157: The Missing Link Between Health, Fertility & Happiness with Colleen Wachob

Essentially health, nutrition, or movement will have about a 30% impact on your overall mortality. But something like commuting and connection can really move the needle more like 40%. But I think it is by far the unsung hero of this health and longevity movement. I would say you have to make the same investment in your joint connection that you put towards other elements of your health and wellness routine. So that can be as simple as like giving yourself calendar reminders to check in with friends because part of having friends as being a good friend. By listening to the Coherence Code podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition, either in yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to the Coherence Code podcast where we explore how the mind and body worked together so you can move from stress and inner conflict to clarity, calm, and alignment. My name is Lauren Brown. I'm a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical therapist. And through my work, I've seen that healing happens when you remove what gets in the way and allow the body and the nervous system to do what they're just trying to do to heal. Welcome to the Coherence Code podcast. My guest today, I'm very excited about I've been wanting to speak to Colleen for a long time, Colleen Walk-Up. She is the founder of Mind Body Green and I'm going to give you an intro to Colleen. But I want to share why she, I think, is a perfect guest for us. And it kind of goes in the title of our podcast. So we talk about consciousness. I'm hoping today Colleen is going to talk about her wake up call kind of a life threatening event that she had in her life. We talk about fertility here. She's going to share, she's had a fertility journey. We talk about beyond meaning paramanopause and menopause. I think she's 45 and older. She looks younger than that, but I've heard her talk before. So based on the math, I would guess she's 46 at the time of her recording, but she gave me a thumbs up for that. And our whole thing is on a holistic and integrative approach with credibility. People know I'm always bringing on MD's PhDs to talk about the stuff that sounds a little bit weird, but bringing that credibility factor. And as I mentioned, she's the co-founder and CEO of Mind Body Green. And that has been my impression that they do think outside the box, bring an integrative holistic approaches, but with some evidence informed behind it. They're looking to vet out the nonsense, I guess I would say. So I want to welcome Colleen, walk up to our podcast. She founded Mind Body Green back in 2009. And that is an independent media brand dedicated to well-being. And we're going to talk about what well-being means to her. And they get over 15 million monthly unique visitors. Do check out their website if you haven't done so already. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to have Colleen on our site is to offer this resource to all of our listeners. She graduated from Stanford University with degrees in international relations and Spanish. She spent 10 years working at Fortune 500 companies, including Gap, Walmart, and Amazon. Before she started to vote, her life worked to Mind Body Green. She's been a speaker at Fortune 500 companies in numerous trade conferences on well-being trends. And her first book, which is where I got introduced, I knew who Mind Body Green was. I didn't know who the founders were. And then I picked up the book, The Joy of Well-Being. I think your friend Gabby Bernstein might have been the one that I was listening to a podcast mentioned it. And I picked it up, read it, totally enjoyed it. As she wrote it with her husband and business partner, Jason, back in 2023. And I had a chance to review it again and lead up to our podcast. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for everything that you do and for inviting me onto the show. Well, let's get to know you a little bit better about your wake-up call. Now, you had a pulmonary embolism in your early 30s. And that can be a life or death moment. I wanted you to walk us through what was happening in your life at that time. And basically, what did you ignore before that happened? And how did that experience reshape your relationship with your body and your purpose in what you're doing now? Yeah. So looking back on my pulmonary embolism, it was one of those inflection points in life. And I think it could have been a breakdown, but for me, it was a breakthrough. And at the time, I was living the typical New York life. I had a demanding job. I worked out a lot. I had a very active social life. And I was probably burning the candle on both ends. And I remember how it happened. And I was even reluctant when I had gone to a yoga class in the morning. And then I was having trouble walking around the West Village. And I was like, I'm kind of out of breath. So I called my husband and was like, Hey, can you come walk around the city with me? And then on our way home on the subway stairs, I collapsed and and fell down. And I got up and I got out of the subway station called my doctor. And I was like, you know, I think I'm dehydrated. I was doing everything to talk myself out of going to the ER in a beautiful Saturday morning in New York. And I was lethargic the rest of the weekend. And then when Monday came, I was like, okay, I'm going to work. My husband was like, the only way you're going to work is if you stop at the doctors on the way. And I stopped within a few minutes. He's like, you're having a pulmonary embolism. I was so confused to give me a little sign that said, I'm having a pulmonary embolism. And you know, this was pre-lover. Jason gave you that a little side toll. No, the doctor did. The doctor did. Yeah. Okay. And so I think he was concerned that potentially. I might make it there. Or what if I made it there and wasn't able to articulate what was happening. And when I got to the ER, it showers of clots in my lungs. And, you know, while they gave me blood, then I was to work through the clots. It's really a process with your body. And that was the wake-up call of really evaluating my life, evaluating my priorities, evaluate how, whether or not I was thriving. And it was simultaneously when my body green was starting out. And so I was able to use all of these experts as almost like a Marco Polo game of, okay, are we getting a little bit better? A little bit worse, a little bit better, a little bit worse. I did a lot of things right. I did a lot of things wrong. I met a lot of great people. I also met some quacks. And it was, you know, really shaped kind of how I view health and wellness. And I want people to have a faster route to get there, to have, be able to get those high ROI kind of experiences that are going to have the biggest impact on their health and well-being. And ultimately, I hope that people are living a life where they don't have to have this wake-up call to kind of reshape and kick them in the butt to change how they are living their life trajectory. I like the comment how you said, break down into breakthrough. I've heard it as you know, some people get PTSD post traumatic stress disorder and then there's post traumatic growth disorder. And you use that wake-up call shift to your trajectory on the well-being circuit and how and how you do it for yourself. I want to talk about, you know, the pillars of health. But I don't want to, I don't want to spend a lot of time focusing on diet and movement. But we need to talk about it. I like what you're bringing to this to this area about the joy, your book, the joy of well-being, like, you know, people, it's the joy of well-being. But if you read the book, you can really unpack joy here. And that's what I want to do here because there's other things that impact our health, these intangibles, it's harder research, although there is some research. I think it's the missing link. I'm 25 years in practice with us talking right now. And I used to focus a lot on the body and I still do. It's it's bidirectional. But man, that spiritual side, that community side, that joy aspect to me, if that gets right, everything else falls into place. And as you've experienced it, you were doing all the physical diet lifestyle, everything. And you still have some health issues. So can you go into like the difference in well-being and wellness? And really why you, in Jason wrote this book and and how important joy is or why you think it's so important in this journey. Yeah. And the wellness movement has exploded over the past decade. And I there was a moment in time where Jason and I were looking at the wellness movement. And we were like, yikes, it's a little cringe. You know, we are people who have devoted our life's work. You see the explosion in the market. But then you look at the metrics. People aren't happier. People really physically aren't much better. So while there's a lot more wellness, we really haven't moved the needle on so many metrics. And I think we kind of lost the plot with a lot of the way in which wellness is portrayed in social media. The algorithms favors extremes. There's a New York Times article about the types of articles that go the most viral. It can inspire people. It can create awe. Or the third is it can create anger. And that's what you see. That third emotion of anger, a lot of in social media, because it's easier to create that type of content. And then you also see the algorithm favoring simplicity of message. It's a lot harder to get a really nuanced balanced message across the algorithms. And how that manifests itself into the modern wellness movement is you have these extreme points of view. You have really elaborate protocols. And when Jason and I were writing our book, it was the pandemic. We were entrepreneurs, parents of two kids with unstable childcare and an unstable school that was getting canceled every day. And we're looking at, you know, how the wellness movement was being portrayed in elaborate morning routines and protocols. We're like, this doesn't apply to us anymore. And we lost the plot. And if I were to recenter kind of the wellness conversation. We really want to focus more on these major needle movers. My friend JJ Virgin has this saying that you have to bake the cake before you put on the frosting. And I think the algorithms really favor kind of these incidentals and these, you know, of the moment tools, but you got to nail the fundamentals before you congratulate to that. And I think, you know, the unsung hero of all of this is really connection and community. And that's where we kind of lost the plot. And in moving to Miami recently, you know, I think that's a, it's a city that really values community. And that has a really vibrant health and wellness community. And I've seen the impact that it's made on me in terms of having those connections. The journals, Marcha Zoroski has said that, you know, essentially health nutrition or movement will have about a 30% impact on your overall mortality. But something like community and connection can really move the needle more like 40% and, you know, it's a much harder thing to develop a product around or to sell. And I want people to think about their joy span in the same way that they do their health span and their lifespan. And that is what are those moments of joy that we have in our life. And if a protocol isn't bringing you joy, I do think you need to evaluate it because at the end of the day, if there's an exercise that you just absolutely hate doing, you're not going to do it. And, you know, since these are habitual habits that we're creating, how do we create them with that lens of joy in mind? Yeah. And the key is joy. If you, if you enjoy it, you'll tend to do it longer. There's, what's the expression? The longer you do it, the easier it becomes, the easier it becomes, the longer you do it. So you got to have it. And if there's some joy, I want to go into the diet, I want to go into breath, because I use that a lot in my practice. But you touched on connectivity and community. And I don't want to, and even spirituality, I, it is the important part. Like you said, it's hard to build a product around. It's hard to pat and something like this. Twice I've heard about the Rosetta effect. The first time I was reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, I can't remember what was outliers or tipping point. And then the second time I was reminded about it in your book, can you share that? Because I think that, you know, stories help people realize how important community is. And at the time of recording, with social media and just people are on their phones. Like, and I'm guilty of it too. I'll be in the elevator. I'm in a waiting room. Wherever I'm at, soon as somebody is bored, the phone goes out. Like they go and they look like if you make eye contact with somebody, unconsciously, they pull out the phone and start looking at it. So Facebook does not create connectivity. Instagram does not create connectivity. There's that loneliness epidemic. And I thought the way you discussed it in your book with the Rosetta effect is important. So you're willing to dive into the connectivity and how this is a health benefit. You touched on so many, so many important things there. And the idea that a text message doesn't really qualify as the same type of connectivity is really important. And I think about this a lot with my kids who are six and eight now. But there was a book that came out where they actually looked Kate's book about what made Maddie run. And it was a young girl who was lonely and unfortunately committed suicide, but she had all these friends and they were trying to understand, okay, how could this happen? She had all the right connectivity in her life. And they were looking at how a text message from a friend or a parent doesn't have the same oxytocin effect as a hug or a warm embrace. And I think we've come to kind of use these substitutes of like, oh, I'm in touch. I'm good, you know, emoji. But it's not having the same impact on our brain, which is just something to remember. And there's been a lot of kind of different ways people have come to really encourage face to face or IRL connectivity post COVID. And it's something we all have to work on. I've had a friend recently moved to in the hometown. And she's been tasked with going on 51states with new friends. But there is this kind of agency that we have to have in connectivity that maybe we don't apply to this part of our life with the same rigor that we do. Okay, I'm going to go to the gym four or five days of week, but you're like, okay, how do I make that same investment in my friendship? You brought up the Rosetta study, which had shown how an immigrant community had just incredible lifespan while they were all living together. And it wasn't in tell that they started breaking apart and living farther apart that had showed the biggest strain in lifespan. So how can we keep these connectivity ties alive? How can we create these rituals in our life? So that if we live in a very fast-paced digital world, we can still have those rituals. You also talked about breath work in spirituality, like all my favorite things and, you know, one long question. But breath work when we talk about those high ROI activities, like if you're going to start somewhere, you breathe 30,000 times a day. It's a great place to start. And I learned through my pulmonary embolism that I wasn't breathing right. And I think we all have to kind of, there's so many tools out there that I think it can almost be overwhelming because you kind of have to dip into and figure out what works for you for yourself. Like what I go back to each and every night for myself is to 4/8/7, 4/7/8 breath, where you inhale for four, you hold it for seven, and then you exhale for eight. And I find that just such a great way to calm my nervous system down. But I really think, you know, it kind of goes back to joy. You got to figure out what works for you. I've tried them all. I've tried TM meditation. I've done all sorts of different versions of it. And you got to figure out, okay, what's the thing you actually look forward to doing at the end of the day? That breath is so I do, I do 4/4/8. Okay. I was doing a talk years ago with Dr. Angel Wyle, you've probably heard of him. Of course. Okay. So we were talking together. We were at a conference together and I was a speaker, he was a speaker. And he taught the breath for six, eight. But I heard it wrong and started using 4/4/8. So that's, so that's how I do 4/4/8. And I have to say, one of the most common feedback for my patients is the biggest difference they've experienced is introducing the breath. And I'll share like many of the physicians I've interviewed and I've met a few of always said, if you can get the body in parasympathetic multiple times a day, it will heal. This is the key. The rest and digest, breed and feed nervous system. The other part that I want you to talk about is I use all of my practices, nose breathing, listening so important. Here I am not listening to you. Ready to talk. And when you nose breathe, your mouth is shut. Right. So to me, breath, sleep, connectivity, and spirituality, something that is not talked enough about that I thought your book did a great job. So can we talk a little bit more about the breath? Yeah. And you know, you brought up so many of the reasons that people, proponents of nasal breathing. And when I think of kind of what had the biggest impact on my own journey, it's that you're more likely to be in fight or flight mode when you're breathing through your mouth, rather than your nose. And this can lead to chronic stress. And when we think of anxiety disorders and troubled sleep and sleep is something I've struggled with my whole life. And you know, a good night's sleep really does start in the morning. It starts with how you're breathing before we even start talking about nighttime routines. So that to me was one of the biggest needle movers in terms of why I was embarking on this nasal journey, nasal breathing journey. And I think the best way to start is during the day, when you're in the car, when you're in traffic, you know, when you can be intentional and thoughtful about it. So you can start growing those muscles now. And so that when you're at night, it comes more naturally to you. And my six and eight year old, my eight year old, you know, does sleep with some mouth tape on. And I, you know, I wish kind of these habits, you know, we're having these conversations when I was a younger kid, as opposed to trying to start it later in life. But what is one of the biggest ROI, you know, activities? It really is sleep. So if you can set yourself up for a good solid nights of sleep, because otherwise without sleep, your body can't recover, you can't exercise. And we know that exercise is something that can have such a profound impact on your on your health span and your longevity. You know, you're really not setting up your body for success. If you're unable to recover that these two are just so interrelated and so important. We're looking at some of the key things. So we talked about breath breath. There's many different types of breathing yoga type breathings to do different things. Sometimes you want to engage in sympathetic, but I think the majority of people I see, they need help with the pair of sympathetic. We're really good at getting to sympathetic unconsciously. And we need help to let the body get we call it in time in Chinese medicine, right? And that's when we heal the sleep part. Most of the paramedic pause women I see they'll have all kinds of symptoms, but the most common symptom is insomnia. And sleep's important. I don't know if it was in your book. I read it or one of your blogs, but you talked about you can miss your green smoothie for a week. You can miss exercising for a week and you'll be okay. But if you miss a week of sleep, so sleep is pretty important on your list of fundamentals in. Oh, 100 100% and you know, you do see people stressing out about, oh, did I get organic produce or kind of crossing some nice tangential thing off the quote unquote wellness to do list, but sleep is just so foundational to it all. And I do think you can use it as a proxy of how is my ability to manage stress? And you talked a little bit about paramedic pause woman. And as a 46 year old woman, we are in the sandwich generation. We got aging parents, we got young kids, we have you know probably more strength. and we've had before in life. And yet sleep is then also getting more challenging. So I think for me building up stress resilience and being able to kind of like work through these inevitable ups and downs in life is just gonna have such an important impact on my health span. - Yeah, I will share with you, it's the resilience factor. This is my opinion now. You'll have to vet me on this one, but my opinion is as follows. It's not the shifting hormones that's the main issue, it's part of it. It's not the underlying cause. Because every single woman in your age group that's in paramedicase, so in their forties beyond, will have fluctuating hormones. The estuens are going up and down, progesterone is declining, and then a menopause they both decline. If it was the hormones, then every single woman would suffer. But we know not every woman suffers and not every woman has the same symptoms. The issue is the resilience, the autonomic nervous system resilience. If you have the resilience, therefore the capacity to adapt, these changing hormones is changed inside. You won't notice it. But if you've burnt the candle and or just your genetic predisposition, you don't have the resilience, so you can't adapt, and your body will send you messages. I'll hot flash, a night sweat, and so on. Yeah. So we do want to balance the hormones, and we do that in our practice with bio-denocle hormones, acupuncture herbs, all the fun things. However, we want to teach the connectivity, the community, the spirituality, and doing things to help build up that resilience, because that's really the issue. And if you just do hormone therapy, this is my opinion. And at 65 or 70, you won't be healthy again, because you don't have the resilience. I think it's just such a huge indicator of thriving in life. And when I, so fascinating right now that's happening in health and wellness, because I think it's a fascinating time in women's health, there's never been more excitement, more interest, but you have kind of emerging of the pharmaceutical and hormone with lifestyle modifications. And before these camps didn't really talk to each other, and now it's so much more of an end conversation of, okay, we can do this if this, you know, if you fit all of these criteria, but it's an end with, and we need to work on our movement, our resistance training, our friendships, our sleep. And it's an exciting time to be in this space where there's finally emerging of these two where we can combine the best in science with the best in holistic wisdom and healing. Can we talk about your fertility journey a bit? Yeah. Some of our listeners are growing their families. Some of them, as I mentioned, are Pyramanopause, Menopausal, and some of them just want to know about the conscious sides. We're going to talk about it all today. Where were you at? Because you had already had the pulmonary embolism. So what kind of fertility person were you? How perfect were you chasing the perfection? And if you could go back and tell that today, if 46-year-old could tell the early, mid-30-year-old, how would you tell her to do it differently? Well, for anyone who is struggling with infertility, if my husband and I can have a child after everything we went through, you know, there's so much light and hope at the end of the tunnel for anyone who wants that to be their path. Because it was a very long and arduous journey. And it did start with that pulmonary embolism, which when a 32-year-old has a PE, they do so much blood work on you. And what's interesting is I didn't have any of the typical markers of someone who would clot. So I didn't have factor five, I didn't have factor eight. Like if I had gone in to see an OB, they wouldn't have been concerned about a clotting risk. But once you have a pulmonary embolism, you are immediately put into a very high risk kind of pregnancy kind of an area. So first it took me a long time from my cycle to come back after being on burst control for a long time. But all of my fertility markers were really strong. So I had a really poor experience at the first fertility place clinic I went to because they waited six months or so to test my husband, which is really not understandable. Crazy. Well, quick focus. Just because there's people listening, yes, if your husband has not had a semen analysis, and they're waiting for you to fail or have a miscarriage, please do the semen analysis right away. And as at the time of this recording, most clinics not all are doing the sperm DNA fragmentation, which gives even more information. A little bit more expensive than a semen analysis. But if that's the issue, then the women may not have to go through all the stuff that they go through while waiting to find out, oh, maybe it's him. Yeah, very important PSA. So we learned that my husband was as you spermic and that they needed to extract his sperm through a surgery, which had about a 50%, 50% success rate. Luckily, after some hesitation getting the surgery, we were able to get to the starting line again, so to speak. And at that point, we thought it would be really easy because whenever I did an egg retrieval, I had a ton of PGD tested embryos and it was a really easy part. But for whatever reason, I had a lot of trouble getting a quote unquote, thick lining and getting the embryos who had been PGD tested to stick. And at the time we were in New York City, sorry, the luxury of, you know, ever great doctor in the US, I feel like was available, to consult and they couldn't, you know, we never really got to the why of why it was so hard. There was a little bit of adenomyosis, which certainly wasn't helping things. Yeah. But I think to get to our first daughter, we had nine transfers of so many embryos and. - How many retrievals did you do calling to get to those, to get that many embryos, do you remember? - I think. - Because it was one retrieval. You did multiple. - Oh gosh. Oh yeah. (laughing) I think I did about three or four retrievals. And, you know, I think the, you know, I'm a pretty rational person. So it was always like if someone had told me to stop or like, hey, here's a reason why it's not gonna work, I would have listened. But because there wasn't a clear, okay, this isn't gonna work, I kept going. And it was, you know, extraordinarily challenging because back in, you know, my first daughter was born in January 2017, but at this time there wasn't as much dialogue around fertility. It was this kind of thing I was doing on the side, you know, I would be traveling from work and, you know, getting a blood draw at a local quest while I was traveling. And when it goes on for such a prolonged period of time, it's hard, you know, to kind of make it a discreet part of your life and be like, okay, for two months, I'm gonna do this and then I'm gonna, you know, re-emerge. So it was an extraordinarily challenging time. And I think, you know, I always maintained the faith that we would have a family. I didn't quite know what that would look like. And I definitely wanted a doctor who shared that same confidence and vision. And I think when I moved clinics, it was really important for me to have someone who believed in me and who really had a non-transactional bedside manner. - Yeah. - Yeah. And that was, you know, probably the most important kind of characteristic. And I luckily found an incredible doctor who I think wanted me to get pregnant almost as much as my husband and I wanted to get pregnant. And that was such an important part because that journey was just so much longer than I anticipated. And I think health and wellness can sometimes send conflicting messages to women about, oh, if you're having a miscarriage, maybe you're not spiritually ready for it. And I think it was really a challenging kind of time to navigate where you wanna take the empowering parts of spirituality. And I really had to just drop everything else at the door and believe in yourself, believe that your body is capable of this. And, you know, definitely was a formative experience and the second one was a lot easier than the nine transfers that led to our first. - And did you do other things like you did the IVF where you're doing, 'cause you're in my body, green person, right? By the way, I just got to, I have to ask question. So in Chinese medicine, I never use mine in body. I always say mine body, 'cause they're not separate, they're one. - Exactly. - And I just, I see it on your sign there. And I just wonder, it's not spaced out. And I was wondering if that's on purpose. So there is intention behind that. - Yeah. - Were you doing other things? Like, you know, I people come in and I often, again, I can be guilty of this, suit cases of supplements. I do my best not to do it. People have come into my practice and I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. But people have come into my practice and I say, bring in all your supplements and they bring them in. I go, did I prescribe all those? I'm so sorry because you forget, right? So I go, let's clean this up. Let's simplify this. This is like we've done in here. So what were you doing? Were you doing acupuncture, supplements, naturopath? Were you seeing a shaman? What did you do? - Yeah. - Or was it just straight up you and the IVF dog? - So, you know, because there was kind of this period of time from my PE and it was a very, you know, quick transition into then trying to get pregnant. Those two journeys had some overlap. And I remember seeing a, I will call him a foe shaman in New York who told me that, you know, my health was at a 1%. And I had enough conviction and belief in myself that even after having a PE, I was like, no, no, no, no. That is not correct. I will not be seeing you again. And I think that's an important part. in that you can have all this data, you can have people with credentials or respect in a field, but your intuition is also such an important part and making sure that you have that right practitioner fit to move forward. So, acupuncture was a mainstay. And as I look at my life now, I often wish that women in paramedic paws, the sandwich generation, whatever you want to call it, we can always treat ourselves with the same grace that we treat ourselves when we're pregnant. Because once I was pregnant and kind of on the road there, I had weekly acupuncture. I was able to get a massage and I was doing a lot of yoga and a lot of those practices I wish I had more of in my life right now. And I could see the therapeutic benefits, but then I'm a little too busy, quote unquote, an air quotes, of course, right now, you know, to kind of treat myself with that same grace. So, I was doing both. It was really for me a blend of the holistic and then also, you know, the cutting edge science and fertility as well, you know, to put those two together to get to the best result. Our practice, we go on site to one of the largest IVF clinics in Canada. So, our patients that I see are all integrated because our clinic does the acupuncture naturopath, and then we work with an IVF clinic and they often say they can tell who the acupuncture, the acupuncturist patients are because in the waiting room, they just seem a little bit more chill. I like that. They just get they can see that. But I will say if I could go back in time, the one thing I do differently, because the wellness world, it was a lot different than was I definitely was not having enough protein in my diet. And let's talk about that because menopause of women also, that's a that's a concern about the energy that they're getting. I had an OBGYN and also that the there's the menopause weight gain that they don't want. And you would think exercise more ketocarb or calories, but it's actually impacts the cell's energy and you'll get fatter by exercising more and eating less because you need more energy and proteins, one of those things that you need and still some carbs. So can you talk about the protein because I do think a lot of the patients I see are under eating proteins. One of the things we do a lot of counseling around. Yeah. And you know, one of the biggest shifts we've seen in health and wellness is a shift into protein. And it's really more of a shift into strength across the board. So if in the 2010s, we were about detox and yoga, which yoga is still great, I still live yoga. But you know, we were had a very narrow view of health and wellness. And I think what's wonderful now is we're really encouraging women to step into their strength to pick up the weights to eat more and smartly with the right amounts of protein and really step into their power. And so, you know, at the time, I was probably eating a diet that was way too fiber forward. I definitely had my my freeze and veggies, but was missing both the strength component in both wasn't doing any resistance training. And I also wasn't consuming enough protein. And the RDA guidelines are, you know, 0.36 grams per pound of body weight. And it's the bare minimum to survive and not thrive. And you probably need about double the RDA amount. So 0.7 to 0.75 grams per pound of body weight per day. And so if you're looking to build and maintain muscle, it's probably even, or sorry, if you're looking to maintain and build, it's probably even more than that. And I now have to be very thoughtful about ensuring that every meal does have the proper amount of protein. And, you know, it's obviously such a macro trend everywhere. And especially as per men, a pausa woman start to think about sarcopenia or maybe they're looking at, hey, you know, it's harder for me to to put on muscle or to look at tone like there's so many different ways in which this protein conversation is meeting women at all different facets of their life. But, you know, to your earlier point, as women think more about body recompt, they're realizing that many of the things they've been told aren't really helping them, you know, get to their goals. And that, it's a wonderful trend now that you see gyms reshaping floor plans to kind of move away some of the cardio because women are wanting more free weight space and more space to lift and do more resistance training, which is really exciting. Yeah. So there's the bone health from resistance training. There's the blood sugar regulation from the resistance training, all the stuff that we need because we're losing that with age. So we got to counterbalance that. Going back to just the idea around diet therapy and in the protein, I saw on your site, you have supplements and it looks like you've you got a vet because who you guys are, you've been so you know what your supplements say you like, I we're seeing more and more for the menopausal population creatin and I saw that on your site and we like for our sleep people, we often do a B6 and a and a and a Toreen and magnesium. And I saw you had creantine with Toreen or treat you with magnesium. I was like, oh, this is so because you're 46. Are you into the creantine or the magnesium? Because magnesium is one of the most common things we've given our practice. Yeah. I mean, what's fascinating right now is like in this world of health and wellness, it's very divided. It kind of mirrors how we are politically lots of I feel like creatine is the one thing we can all agree on. And the creatine market is growing at a really fast rate and women are driving all of that growth. It used to be the teenage boys. My teenage boys wanted to bulk up and now I got it, it was my pyramid of positive women coming in and asked about creatin. So I had to go do a deep dive and I'm like, this looks fantastic for you guys. Yeah. And it, you know, it's really interesting kind of like what brings people into the creatine conversation. You have people coming at it, you know, out lower doses. So three to five grams for women, you know, who are thinking about lean muscle mass. And, you know, as you ramp up the dosage, there are benefits, bigger benefits. And, you know, it may play a bigger role in brain health, which is exciting and something that a lot of women worry about as well. It's really hard for me to put on muscle. So I'm having a lot of creatine every day, like 12 grams. Yeah. All right. So you're doing the creatine. Okay. So two plugs. One is check out my body green. They're, they're shopping area. They have really good, I was looking at them. I was like, these are, I'd like these combinations. I'm just sending you some. Yeah. I, please do. Which I had them, I would have done a picture, but I was looking at your creatine and the touring magnesium. You got some really nice stuff. They're stuff for bloating. I was like, wow, this, and, and again, I trust you guys. I, I before we met today, I'm aware of your site. And it was one of those sites I like because you've done some of the vetting for me, right? And I, you know, I go into open evidence. I go on to my pub, man, and look at things, but it's nice how you guys have done this. I also want to plug. We have a free fertility diet and a longevity diet. I want to talk about the joy of eating because the first rendition that I was responsible for, I don't cook much. The feedback was the theory was great. The food tasted disgusting, like cardboard. So Dr. Kater McCoy'sic joined me on the second edition. And she found recipes or gave recipes and they taste great. And this reminds me of a quote from John Robbins, the, uh, the hair of the basket and Robbins. It may be healthier to eat beer and Frank's with cheer and thanks, then to eat sprouts and bread with doubts and dread. So again, you can be eating perfectly and hating, resenting all those issues. And it's going to have a negative effect because what's going on in your, the psycho neuro immunology, the P and I, what's going on in your thought and thinking. And so there is this idea of disposition, emotional disposition, how it impacts you. And I wanted you to unpack that a bit. So can you talk a bit about the, there's enough stuff out there on diet. We have a great diet book. I want to hear more about the joy again because it's so easy to get caught up and try to do things perfectly. And I think that perfectionism is bad for our health. I 100% agree. And I know when we were talking a little bit before the podcast we were talking about HRV, I will have like my most stress resilient nights on those nights when I'm out with friends, out with girlfriends and laughing, probably not drinking, but really just where there's this undercurrent of joy throughout the whole activity. And I think we've kind of lost the plot on making wellness a bit too protocol specific, a bit too rigid. And now, you know, in this new era, we'd love to open up a more expansive form of wellness in which joy is such an important pillar of it. And I fully agree if you're doing everything perfectly, but not doing it amongst friends or with joy, you're probably missing the mark. And that reminds me now the joy and the belief part. So we're, I'm sorry for our listeners bouncing a bit, but when we talked about you wanted to believe in your body, because I want to tie in like Lisa Miller. I love Lisa. Well, I interviewed her. She's episode 80s, episode 68, the Waking Branch. We had a great conversation with her. So I kind of wanted to talk. I think we can tie all this in on the spiritual aspect. You'd say something that a few patients in the in my that come to me for fertility issues, only a handful have said that I believe I'm going to get pregnant. Everyone wants to get pregnant. That I can see it over attachment. Like, you know, I we work on surrender and wanting, but with a little bit of surrender in there. There's only a handful in all have gotten pregnant where they truly believe they knew it. They just needed some guidance. And I kind of got that sense the way you were talking. You even made sure that the the doctor aligned with you, you believed and you didn't like this doctor. Like Shashan been saying, you got 1% health or this doctor made it transactional. You were pretty clear, unconsciously or consciously, you're going to get there and now you're looking for the right people to support your journey. So can you? you talk a little bit about that because affirmations often don't work for people because they say one thing, but this release, somatically, they don't believe it, right? Right. There's a disconnect. I think it's Freud that says the mind forgets the body remembers. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey. And again, what would you say to your younger self or our listeners about your experience that may help them? Yeah, I mean, you tapped on one of my favorite people, Lisa Miller, the PhD faculty member at Columbia University. And then she splits part of her time here in coconut growth. So I'm lucky to call her a close friend. And her point of view and perspective on spirituality has, you know, had a profound impact on our lives and how we raise our children fully. And we'll go back to Lisa. But yes, on the affirmations, I think there's a natural kind of knee-jerk reaction of cringes when you when you hear them. But there is this idea that, you know, your thoughts do need to your thoughts are powerful. And while I'm never a favor of thoughts without action, you need to believe you can, whether it's get pregnant or whatever it is, do the hard thing. But then you also need to do all the work, you know, that supports it. So but going back to Lisa, she's done so much fascinating work. You referenced the study that when mother and child are both high in spirituality, the child was 80% protected against depression compared with mothers and children who were not as high in spirituality. In other words, a child was five times less likely to be depressed when a spiritual life was shared with a mother. And she is a very expansive definition of spirituality. It's not religious. It's a deeper connection to your life, whether it's prayer, nature, a walk in the woods, volunteering, picking up trash, essentially just a belief in something higher than yourself. And all these things bring us closer to what feels like universal truths and experiences that we've all shared. And you know, this idea of a transcendent relationship and something bigger than all of us, I think is really important for anyone who's, you know, grappling with something that's really hard. And I think so much of Lisa's work is really important right now, whether it's for girls who are growing up in a world that's very lonely and depressed right now, and how we can, you know, help them whether the storm or, you know, just people who are looking for more purpose in life. So she's just such a thought leader in this space. And in her research, not only did she share about the less addiction and depression protection, but she showed how their structural changes in the brain. So it's not just, oh, I think I feel they could actually see changes in the brain as well. So when we go into this area, spirituality, I love the fact let's emphasize that because some people cringe, they hear the word God or spirituality and it can go really out there. And that's just because society where very new toning materialistic world, although that's shifting. And when you believe there's something greater than you, it takes you off of yourself a bit and allows you, it gives you, it's another tool of surrender. I find this form of surrender, which isn't resignation. It's a form of letting go. Basically, when you, when the resistance drops, flow and receptivity go through you and you talked about right action, I always say right action follows right thinking. So if I'm cloned, you know, if I'm cloned, it's my beingness. If I'm coming from lap, if the, if the actions are saying, but one of me is coming from lack and fear and the other one's coming from feeling whole and complete, even though they do the exact same thing, the beingness behind the action changes what I'm going to get from it. Lisa Miller's work shares that you talked about. It could be volunteering, right? I think there's a couple of levels of giving, right? Like two. So you want to give. And if you give to get, that's still okay. But the most powerful shift is when you give for the sake of giving, you just do it because it's, it's kindness. You just do it for altruistic reasons. And when you can get to that place, that seems to have the greatest impact cellular and things change. So spirituality could be in nature then. Yeah. What are you calling spiritual? Because some people may go, Oh, I do that. And now they'll do with more attentionality. It's not necessarily going to a temple to pray. No. And you know, we've been talking about kind of the, the impact on Miami in terms of community and spirituality. And I think a big part of that is being by water and having a spiritual connection to the ocean. And you were talking about parasympathetic nervous system. Oh, that is such a great way to reset me as to to be near an ocean. And you know, everyone has to figure out what that is for themselves. Like the ocean and the water has a profound impact on my nervous system and my concept of the universe. But that might not be it for everyone. You know, you kind of have to look into yourself and figure out what is it that makes you that gives you that reset that connects you to something that's bigger that that really resonates with you. So I want to see if I get you from reading your book and doing my prep for you. So I understand that movement and diet is important. So do that. And we didn't talk too much about it because you can go everywhere and anywhere and it's all there. The joy parts important. So I get this from you. One is your breath is sacred. And through your life and death accident, you're from the pulmonary amyllism. You nasal breathing became a very important part of your life. Helps you oxygenate, state, calm your nervous system. Right. And return on ROI. So for those that return on investment, you know, you find that that's a great one. You're breathing any house. So just shut your mouth and breathe through your nose. Sleep seems non-negotiable for you. Yeah. True. Okay. Yeah. So you take care of that as a vital sign to keep you healthy. And then emotions and intuition seem to matter. That's something that I really liked in your book because it's something I found for my own personal health and what I share in my practice. And you talk about this a lot. So you don't think that the pulmonary amyllism was a random event than do you? No. Yeah. And do you look at it as, can you tell now that your body was actually sending you little whisperers, little messages and you weren't listening to it and then it took a hammer? Oh, 100%. And you know, I think it has to start with those little things of, you know, how do you sleep through the night? How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? And I think we've almost conditions are self to believe that it's normal to have so many, you know, depends on what life stage you're at, but not at, you know, the age I was at 32 to have so many trouble sleep issues or to not wake up and feel energized. And I really wish that I had listened to those whispers so that I didn't have to get that hammer. Right. So fatigue, irritability, muscle tension, and so on. Yeah. These are subtle signs saying change. Right. And, and, and the part of you that has your best interest, although you think it's not being nice is, is changing because I'm sure you would never want to have what you have the pulmonary amyllism, but is there a sense of gratitude because of who you are today, what you're doing today, are you grateful for it because of how it's changed your trajectory, your trajectory? Oh, totally. It was a breakthrough moment for me. And I think, you know, it could have gone either way, but ultimately shaped my life's work and really kind of reinforced my commitment to the mission of what we do here each and every day. And I want, I don't want anyone else to have to go through a PE. I want them to have the tools at their disposal and kind of the self-awareness to have high standards so that they feel their best throughout life and that they know that they shouldn't have to settle for anything else. I like that. And you're saying, listen to your intuition, listen to the whispers so you don't have to have the the life, um, altering event. So I got one more I want to bring up. So we talked about breath, we talked about sleep, we talked about emotions, intuition. And the other one is that joy and connection is a form of medicine then. And there is research then on this that joy and connection are on this. And this is that idea of all of a sudden the superficial goals that were constantly chasing outside of ourselves, change. And it looks like from again, my prep of listening to other podcast you're on reading your book, family became a priority community purpose and doing things joyfully, which is why you move from New York to Miami. We're not nothing against New York, everybody. Just individual for you guys, that was the right move. And so anything you want to share again about that joy and connection or tips on, you know, if somebody's because loneliness is an epidemic right now, I think when I work with people and hypnosis, that that loneliness shows up even though they have their successful, they could be, you know, an influencer, multimillionaire, when we do the work and we regress, not feeling enough or loneliness is one of those programs that's running. So what tips or what can you share to help people find that joy and connection? I would say you have to make the same investment in your join connection that you put towards other elements of your health and wellness routine. So that can be as simple as like giving yourself calendar reminders to check in with friends because part of having friends is being a good friend, being the one who invites people to an IRL hang. I learned, you know, friendships, post-college, which was a long time ago for me. They require work. thoughtfulness and you have to put those investments in to be able to get the rewards and be a good friend before you can expect other people to be a good friend. And a lot of times it involves doing things that maybe make yourself uncomfortable and asking friends out on dates and dating, which is all part of the process. And I think part of moving to Miami, which has enabled us to find our community, is there is a very vibrant health and wellness community here. And so in so many ways, it's been easy to to find our tribe and find people who want to work out, who want to go on that rock walk on the water in coconut grove because you have that kind of undercurrent of shared interests across what we do. I just wouldn't minimize its impact on health and longevity because I think it's it's one of the biggest levers we have. Excellent. So I want to remind our listeners that you can follow Colleen at Colleen walk up. You can follow my body green as well under my body green. We'll put these in the show notes. Get your copy of the Joy of Wellbeing. I have it both in audio and in print. I listen to it first and then I wanted to go back to it. So I want to and I want to thank you for taking the time to have this conversation with me. I think the only thing I said I was going to talk about that we didn't. So if you have any last things you want to share, but do you have a different definition between well being and wellness then? I think I said I was going to talk about that with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I do think that the I wellness, I have a bit of a complicated relationship with the word because I do think that the way it's currently manifested across social media plays to these extremes of either Kardashian wellness where it's like so many lymphatic massages and Korean skin treatments and just really buzzy words that may not have kind of the science and the impact behind them or it's the rigid bro biohacker culture of protocols and new technology that's yet to be proven where I think this idea of well being elevates the conversation to something that's bigger than all of us. And I think that's the big needle mover. Thank you for that. And again, sleep and if you need help sleep, there's on your website lots of tips and tools. Our clinic, that's one of the things we see people come in for other things, but sleep is the thing we always ask about. So get yourself sleeping, the nasal breathing, I like info for hope for eight. What was yours for seven eight or seven eight? The key is a long Excel everybody. That's what's going to engage the parisepathetic and the inhales through the nose and your ex-hells through the mouth. Yes. And we'll add a little Chinese medicine to it. The hookup point is under the behind your front teeth on the gums. So if you want to add a little bit of that, Chinese medicine creates the inner orbit circuit between the duan red my channels. And I like the common sense. If your tongue is behind your the roof of your mouth behind your front teeth, then you won't cleanse your jaw. So it helps relax the jaw as well. So just a practical thing is there. All right. Anything I need to share where they can find you. I said how they can find you will put in the show notes, but that's that's where we're going to find you. And we I got it. Was this complete for you? Did we get we we were pulling pull and complete for picture of the joy of well being the joy well being and you still need to read it. If you want to hear more about the Rosetta study and you want to hear more of the tips, they really do unpack it. And they're not adding things. I I like your book and I'll share again why I encourage you to as a resource for the people that are listening is it's we're so guilty of adding do this do this and we make your life less healthy because we're adding to it. I find you're taking away and you're giving stuff that works. And so if you're looking for simplicity and you're looking for joy of well being, then pick up a copy of the joy of well being calling. Thanks for making the time today. Oh, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for spending this time with us on the Coherence Code podcast. I'm Dr. Lauren Brown and I will see you next week for another conversation on Coherence and Healing. If this conversation resonated with you, please like, subscribe or follow the show and also share it with someone who might benefit from it as well. Remember to take a moment to breathe, reflect and stay connected. Welcome to the Coherence Code podcast.