The Science of Healing Faster with Victoria Maizes, MD

[00:00:00] Dr. Victoria Maizes: There are times when nobody, conventional medicine, integrative medicine, no one has good answers. But there are places where integrative medicine has such great strategies to remove impediments to healing and help people really get well again.

[00:00:19] Dr, Melinda Ring: This is Next Level Health. I'm your host, Dr. Melinda Ring, Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern University. On this show, we explore ways to take actionable steps towards optimizing our health with leaders in the integrative, functional, and lifestyle medicine fields who believe in science backed and time tested approaches to well being. Let's take your health to the next level

[00:00:51] Dr. Melinda Ring: It's cold and flu season as you can hear in my own voice, and before you reach for that over the counter remedy, I encourage you to press play on this episode first. Today we're joined by one of the true pioneers of integrative medicine, Dr. Victoria Maizes, who has spent decades helping people understand how to help their bodies to restore balance and accelerate healing, whether recovering from the common cold surgery or chronic illness. Dr. Maizes is the founding executive director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and Professor of Medicine, Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of Arizona. She is internationally recognized for her work in women's health, nutrition, environmental medicine, and integrative healing, and she was the U of A's director back in 2002 when I was in my fellowship in Arizona. So I am personally thrilled to welcome my friend here today. I. Dr. Mays is the author of Be Fruitful, co-host of the Body of Wonder podcast, editor of the Oxford Integrative Women's Health textbook, and the author of a brand new book that we'll discuss today, Heal Faster, which explores the science and strategies that help us recover from illness and injury by tapping into the body's innate healing intelligence. Whether you're looking to speed up your recovery from a winter bug, support a loved one through surgery or rebound more quickly from stress or setbacks. This conversation is packed with powerful evidence-based takeaways. Welcome, Victoria. I'm so glad to have you here.

[00:02:24] Dr. Victoria Maizes: thank you so

much for

having me. It's a pleasure.

[00:02:27] Dr. Melinda Ring: You are just passionately committed to helping people live healthier lives. Can you take us back to the early days in medicine, because you're really a pioneer in the field, and what sparked your journey into integrative medicine and how you became one of the field's first leaders.

[00:02:44] Dr. Victoria Maizes: You know, it's interesting. I feel like in some ways I just am wired a certain way. I have this central question that's always been of interest to me, which is how do you help people lead healthier lives? And when I went to college, I actually designed my own major at Barnard College in New York. It was called health studies and. I probably would've gone into public health with that interest. But at that time, public health was very focused on communicable diseases on infectious diseases, and so it was different than it is today where it's much more focused on public health really, and not prevention of disease. So I went to medical school. And in medical school I continued to have this interest and therefore I did a residency in family and community medicine. And when I began my practice, I went to practice at Kaiser Permanente. Again, a very intentional decision because it was a health maintenance organization and there were wonderful supports for people to be healthier ranging from programs based on. John Cain's mindfulness work and James Gordon's mind, body work, and this was just part of what we could offer to people. It was rewarding for a long time, and then the treadmill of medicine started to get faster and faster and faster. And I felt like instead of helping people get healthier, we were putting band-aids on disease and I didn't wanna practice medicine that way. That was not what had drawn me. And so even though I had in many ways a very interesting job, I was the chief of strategic education. I had developed an employee wellness program. I had a really nice balance between my clinical time and these more creative projects. So even though I had a really interesting mix of responsibilities, I just felt that I couldn't support the way medicine was being practiced. And so I cast about, and what will I do instead? And Andy Weil had just begun a fellowship in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona. And so I wrote and I said I'd like to be faculty. Because I had already studied nutrition and dietary supplements and you know, I had a lot of the background that they were teaching, but they invited me instead to apply for the fellowship, which I did. I came and I asked if it was a healthy place to work, and I listened and I thought their mission and my personal mission are so well aligned. I'm gonna do this. And so I moved my whole family to Tucson, Arizona from Northern California. And the rest is history. I've been here for over 28 years.

[00:05:41] Dr. Melinda Ring: Wow. Yeah. When I trained at the Dr. Weil fellowship in the early two thousands, I've known you for over 20 years now. At that point you were at faculty when I joined the fellowship and that emphasis on healing, not curing resonates so much with me. It's really stuck with me since then. And I definitely carried it into my clinic and teaching. Unfortunately, it is still not a standard part of the medical school curriculum. I mean, we're starting to see movement when it comes to a call from the government level to have nutrition. And I think we're seeing a greater uptake of lifestyle medicine. which to me is the core of what we do in integrative medicine, but it's not everything we do. And so I'm thrilled to see lifestyle medicine taking a step. What do you see as the lifestyle medicine, integrative medicine relationship, the uptake in the medical community and you know, why do you think that we're seeing this differential between acceptance of lifestyle versus integrative medicine?

[00:06:53] Dr. Victoria Maizes: I completely agree with you. The core of integrative medicine is lifestyle. Just to make that specific, we talk to our patients about their sleep, their stress, the food that they eat, the environmental chemicals they're exposed to, their relationships. I mean, these are all things that matter. Movement, you know, whether they're getting any kind of exercise in their day. These are all things that are part of lifestyle medicine that everybody would agree with. Wow, those are important. We ought to pay attention to those. You know, we want to be sure that our patients are leading healthy lives. I think that health professionals listening to this know, but I don't know if everyone listening knows the number one cause of death in the United States is heart disease. 80% of heart disease is preventable through living a healthy lifestyle. So this is so fundamental to what we want to do in integrative medicine, and it doesn't really create any red flags for anyone. It doesn't rub anyone the red the wrong way. But some of the things you and I have been trained in do rub people a bit the wrong way. So for example, I don't know why there's so much antipathy to dietary supplements. As an example, as someone who wrote a book called. Be fruitful. The essential guide to maximizing fertility and giving birth to a healthy child. I like to remind people that all of the organizations who care about pregnant women, which is the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the United States Preventive Services Task Force, say that women of childbearing age should take at a minimum folic acid or a multivitamin multimineral supplement that includes folic acid. So there's one very broad recommendation that that supplement is gonna be helpful. We have lots of other examples. People who, for one reason or another, have a genetic mutation where they may need additional B vitamins or they may need methylated B vitamins for optimal brain function for example. We know about the ways in which the neurotransmitters need appropriate vitamins and minerals to be synthesized in our bodies. So there are so many examples like those that I could give where adding a supplement makes a difference. Of course, people should eat a healthy diet, who's gonna argue with that yet? The vast majority of Americans don't get enough vitamin D or they don't get enough magnesium. And by replacing these with a supplement, not just saying eat a healthy diet, people have fewer migraines, they have less depression, they have better immune function, so. We have studied and understand the value of using dietary supplements, and yet it is still controversial. People will say it's just, you know, an expensive waste of money and, and I firmly disagree with that, but dietary supplements are not part of lifestyle medicine for the most part. You and I have learned about the value of using our colleagues who've been trained in traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, and as an example, someone who suffers from neuropathy. You know, in conventional medicine we have some treatments for neuropathy, but they tend to have side effects, so why not go to the acupuncture that is least likely to create side effects. And may, this is a term that I've introduced in the book, Heal Faster, may actually offer side benefits. You may get an enhanced sense of wellbeing, not just a reduction in tingling or numbness in your feed or fingers. And so there's a role for acupuncture, but that's not part of lifestyle medicine. And I could go on in that way. Integrative medicine is a larger paradigm than lifestyle medicine. It's not everybody's comfort level, but I sure wouldn't wanna give up all of the tools in my toolbox in this larger paradigm.

[00:11:14] Dr. Melinda Ring: I could not agree more. I mean, even to what you were talking about, because, which is top of mind for me because I'm teaching our fellows about micronutrients and vitamins this week, you know, the 2018 review of. The Nhan study, National Health and Nutrition Survey that surveys Americans every year. You know, it looked at, as you mentioned, this prevalence of these very important vitamins. I mean, they're vital. They're, that's why they're called vitamins. They're vital to our wellbeing. And and it, and it looked at it compared. People who use no dietary supplements, where there were say 40 plus incidents of nutrient deficiencies versus those who took multivitamins and it went down to like 18%. And so, you know, this idea that. We shouldn't use supplements or that they're just, like you said, expensive pee. You know, I think we've gotta move past that. Still going with, as you said, like all of the healthy lifestyle factors, but I, I mean, I could not agree more that We're not doing enough through our healthcare, through our diet to let us live, not just, not just treat disease, but to like really li live optimally healthy lives. your new book, which is coming out. You talk about everything from colds and sprains to asthma and diabetes from your mind, what connects all of these conditions when it comes to supporting recovery? How did you come up with how you were gonna frame what's included and and is there a common thread there to how people recover no matter what the condition?

[00:13:04] Dr. Victoria Maizes: I think the common thread is that we don't talk enough about the innate healing system that our body has. We have this intrinsic set of systems in which our immune system, our nervous system, our microbiome, I mean it all responds to create health, to recover when we're sick, to maintain health and on some level, we know this, you know we get a cold. We don't feel well for a certain number of days, but usually within a week we're better. How did that happen? We didn't take medicine, you know, we didn't go to a shaman. Our healing system leads us to recover. We have a broken bone, as long as it's aligned properly it's gonna heal. And so healing in some ways is the natural course of things. And yet we don't think about it that much. We don't honor it that much. We don't necessarily say, what do I need to do to maximize my body's capacity to heal? So I think that's the overarching part. In addition I wanted to point to conditions where I thought integrative medicine really adds value. I'm sure this happens to you, but I am regularly asked by my friends, family, patients, fellows, colleagues, I have, fill in the blank, what can I do? I don't think integrative medicine has answers to everything. I wish we did. But if you have a neurodegenerative disease, I don't think we actually have great answers. There are times when nobody, conventional medicine, integrative medicine, no one has good answers. But there are places where integrative medicine has such great strategies to remove impediments to healing and help people really get well again, take diabetes as an example, a tremendous amount of type two. So we're not talking about the autoimmune disease type one, where the eyelet cells are destroyed and therefore people must have insulin. But an enormous percentage of type two diabetes is reversible, and it's reversible in different ways for different people. And this is another one of those integrative medicine principles. We individualize care. So as an example, I've seen people reverse their diabetes by eating a vegan style diet, a plant-based diet, that's awesome. I've also seen people do it with a keto diet, which in some ways is the exact opposite. Very little vegetables and fruits, a lot of fat, some protein, very little carbohydrate, so it's not a one size fits all. I've seen people reverse their diabetes by following time restricted eating, where they have a long overnight fast. I'm not just saying I, I did just say I've seen this, but the research supports all three of those approaches and people don't necessarily know that. They hear they have diabetes and they get this sense of despair. Oh, my uncle had that and he had to have an amputation, or he lost his vision or had some other really bad consequence, and that person's actually quite motivated to do all they can to reverse their diabetes well. In the chapter on diabetes, there are all the things one can do to heal faster. And so I sought to give people very practical, doable strategies to reverse disease where it's possible, which is true for diabetes, for a lot of heart disease for improving bone health. And then. I also acknowledge, well, where are you going to use medications? You know, where are we gonna say you need to move forward and do other things? And then there's a whole section on surgery because if you prepare for your surgery, if you prehab, the likelihood is you will recover better from your surgery.

[00:17:35] Dr. Melinda Ring: It's not just taking these dietary supplements. What is the dietary, what are the lifestyle approaches? A big focus on sleep, which is, you know, we have a sleep deficit epidemic right now in our country. It was really nice when you gave like, here are some specific supplements that I do recommend. These are quality ones that I would recommend without any bias, but really just guiding people into a direction where they could actually read this plan and then say like, okay, I know what to do. I don't have to, you know, of course I need to, ideally I'm gonna work with my physician and an integrative physician to, to implement this but I have a great starting point from somebody who knows what she's talking about. Now in it, you talk about, and it's on the, On the cover about unlocking this rapid recovery reflex can you describe what that means, that rapid recovery reflex, and is it something that is trainable or is it more that we need to remove blocks to healing?

[00:18:40] Dr. Victoria Maizes: That's such a great question. The rapid recovery reflex in some ways is our physiological mechanisms of homeostasis. It's how our body knows. If we eat, for example, a meal that bumps up our blood sugar, we have mechanisms in which we excrete more insulin that brings our blood sugar back into a normal range. If we do that repeatedly, we're at risk of type two diabetes. And so we can change our eating, either what we eat or when we eat. And if we change what we eat, we don't challenge our pancreas and eyelet cells and the need to secrete insulin in the same way. And so yes, that's trainable If we. Having a longer, overnight, fast, we give our body a better chance to reboot because nighttime is when we are supposed to be rebooting our systems, our metabolism, our immune system. We're laying down memories. So this circadian rhythm that is our internal clock that has actually assigned times for different tasks is allowed to optimally function, and therefore our recovery reflex will function better if we eat at the right time. Sleep at the right time. It's a little like Ecclesiastes, right? For everything there is a season and a time for everything under heaven. Well, yes, for our bodies. There are actually ideal times and, and we're not all alike. Sleep, for example, you know, some people, you, you hear them and they, they go to bed by eight 30 or 9:00 PM Other people don't go to bed till midnight. So we have the, oh, you're a midnight person. So we have night owls and we have.

[00:20:38] Dr. Melinda Ring: 30 in the, I am an eight 30. My kids, my kids were tucking me in.

[00:20:43] Dr. Victoria Maizes: Yeah. Yeah. I remember when my younger daughter was a teenager. It felt like 10 o'clock was when she was ready to talk to me, and I was completely exhausted at 10 o'clock. So we were a mismatch. Yeah. But there are people who, you know, really don't go to bed till midnight and ideally would like to wake up at eight or nine and start their day later. Whether society allows for that or not is another question. So some of this is the lifestyle habits of what we eat, when we eat, how much sleep we get, what time we go to sleep, whether we're living in alignment with our clock. There's evidence that exercise is actually more optimal in the afternoon. You know, most Olympic records are actually made in the afternoon because that is when our bodies have the highest priming for exercise. But this is important, but. If you find the only time you could fit exercise in is first thing in the morning, I'd say do it. Like don't say, okay, but I'd be more efficient or more effective in the afternoon. So it's this balance between what society allows, but also what your particular body is calling for. So I actually had some really interesting examples of people who have trained their rapid recovery system in very interesting ways. As an example, there are people who train to increase their oxygen carrying capacity. And they do that by exercising at altitude. There are people who train their ability to memorize. And there have been books written about this, about how you can greatly enhance your ability to, to memorize things in certain ways. There are interesting adaptations in some animals. Like one of the things that I read about is the Burmese python. It eats this enormous meal and then it has to turn on all sorts of different metabolic functions to be able to digest that meal. If you think about animals that hibernate, you know, they don't eat for months at a time. There is a range of capacity that can actually be developed. it's both and we have the capacity to modify it. And also we want to remove the impediments. The impediments being things like ultra processed food, environmental toxins, inadequate sleep, because all of these in a slightly invisible behind the scenes ways negatively impact our recovery reflex.

[00:23:31] Dr. Melinda Ring: These days with the wearables and with people having access. More readily to tests like the VO two max and listening to people who are in the longevity realm that it's something that people are really getting more interested in , in my mind, as long as it doesn't create anxiety or obsessiveness, is a good

[00:23:56] Dr. Victoria Maizes: right.

[00:23:57] Dr. Melinda Ring: So I think

that's really an individual thing about, you know, like how, how, much information is the right information

[00:24:05] Dr. Victoria Maizes: So I'm with you,

[00:24:06] Dr. Melinda Ring: too obsessed?

[00:24:08] Dr. Victoria Maizes: Right. But I do write about wearables and I think one of the wonderful things about wearables is that individualization and personalization. We have these general recommendations. You might call them public health recommendations. And yet the same thing doesn't work exactly the same for each of us, and the wearables tell us that. I'll give you a specific example for me. I do recommend that people sometimes use A-C-G-M-A continuous glucose monitors, even if they don't have diabetes, because I think you could get interesting information about what spikes your blood sugar. So for me, as an example, oatmeal. And it was like steel cut, whole grain oatmeal, which I always thought of as a healthy food. I still think of it as a healthy food, but not for me, because I could eat chocolate. It didn't bump my blood sugar, but oatmeal would. And so I, you know, it wasn't my favorite food. This wasn't a great sacrifice, but I no longer eat oatmeal for breakfast because I don't think it's a healthy food for me.

[00:25:16] Dr. Melinda Ring: our chocolate for breakfast.

[00:25:20] Dr. Victoria Maizes: No, I try to have that as an afternoon snack. But this is, this is the good information that, you know, that is really helpful for people to know. The wearables, the sleep trackers. You know, I have lots of people who say, get plenty of sleep, and yet when they track their sleep between having a long latency, which is the amount of time it takes until they fall asleep or they don't get much deep sleep or much REM sleep and then they notice if they don't drink alcohol, their deep sleep, their REM sleep is way improved. This is really good personalized feedback that allows you to make behavior change based on what you know, works or doesn't work for you. And I agree, we can get a little crazy like, okay, I only got 9,722 steps and I need 10,000. Right? So it, it's, it doesn't work for everybody to have this life that's just nonstop tracking everything. But I do think the trackers can offer very valuable personal feedback that can help you refine. Your lifestyle and in that way, improve your recovery reflex.

[00:26:37] Dr. Melinda Ring: I am also a fan of these and I've done the continuous glucose monitor myself. .

[00:26:42] Dr. Victoria Maizes: Did you find anything?

[00:26:43] Dr. Melinda Ring: for me, it really helped understand the optimal timing of when I was eating to keep my blood sugar even, and. I'll just say for people who are listening who are, don't know that these CGMs are FDA approved for diabetes, but are, and so will be covered by insurance for things like diabetes, oftentimes for pre-diabetes or for other things, but if not covered through insurance that now there are two probably more on the horizon, just over the counter options that don't require a prescription. If you wanted to try a continuous glucose monitor, put it on the back of your arm for two weeks and, and get a sense of what's happening. So let's just talk about two conditions. I would love to go through so many with you. But you know, when I was going through the book, you, you'd recently brought up sleep. Okay? So sleep. Sleep's one of those core things. If we don't sleep, we can't heal. And besides the usual like melatonin and other sorts of things, maybe you can share a few of your practical tips and like what you learned about our temperature and how that relates to the quality of our sleep.

[00:27:57] Dr. Victoria Maizes: Yeah, well there are non-intuitive things that we now know through really great scientific research. And some of it has to do with what's the ideal room temperature to sleep in. It turns out it's a cool room. We sleep better when the room that we are going to sleep in is a cooler room and you could put a warm blanket on you. You know, we're not suggesting you be cold. Our body actually has to cool down to fall asleep. And if you take a hot bath, you'd think you're heating your body up, but actually you are. Because of your homeostatic mechanisms, your recovery reflex. When you take a hot bath or a hot shower, you move more of the blood to the periphery, so your hands get warm. Your feet get warm, but actually your core cools a bit. And so that's why a hot bath or a hot shower before bed can help you fall asleep more easily. I don't know if you've ever noticed, but if you have cold feet, it's hard to fall asleep. And that's again, because you're shunting your blood. And so wearing what I like to call sleeping socks, where you warm your feet at night and you, and you may kick 'em off and that's fine. You may only wear them for the first half hour or hour or whatever it may be. You may wake in the night and take them off, but. That will also bring more blood flow to the periphery and help cool your core temperature. And so these are strategies, they're very simple things you can do. I also think and I learned this from one of our faculty at the University of Arizona, Ruben Niman who is a psychologist who has focused his career on sleep health. And you know, he has this wonderful way of saying. Even though we say I'm gonna go to sleep, like it's some active thing we're gonna do, we actually let go. Acquiescing, quiet, very passive in some way. And so we have to create a state that's conducive to sleep and the room temperatures. One, the darkness of a room, the quietness of a room, the comfort of the room. Avoid things like blue lights and screens right before you go to sleep, because that interferes with the production of melatonin production, which is one of the hormones, the neuro hormones that help you fall asleep. All of these things create a state that makes you more receptive. And then I. We worry and sometimes we put off worrying all day 'cause we're busy and we lay down to go to sleep and that's when the worries show up. And so can you make room at another time of day to worry? So it's not as you're working to fall asleep can you write them down on a piece of paper so you. Your mind that's going, I don't wanna forget this. Won't have to forget it 'cause it's written down on a piece of paper. Can you do some guided imagery or listen to a boring sleep story, which exists on these free mind body apps. So there are many ways to make your bedroom more conducive and to set yourself up for a really good night's sleep.

[00:31:25] Dr. Melinda Ring: Yeah, I think I, I love that idea of the letting go because I, I think sometimes When they've had a history of poor sleep or they have a few nights of bad sleep, the idea of going to sleep itself becomes anxiety provoking, and that is part of why this field of cognitive behavioral therapy, insomnia, the CBTI, I think helps people retrain that anxiety. And you mentioned some great ones. In addition to going to see a therapist trained in CBTI also,

[00:31:59] Dr. Victoria Maizes: Yes. so

[00:31:59] Dr. Melinda Ring: Now, so many tools.

[00:32:01] Dr. Victoria Maizes: There are not a lot of CBT therapists, and so often people do turn to the apps and I, I share several of those and heal faster. I think it can be incredibly helpful. But I, I want to just affirm what you said is that this vicious cycle between anxiety and not sleeping can be very significant for people. And so sometimes the reason we're not sleeping is we're anxious and then working specifically on the anxiety and there's another chapter, and heal faster with all sorts of things that can be helpful to mitigate the anxiety. And if that's why you're not sleeping, that's often the better direction to begin with.

[00:32:46] Dr. Melinda Ring: So then shifting to our last, uh, health topic, which as you can hear again, is very personal to me right now as I'm drinking my tea filled with things that are mentioned in the book. Um, And we're, we're getting deep into the cold and flu season. So are they specific. Herbs or integrative remedies that you personally turn to when you feel something's coming on? What are some good recommendations that you have for people? Of course we know sleep affects immunity, but beyond just getting a good night's sleep, what else can people do instead of just turning to the over the remedies?

[00:33:27] Dr. Victoria Maizes: things I recommend at the very first hint that you might be getting sick or even, you know, if you're on an airplane and you wanna be extra cautious, I am a big fan of zinc lozenges. Zinc lozenges are usually five to seven milligrams of zinc. You really need about 25 milligrams, so you're gonna be sucking on one of these every two or three hours while you're awake. They often contain a little vitamin C, sometimes some elderberry. Both of those are also helpful, so that's great if it's a lozenge that has all three of those. I also do recommend some vitamin C. The data is not as strong as zinc, but I think the downside is very, very low, and it's a way of staying hydrated as well. If you get, for example, an emergency packet and you add it to water and you're sipping on that and, and getting your vitamin C in that way. I really like tea. You're drinking tea. You can buy commercial teas that are soothing to the throat or ones called breathe. These help, you know, with different kinds of ingredients, you can make your own. I'm a big fan of making strong tea with echinacea. And some black tea, but adding some fresh pressed garlic, lemon honey, cayenne pepper that sounds like, how could I ever drink that? But actually when you have a cold, it tastes good. It's sort of very soothing and it is stimulating to the immune system. Echinacea can also be taken as an extract or a capsule, there's good evidence for that. I like Andrographis, which comes to us from both traditional Chinese medicine, but also from Ayurveda. And I think that that could be helpful. The other thing, and this is something that I. I find it really hard to talk my patients into is rinse those nasal cavities. Use a neti pot or a nail med, sinus rinse and get the mucus out because not only will you breathe more easily, you won't have post-nasal drainage that you then have to cough up in the morning. So that's great. And, the last thing maybe I should have said is the first thing, 'cause it's a food that is fresh pressed raw garlic, which has antiviral and antibacterial properties. You press a clove, you could mix it into a little bit of something like a little cheese, cream cheese, goat cheese, spread it on some bread. You could put a little bit in a salad dressing, but raw garlic, it can't be cooked. Cooked, maybe yummy, but it doesn't have that same antiviral property.

[00:36:08] Dr. Melinda Ring: So those are all great culinary tips. I have my tea, as you said. It's got elderberry, echinacea, some fresh ginger in it, and fresh honey. And it's why yesterday I couldn't do the podcast, but today uh, in time for it, I was able to at least get my voice back. So um, uh, yes, some great tips are, are there people who need to be careful with some of these herbs that you're talking about?

[00:36:33] Dr. Victoria Maizes: So the foods, the garlic honey, pretty much everyone could do that unless, you know, for some reason you know, you can't tolerate garlic 'cause your microbiome doesn't like it. Or honey, if you're a child under the age of one, we don't give honey to kids under one. I think the. The main group that you wanna be careful of is with echinacea there are some people for whom they have to be a little careful about echinacea. You could ask your pharmacist depending on what medications you're on or you know, what's happening with your particular health. I didn't mention elderberry. I think elderberries are terrific as well. It has very good evidence actually for shortening the duration of the flu, which is a much more serious illness. But elderberry is yummy. It's. It's a berry, so it's sweet. And it's one of those tips that I recommend, especially to parents of young children. I have my daughter give this to her children during the cold and flu season to help prevent some of them and also to help get over them more quickly.

[00:37:40] Dr. Melinda Ring: you've said that. Perfect is the enemy of the good when it comes to staying healthy. And so what's one piece of personal wisdom that you'd like to share with listeners that would help them heal faster or reach their next level of health?

[00:37:58] Dr. Victoria Maizes: The perfect is the enemy of the good really because people can sometimes feel overwhelmed. We talk about all of these different domains of lifestyle and and you know, some people are 90% of the way there and some people are just 2%. And so I really do like to work with people. Where are you on this journey towards health? You know, if you're just beginning, if you're just tuning in and just beginning to pay attention, what are some simple things you could do? Maybe one more vegetable per day. Um, figure out how to make some yummy broccoli. Get glass Tupperware instead of plastic. Go for a five minute walk. These very small steps make a difference. We have really good evidence about the value of a five minute walk. It is ever so much better than being sedentary. We have very good evidence about one more piece of fruit or vegetable per day. Maybe go to bed 10 minutes earlier. So small steps really can make a difference. Can feel less overwhelming. And then you have the good feeling that you were successful, and so it motivates you to build a little on that small step.

[00:39:14] Dr. Melinda Ring: That seems to be a recurring theme when with our guests, is that idea of the small steps make big change. Victoria. Thank you again. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your warmth with us today. Your work has inspired me since my early days in the fellowship and continues to inspire so many around the world to take an active role in their healing. If you are listening and wanna explore more, again, I cannot recommend more highly her new book Heal Faster as well as the Body of Wonder podcast, which she co-hosts with Dr. Andrew Weil. And if you love the conversation. I hope you'll share it with someone who's going through their own recovery journey, whether it's from an illness, from surgery, or even burnout it could be just what they need. . Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Health. I hope you found some inspiration and practical insights to enhance your wellness journey. Don't forget to leave a comment on YouTube or review on Apple Podcasts. I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for future topics or speakers. Be sure to follow Next Level Health with me, Dr. Melinda Ring as we continue exploring the path to healthier, happier lives together.