t transmit while you’re sleeping.
Dr. Steven Gundry (25:32):
Oh thank goodness. All right. How long do people need to use this device to go to sleep? Is it something that just becomes part of a practice or can people, for lack of a better word, wean themselves from the device once they’ve learned or how do you see it used?
Ariel Garten (25:58):
It varies from person to person. We have hundreds of thousands of people that use Muse in their regular lives and some of them use it initially just to learn to meditate and then once they have the skill do it on their own. Others have used it every day for the last six years since its come out because they love it as a meditation tool. Some people go back and forth. Also multiple people can use the same band. Once a head band comes into a household, you’ll find mom bought it and she is using it, husband steals it, now it’s on his night side, he’s falling asleep with it, then the kids start using it and then it goes around and around the house and so it becomes a really fun way to bring meditation into all of your lives.
Dr. Steven Gundry (26:42):
Oh, that’s cool. In fact that’s a really great idea and in this day and age it justifies the price of multiple people can share it and use it.
Ariel Garten (26:51):
Yeah. Share it and use it [inaudible 00:26:52], or like one psychotherapy session is just one person one time and this is something that use over and over and over again for the same price.
Dr. Steven Gundry (26:59):
All right. Now help me with my monkey brain and help all my viewers and listeners with monkey brain and for those of you who don’t know what that is, that your brain is constantly talking and it won’t shut up and there’s no possible way that you can meditate and why bother? Give us some hope.
Ariel Garten (27:26):
Everyone can learn to meditate. Absolutely everyone and so long as you’ve just stopped for a moment and put your attention on your breath and taking yourself out of your thoughts just by putting your attention on your breath, you don’t have to do anything special. You have had a moment of meditation and as you link those moments together, your body and your mind start to orient towards them. Don’t fear. Every person that I’ve met that says, “I’ve never been able to meditate.” Ultimately does learn how to do the practice when you just put your time and attention to it. There is much, much hope.
Dr. Steven Gundry (28:01):
And I wrote in The Longevity Paradox that there are actually good human studies that show that meditators actually have a better health, number one. They actually have a better, more diverse gut microbiome than non-meditators and there is some suggestion that a longevity will ensue from a meditative practice. What do you think or is that just hogwash or real deal?
Ariel Garten (28:38):
The data seems to demonstrate that in the work of Elizabeth Blackburn who’s a Nobel prize winning scientist, she demonstrated that meditation is able to increase the length of telomeres. That’s a marker for cellular aging on the end of our DNA. Other research has shown that meditation is able to make your brain look younger. The work of Dr. Eileen [Looters 00:29:00], shows that longterm meditators have brains that look on average 7.5 years younger than non-meditators and she defined a longterm meditator as somebody who’s been meditating for five years or more. The evidence is looking quite compelling.
Dr. Steven Gundry (29:14):
Okay, next question. How long every day do I have to meditate to get a benefit?
Ariel Garten (29:25):
The studies tend to look at 20 minutes per day of meditation but that can be a lot for people. I always recommend starting with 3 minutes a day, moving it up to 5 or 10 and the studies that we’ve done with Muse, we’ve demonstrated that as little as 3 minutes a day can have significant impact. We just did a study with the Mayo Clinic and they looked at breast cancer patients awaiting surgery using Muse and through using Muse in the cancer care process, they are able to improve their quality of life and decrease their stress and fatigue and their instruction was simply use it for at least 3 minutes every day. Starting a little bit really does work and just move yourself up as you become comfortable.
Dr. Steven Gundry (30:07):
And the cool thing about your app is you can dial in what you want in terms of the length of time for meditation.
Ariel Garten (30:13):
Exactly.
Dr. Steven Gundry (30:15):
And secretly there’s actually a 1 minute time period to it. Maybe, I shouldn’t have told everybody that.
Ariel Garten (30:22):
It’s okay so long as you start. Tiny habits, build, build, build.
Dr. Steven Gundry (30:27):
Yeah. In your introduction, you do a three minute one but I found the one minute one for us busy people. All right. Got any other tips during this time particularly, you don’t have the Muse band, anything else we can do to improve sleep quality right now?
Ariel Garten (30:51):
Absolutely. The first thing is give yourself permission. You don’t need to be looking at the news every moment and you also don’t need to be thinking about it as you’re falling asleep. If you actually, as you’re falling asleep, give yourself permission to say, Hey, I don’t need to think about this right now. This is not helpful to me. I’m allowed to sleep. It can actually have a profound effect in allowing your brain to actually shut down and say, Oh right, we don’t need to be circulating these thoughts. This is not helpful at this moment. From a sleep perspective. There’s also the obvious things like no caffeine after noon and is since you’re not going out to the office, you might try cutting back caffeine even further because you’d be surprised what an impact that has on sleep and anxiety.
Ariel Garten (31:36):
You also want to stick to a schedule because schedules are healthy for you when we’re in situations where there’s a lot of change in lessons but allow yourself to sleep as long as you need to. If your alarm used to go off at 7:00 and you felt grumpy about it, move it to 7:30 or 8:00. We need all the sleep we can get in these times and if it ends up being later in the morning at this point, there’s probably not somebody judging you for it. Give yourself permission to do what ever it is that you need to do. You’re going to feel however you feel. We’re all feeling a little bit strange right now and that is okay. Rest in the global understanding that we are all in this together and it’s strange for everyone and we’re all here to help one another, figure it out. We’ve got each other’s backs.
Dr. Steven Gundry (32:23):
Yeah. And that’s why we’re still doing our podcast. We’ve got some fascinating social distancing going on and but we’re going to keep going because getting people like you out there to help us through all this is my mission and I appreciate you coming on and in this time you’ve got a three year old to take care of but we really appreciate you coming out and giving us some insights. What’s next for you? Assuming all of this finally finishes up for you. You got any fun projects?
Ariel Garten (32:58):
Well, COVID is a pretty big project for us now. Making sure that we have lots of resources that are available to people. We have free meditations, the SOS call meditation. We have monthly meditation challenges where you can sign up every day to get your meditation practice going with the supportive community. We’re really growing and tending our community, it’s thousands and thousands of people who really love and support each other and talk about your meditation practices. They welcome in novices who’ve never meditated before. They’ll answer any questions you have so it’s a great way to feel connected and supported and then we’re always working on more guided content. We have hundreds and hundreds of guided meditations for whatever comes up in your life or relationship problems, work issues, focus, performance, frustrated standing in line. We literally have a two minute meditation for standing in line, for finding morning joy and so we’re always kind of looking for what is the content that we can give people that meets them exactly where they’re at so that they can find more peace shift perspective and find more calm in the moment.
Dr. Steven Gundry (34:04):
My good friend Tony Robbins always says that these sort of times are probably the biggest opportunities that can present themselves to you if you will actually view what appears to be happening at you to be happening for you. Does meditation help you develop a new skillset or decide to make a leap into a new career or a new job? Is there studies about that?
Ariel Garten (34:41):
That’s a good question. I don’t know of any specific studies but when you look at what meditation allows you to do, which is get out of the stress, get out of the fight or flight and strengthen your prefrontal cortex, which is the part associated with planning decision making inhibition. Yeah. You are able to kind of have that wisdom, the ability to survey the landscape and rather than be caught up in the experience, be able to sort of rise above and see what’s going on and then make your best next move. Do something different than the rot that you’re stuck in and that’s really the key for meditation. It takes you out of the rot of your own mind and allows you to make a different choice.
Dr. Steven Gundry (35:22):
Oh, I can see a meditative app right now coming onto the Muse App for making a new life choice right now.
Ariel Garten (35:32):
We are happy to work with on that content. That sounds fantastic.
Dr. Steven Gundry (35:34):
All right. Ariel, it was great seeing you again and having you on the podcast. Where do people find you? Where do they find all this free content during this crazy time? And give us the connections.
Ariel Garten (35:51):
Sure. You can find Muse at choosemuse.com. You can find the free meditations. If you download the Muse app in the iPhone or Android store and you can find myself on Instagram at @ariels_musings and Twitter, ariel.garten.
Dr. Steven Gundry (36:08):
Great. Just to reiterate so you don’t actually have to own a Muse band to download the Muse app and use it for it’s free content?
Ariel Garten (36:23):
That’s correct.
Dr. Steven Gundry (36:24):
I think that’s fantastic news. There’s lots of great stuff there to help you without buying the band but I happen to own two bands, so what the heck?
Ariel Garten (36:37):
Awesome.
Dr. Steven Gundry (36:38):
All right. It’s time for our audience question. Joe M. Gardner wrote in and asked, I currently use a lot of olive oil but nowhere near a liter a week. And for those of you just tuning in, I like to have you try to get a liter a week, like three of the blue zones do. Other than drinking it, how do you consume that much? Well, as you know, my favorite thing is the only purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth. Anytime you are eating anything, the bottle of olive oil should be at the table and you should be drenching it.
Dr. Steven Gundry (37:17):
The other thing that I’ve actually been trying, since everybody’s stuck at home, here’s my new latest tip. I want you to take a jigger of olive oil, put it into your mouth and rather than coconut oil pulling, I want you to do olive oil pulling because there are some interesting papers and I’m not going to make a scientific claim but there are some fascinating papers that polyphenols in olive oil impact the ability of Corona viruses in general, in general to not replicate. I got to get olive oil in you and so do some oil pulling with olive oil and then swallow it and Joe, that’s an extra good way to get it into your system as well. That’s a great question and thanks for bringing that. Okay, Ariel, thank you so much. Stay safe. We’ll get through this and-
Ariel Garten (38:17):
We will all get through it. I’m glad to be in Canada and feeling safe and sending my absolute love and best wishes and sense of connection to absolutely everyone.
Dr. Steven Gundry (38:26):
… Appreciate it and thanks again for being here. It’s time for this week’s review of the week. This one comes from Joanne on YouTube. Thank you Dr. Gundry for your generosity and sharing your expertise with us through your podcast series. As you yourself speak or as you interview someone on your podcast, I frequently feel I’m privileged to be overhearing a lively conversation of experts in their fields and indeed I am to receive the information you and your guests share with us I know would cost a pretty penny in a doctor’s office if the doctor even knew enough to articulate that information. I am also so very grateful to you and your wife, Penny, for sharing with us what you’ve learned over the decades. I can’t fathom a price tag it would carry for me to get this information through a private doctor or a naturopathic healer.
Dr. Steven Gundry (39:22):
Well, thank you very much Joanne. I’m glad you that comes across and anything I can do, anything our whole team here can do to get information that at least I and others think is important for you to know is we’re going to keep doing this and we’re going to keep doing this through the Coronavirus crisis and as long as we can, we’re going to keep doing it social distancing included. Hang in there and tell your friends about us and that’s all watch on YouTube.
Dr. Steven Gundry (39:57):
I want to take a moment and thank you for watching and tuning in to The Dr. Gundry Podcast. I know things are difficult and a little scary right now and that a lot of people turn to my podcast and other great health podcasts to get up to the minute news and information about what’s going on in the world, which is why we’re committed to releasing The Dr. Gundry Podcasts during this time for as long as possible. I’ll make sure that share updates about the current crisis tricks to make social isolation more bearable and even some off topic podcasts for when you need a little distraction.
Dr. Steven Gundry (40:38):
For as long as it’s safe to record, we’ll be here for you. Practicing safe social distancing at our end of course. Make sure you keep checking back every week for new episodes and maybe even some bonus content too. Stay healthy out there. We will get through this and I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
Dr. Steven Gundry (41:05):
Thanks for joining me on this episode of The Dr. Gundry Podcast. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts and if you want to watch each episode of The Dr. Gundry Podcast, you can always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/doctorgundry because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
