How to Benefit from Ayurvedic Medicine Wisdom in Modern Times

How to Benefit from Ayurvedic Medicine Wisdom in Modern Times
Dr. Dawn Marie Jacobson, MD

In this episode

In this episode, we’ll dive into one of the world’s oldest medical systems. Developed over 3000 years ago in India, ayurvedic medicine is a holistic approach designed to optimize healthspan and lifespan by living in balance and harmony with nature.

But is this approach still relevant in modern times? And if so, how can we benefit from some of its principles?

Our guest in this episode is Dr. Dawn Marie Jacobson, MD, a functional, integrative medicine physician who combines Ayurvedic medicine with genomics, advanced biometrics, and other cutting-edge approaches to help her patients achieve exceptional health and longevity on all levels.

Also in this episode:

Dr. Patti Shelton, MD, LongevIQ medical communications officer
Amir Ginsberg, LongevIQ founder.

Main topics

(0:00:00) Podcast and episode intro, medical disclaimer
(0:03:06) What is Ayurvedic Medicine
(0:04:44) Ayurvedic medicine personalized approach
(0:05:50) Ayurvedic clock and body clock medicine
(0:09:31) Ayurvedic eating patterns
(0:11:35) Ayurveda, fasting, and nutritive fast for health and longevity
(0:13:13) Ayurveda approach to detoxification
(0:15:08) Eating according to the season in Ayurveda
(0:17:16) Combining Ayurvedic medicine with modern medicine
(0:20:09) Mind-body-spirit types and doshas in Ayurveda
(0:22:27) The importance of honest self-reflection in healing
(0:25:52) Top tips for a long, healthy, happy life

Transcript

This podcast episode was edited to improve readability.

Podcast and episode intro, medical disclaimer

[00:00:00] Dr. Patti: This is Dr. Patti Shelton, and you are listening to the LongevIQ Podcast. We discuss anti-aging and longevity science and how to benefit from it so we can all live long, healthy, happy lives.

Just before we get started, a quick medical disclaimer. This podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or to provide or replace medical advice.
Please use this information to educate yourself as much as possible and share this information with a qualified health practitioner that you trust.

But is this approach still relevant in modern times? And if so, how can we benefit from some of its principles?

Also joining us today, as always, is Amir Ginsberg, the founder of LongevIQ.

Welcome, Dr. Jacobson. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Dr. Jacobson: My pleasure. I am very grateful to be able to share what I learned along the way in my health journey and through others’ health journeys.

Dr. Jacobson’s Journey

[00:01:32] Dr. Patti: You’ve had a very interesting and unique journey. So maybe share with us just about the various healing modalities you’ve studied and how you came to be where you are.

[00:01:42] Dr. Jacobson: Sure. I grew up in a part of the country, north Central United States, Minnesota, where really what healthcare was going to get your medical degree or a nursing degree. And I didn’t grow up in an environment that was holistic. I think we were pretty straightforward, upper Midwesterners, and it was pretty much western medical approaches, and I decided to pursue that and went to medical school.

I didn’t even explore integrative or holistic medicine at that time. I just went through, learned surgery, learned pharmaceuticals, and that was fine. And then, through a series of my own sort of health conditions was led to ask different questions.

And through that process, I discovered Ayurvedic medicine, integrative medicine, naturopathic medicine, and herbal medicine. And there just became an opportunity in my life where it was time to go to what I called Med school 2.0. I completed the Andrew Weil Fellowship at the University of Arizona, health training through Maharishi Ayurveda based in Fairfield, Iowa. And it just all started really clicking on how real healing happens versus just treating a condition or monitoring symptoms.

I have been very blessed to be able to then practice that way full-time for the past eight years.

What is Ayurvedic Medicine

[00:03:04] Dr. Patti: Wonderful. Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about Ayurvedic medicine. So for our audience who’s maybe not familiar with that term, what does that mean? What’s the approach like?

[00:03:13] Dr. Jacobson: I’m glad this is part of our talk today. And for those who practice yoga, often learn aspects of Ayurvedic medicine just through that practice, or they have a yoga teacher that brings in some of the principles of Ayurveda. But commonly, the way it’s first introduced is what it means in Sanskrit, and Ayurveda is the science or the study of life or living. And I think that’s important to build on a bit.

Ayurveda captures the totality of how to have a full, abundant balanced energy life, a holistic healing system that this planet has created over time. It’s a wholeness thing. It’s not just wellness.

And so I think that’s probably the easiest way to explain Ayurveda.
The other approach that I use with my patients and other people who ask me about what Ayurveda is is – With immigrant patterns in our country, people became very familiar with traditional Chinese medicine, and eventually, acupuncture became more and more accepted and covered by insurance and things like that. Ayurvedic medicine’s been around for as long, and it’s a similar type of holistic healing system that’s now making its way into US culture and becoming more known. In many ways, it has similar aspects to it.

So it will get more familiar over time. There are manual body treatments and herbs; there is an herbal tradition and ways you would align your life with daily routines, which we’ll talk about later in the session.
So it’s wholeness, and it’s been around a long time, well established, coming out of the part of the globe that we now call India. But it was created long before the country of India existed.

Ayurvedic medicine personalized approach

[00:04:44] Dr. Jacobson: There’s a way in Ayurvedic Medicine that it’s always about who is coming to you that’s is just as important as what symptoms or illness they may have. So it understands that there’s a unique set of physical attributes that a person has. There’s a very unique way that they think and process things. Mentally there are different ways that people feel emotions, process them, digest them, and make them part of their path. And then even a unique way people would approach their spirituality or consciousness beyond thought.

What’s really nice about that element is that it focuses on the person who comes to see you as the healer. All sorts of practices emerged with Ayurvedic medicine over time, just like any medical approach on the planet.

It really is personalized; everything from food to herbs to music that you play to the colors that you wear may become part of what heals you and balances you ultimately for your longest, healthiest, most vibrant life.

Ayurvedic clock and body clock medicine

[00:05:50] Dr. Jacobson: The other aspect of Ayurvedic medicine that will come into play in western medicine more and more is they’ve never separated themselves from the seasons or the times of the day.

And I like to call it body clock medicine or body clock and biorhythm medicine. I think that most people would be more familiar with the term circadian medicine, which gets a bit more into day-night cycles because that’s been so well studied.

More science is showing that the times of day we eat and move our body align the body’s functions so that cells recover faster and prevent disease from developing.

One thing that intrigues me about Ayurvedic approaches is that there’s a season for everything, so there’s a way that the body stays in balance that is a little bit different when you’re a child versus when you’re a young adult versus a middle-aged adult and, getting into the wisdom years.

[00:06:42] Dr. Patti: That’s beautiful. And I love that you used the phrase, the wisdom years. So a really positive view of what we grow into as we pass into that section of life. And you mentioned the Ayurvedic clock earlier. Could you talk a little bit more about how Ayurveda views these rhythms on the level of a day, a year, or a whole lifetime and how we work with those rhythms in Ayurveda?

[00:07:05] Dr. Jacobson: In Ayurvedic medicine, when you start the training, you learn that the energies that are outside the window that are happening outside like the temperature, the humidity, the movement, the light, all of that affects the human body. So you can’t really separate yourself from the universe. You are a part of it.

The energies that are outside the window that are happening outside like the temperature, the humidity, the movement, the light, all affect the human body.
You can’t really separate yourself from the universe. You are a part of it.

With that comes certain times of day that you would do certain things and changes that you would make by season depending on what is happening. So microclimates where you’re living on the planet – it’s going to be different. It will be different depending on living in the tropics versus living somewhere where you have the four seasons. The principles are the same, though, but there’ll be variations by climate.

The more that we honor the way the body’s inherently designed to respond in its environment, you would modify things based on time of day and temperature, heat, humidity, and things like that. To then prevent wear and tear on the cells and prevent toxin buildup in the body.

So times of day are important, from both an ayurvedic and western body clock science context, because they will allow your body to repair itself and build and remodel tissue most effectively.

Here’s a specific example. Ayurvedic medicine has said for a very long time that there’s less wiggle room with sleep times. No matter what your unique body type is, we recommend that you go to bed between 10 and 11. Like there’s not a lot of room. Sometimes you can go to bed at 8:30 and sometimes at midnight. It’s a little tighter of a time recommendation.
Getting up can vary anywhere from four in the morning to seven, depending on the person’s unique constitution. But that time window between 10 and four is really important. So now, if I put my Western cellular, molecular Medicine hat on, the dementia research has shown that you clean out metabolic byproducts like amyloid, oxidative stress, and inflammation most efficiently between 10 and 2 to 2:30 in the morning. So your body repairs itself, including DNA repair mechanisms in that window. It’s also why night shifts have been linked to cancer.

So that’s clear alignment there to me when I’m working with someone. I work with pilots or people who work the night shift. How do we balance the functions to where you’re still getting some of that repair mechanism at that time of day?

We have to think about cellular repair in longevity. We need to repair our DNA, and we need these normal processes of metabolic activity in the body to thrive and live a long life.

Ayurvedic eating patterns

[00:09:31] Dr. Patti: How about talking a bit more about the specifics of the eating pattern that Ayurveda might recommend? When would we eat our first meal? When would we eat our last meal?

[00:09:39] Dr. Jacobson: That’s exactly where I was going to go. I love, love, love this. So in Ayurvedic medicine, this is a daily routine. You do quite a bit of self-care and nourishment in the morning. That’s why that morning of four to seven is broader. You might get up and meditate for an hour or get up and meditate for five minutes. How you design the morning routine will influence everything for the rest of the day.
So Ayurvedic medicine would say get up, have a healthy walk outside, and get sunlight on your retina and skin. That’s great for keeping the circadian rhythms aligned. You would probably do some exercise in the morning, like yoga, preferably before you eat, to burn some calories.
You’d be doing a series of oral hygiene that would keep the biome, your nasal passages, and your mouth balanced. You’re doing all that before you even really are doing food. And then you have breakfast, and it’s usually on the lighter side. One caveat is that a high-carb breakfast isn’t going to work for everyone. So there’s this concept of personalizing the meal plan based on things. Regarding the timing, breakfast should be no later than nine.

So somewhere in there, breakfast gets done, and then a big lunch with things that are harder to digest or take longer to digest, so you have time to digest and clear it. That’s when Ayurvedic medicine says that fire and heat are the strongest. So noon is a big meal, and it’s advised between 11 AM and 1, and you’re supposed to take an hour for lunch.

Then dinner between five and seven so that all the mechanical digestion is done before you go to bed.

You have dinner done by six and breakfast at eight or nine the next day. That’s automatically in that window of 13 to 14, 15 hour overnight fast that we know keeps blood sugar regulated, insulin resistance down, and leads to healthy body composition.

I would say this is how I see ayurvedic meal timing, but also matching some of the things we see that will lead to health, including optimizing microbiome activity, sleep, and things like that.

Ayurveda, fasting, and nutritive fast for health and longevity

[00:11:35] Dr. Patti: At any point, would Ayurveda recommend, say, a day or a few days of fasting at any certain time of the year, or would it be consistent every day the same?

[00:11:44] Dr. Jacobson: It’s interesting. So I was trained through maharishi ayurveda. The way they taught me was like, fasting isn’t necessarily great for the body. That’s very different compared to some schools of fasting out there, which do a water fast for five days, or some of the ketogenic fasts out there that let you eat ketogenic-friendly snacks or small things to get into ketogenesis for three or five days for brain health and things like that.

Rather than those types of fasts, I started using the term nutritive fast, which means that you might have small amounts of food, like cooking your grain if you eat it, and then saving the water and sipping on the water. It’s not zero calorie day. Light eating, like a nutritive liquid kind of day here and there, is very healthy. Especially in our culture, where we just can graze, we always have food, and it’s always abundant. It’s relatively affordable and easy to get. So we learn to eat light.

We eat a lot of heavy foods in our country…but the body wants to experience lightness, and the bowel needs to rest. So we must give ourselves a break from all that and allow everything to rest.

We eat a lot of heavy foods in our country. When we prepare them, we prepare them heavily, but the body wants to experience lightness, and the bowel needs to rest. So we must give ourselves a break from all that and allow everything to rest. Like one day a week, do light eating, and I think in longevity science, it’s that 300, 400 calorie day. Do your routine, get that solid 13 to 14 hour overnight fast all the time and then do a light day once a week. There’s also a nice detoxifying, calming effect on the body if you do that. And I think it’s hugely important to start understanding the toxins we take into our body and how to get them out.

Ayurveda approach to detoxification

[00:13:12] Dr. Patti: You brought up a very important topic in health and longevity, which is this concept of toxins and how they affect our health. Could you expand a little bit on how Ayurveda views the detoxification process?

[00:13:26] Dr. Jacobson: Ayurvedic Medicine has always had a balance of activity and rest. It’s a balance of breaking down and building up. And what I love about it so much is they have detox built in, and they always have. So you would go to an Ayurvedic treatment center and stay there for anywhere from one to three weeks.
And you would have detox foods. You’re doing yoga, doing breath practices, and just getting deep oxygenation, which we know is so important for energy and detoxification in the body. You would do that two or three times a year, particularly at the changes of the season.

There is toxin buildup. It’s inflammation. It’s oxidative stress. It’s DNA that needs to be repaired that’s hanging out there and maybe going to become a cancer cell, maybe going to accelerate heart disease or amyloid deposition in the brain.

I think detoxification is important, but what Ayurveda does right is it rebuilds you after they do the detox. They might give you a big cleanse with healthy MCT oil, which is Ghee. Or you’re given castor oil or something to clean out the colon entirely.

Our version of that in the west is a colonoscopy prep. We just do it in 24 hours instead of a week. I am very curious to see if this colonoscopy prep can be used to our advantage in western culture for longevity. Not that you do the colonoscopy more than recommended, but that idea.

Colonics, water high in the colon is not as gentle to the body as sesame oil Basti in Ayurveda (*oil-based enema). It’s a way to get natural herbs into the body through the rectal and lower GI mucosa. It is very calming to the body and the nervous system. Much less invasive than other things we do in western medicine.

Eating according to the season in Ayurveda

[00:15:00] Dr. Patti: You alluded earlier to seasonal variations. So for those who may live in a climate with a summer and a winter, how might you make those shifts?

[00:15:08] Dr. Jacobson: I often tell people we’re going to match what we’re doing health optimization-wise with what we’re seeing out the window. So Let’s say someone comes in and they have a lot of fire energy, and it’s summer in Arizona. It’s 110 degrees in Tucson or Phoenix or wherever they’re living, Sedona. They’re a fire person. They’re driven. They’re impatient. They want things done now, and once they decide they’re going to do something, they’re going to get it done de pronto.
That’s fire energy. And I ask, what is your favorite food? And they’ll say, oh, I love hot chili. I love spicy peppers. All that Southwest Tex-Mex stuff, right? And I’m like, what symptoms are you having? Oh, I get rashes and heartburn. Those are signs of heat in the body. So Ayurvedic medicine would say, let’s prescribe foods that will calm the heat down in your body. It might be salads, which you wouldn’t recommend for everybody, but for that person, cooler natural foods would be fine.

Now it’s a picture postcard, perfect Christmas weather out here. I have a blizzard outside my window. I’m going to be eating warming foods. So even if someone is a fire person, it’s negative 20 degrees out there. So maybe we bring in the garlic, the hot, spicy jalapeno pepper chilies that that person likes. They eat them in the winter but not in the summer.

Spending time outdoors

[00:16:21] Dr. Patti: You’ve said a few times, let’s base what we’re doing on what we see out the window. How does ayurveda view going outside? And would they say it’s important to spend some time outside? If so, when would you do that? Would it be different in different seasons?

[00:16:34] Dr. Jacobson: I would say we are no longer an outdoor group of human beings, right? We have created a world where we’re naturally inside all the time unless you still have a job where you’re outside. At least most of the people I work with are indoor people.

We’ve known for a long time that vitamin D is important. It’s becoming more front and center now with COVID research and even cancer prevention and autoimmune research. We rely on vitamin D for so many things.

Ayurveda says, get out in the morning, go for a morning walk. And that is going to make sure that your circadian clock stays balanced. Open up your windows, get fresh air, and be outside unless it’s somehow going to be harmful to you. If you have a lot of fire energy, they wouldn’t say run outside when it’s 90 degrees.

Combining Ayurvedic medicine with modern medicine

[00:17:15] Dr. Patti: One thing I find really fascinating about your practice is how you integrate these ancient, more natural approaches with the really modern scientific kinds of approaches. So how do you fold in things like genomics into your practice?

[00:17:29] Dr. Jacobson: First, let me say that Ayurveda’s wisdom didn’t come down thousands of years ago in one package and has been unchanged. It’s been adapting and growing and bringing in the science of the day for centuries, right?

[00:17:43] Dr. Jacobson: I think epigenetics is where Ayurveda shines because it’s everything we discussed. The environment around you, the foods you’re eating, daily routines are going to turn on your resiliency genes, or they’re going to turn on cancer genes, or they’re going to turn the heart disease acceleration genes, or they’re going to turn off sirtuins, and you’re going to start aging, or your telomeres are going to be not as long.

We can start blending in all sorts of western testing, which I love. But it comes down to what are you going to do to then optimize?

So to me, it’s very easy to interweave the two. And the genomics program I like to use is IntellxxDNA, based out of Austin, Texas. They’ll put things in there like, oh, these genes are a little bit different or slightly different. They’re not as optimal.

For example, if I see detox pathways, like the glutathione SNPs, and I check the glutathione level, and it’s low or suboptimal, like low normal, and that person’s mercury level stays around 10 no matter what.
They love fish, and they’re still eating it like once every other week. But their mercury level is still high. Clearly, they don’t have the detox capacity genetically. Then I can still choose supplements or personalized herbs and things from Ayurveda to help lower or optimize everything for them.

Ayurveda and stress

[00:18:50] Dr. Patti: And you mentioned resilience, which makes me think about stress. In the modern world, almost everybody experiences being under stress, at least some of the time. So how can people maybe optimize their lifestyle according to Ayurveda and other parts of medicine to help them deal with stress better? How might you shift your patterns in times of more stress?

This idea of a full, abundant life is actually causing disease. We’ve pushed ourselves to a level of productivity that isn’t healthy for us…the inputs have to change on some level. We’re going to see it more and more in research that lifestyle choices matter.

[00:19:09] Dr. Jacobson: Clearly, daily routines are important. I’m like, what time do you go to bed? Well, 12 o’clock, 12:30. When do you get up? 8, 8:30. You’re pushing the body clocks in a way that doesn’t allow your body to recover from stress anymore. Plus, the inputs haven’t changed.
So I have to talk delicately with people around that because this idea of a full, abundant life is actually causing disease. We’ve pushed ourselves to a level of productivity that isn’t healthy for us. I have to find an entry point for that. I’m like, let’s, have an honest conversation. The inputs have to change on some level. We’re going to see it more and more in research that these lifestyle choices matter.

For example, research that came out maybe 5,6,7 years ago from the Scandinavian countries described how people come home from work at 4:30 and go for a walk with their family. Then they have dinner with their family. And I’m like, is this even real? Does this even happen? And they were talking about the health outcomes related to that.
I think we need to take a look at some of these other daily routines, especially when your energy bank starts going down.

Mind-body-spirit types and doshas in Ayurveda

[00:20:09] Dr. Patti: Could we talk about the concept of doshas in Ayurveda? The way that Ayurveda categorizes people or puts people into different groups?

[00:20:17] Dr. Jacobson: I call them mind-body-spirit types. There are these 10 pairs of opposites that Ayurveda uses for diagnostic purposes, which they condense down into three: doshas or core constitutions.

Vata. Mostly air, light, mobile, quick moving, and dry.
Pitta. Mostly fire, but some water, hot, oily, and intense.
Kapha. Primarily earth. A little bit of water, heavy and slow and reflective.

There are ways that you then treat people based on those constitutions, mind-body-spirit types. There’s also an ayurvedic psychology category called rajas (*activity), tamas (* stability), and sattva (* consciousness). Rajas is intense and driven, whereas tamas is more inert. And you want a healthy balance of these so that you’re not just overthinking, overdoing, overgoing, versus stuck and not moving.

And mind spirit gets into this concept of sattva. And so you think of volunteerism, giving back to your community, selfless service, like where you’re going out and doing something not for recognition or for money, but you’re doing it just because it’s the right thing to do and it’s something you’re called to do in your life.

Sattvic principles get you into that Rumi field where we let go of our judgments, we let go of our expectations. We’re full on into self-compassion and self-awareness…and it’s joy-filled, free, and open. And that is where real healing happens because the body wants beauty….the body wants loving, kindness, and compassion.

So those sattvic principles then get you into that Rumi field where we let go of our judgments, we let go of our expectations. We’re full on into self-compassion and self-awareness, allowing others to be in that space. And you end up in this field that Rumi talks about beyond what’s right and what’s wrong, and it’s joy-filled, free, and open. And that is where real healing happens because the body wants beauty. The body wants honesty to stay healthy. The body wants loving, kindness, and compassion. It just resonates with those things, equanimity. There’s just a way that you thrive when you focus on those types of principles.

[00:22:08] Dr. Patti: What a beautiful message. Absolutely. Super important message for everyone out there to listen to, addressing all levels of wellness.

The importance of honest self-reflection in healing

[00:22:16] Dr. Jacobson: I love it. And to me, that is how you live your longest, healthiest life because everything will be in harmony in your body. And we start seeing that in the biomarkers, the biometrics that we have.

When we start interweaving mind, body, and spirit types with what we’re going to do for health based on a randomized controlled trial or a good longitudinal trial, you just have to look in the mirror and say, is what I’m doing working? Who are the healers that I need to talk to get as much information as I can because somewhere in there is the root cause. Somewhere in there is the set of solutions personalized to that person based on genomics, biometrics, mind-body-spirit assessment, and daily routines. To me, that is what’s going to get you there. And we can decide what we want to measure together and follow.

For instance, if the problem is inflammatory fats and someone says well, I have to keep eating out, then I say great, let’s work with that.
Knowing that when you go to a restaurant, they’re not using olive oil, they’re using some sort of vegetable slash canola oil, probably increasing your inflammation. Or we find partially prepared meals like sun Basket, Thistle, Sakara, all these companies that send you the meals. There are ayurveda ones out there too. So that you can get at least the things to your house so you can cook more is sometimes a solution for people.
And then we work together. Such a core part of my approach is collaboration.

Healing begins with honest self-reflection. That honest self-reflection and being able to have a healing conversation with a provider at some point is immensely important so that you really understand what’s going to fine-tune every function in your body for more days than not and then really set you up for the longest, healthiest life.

Amir: You mentioned two huge takeaways we want to reflect on. One of them to be honest with yourself and be self-aware; What I want to achieve, and is my current situation, am I happy with it or do I need help? And if so, what type of healer do I need? It’s a very honest conversation. It goes above and beyond agendas and beliefs. I think that’s one thing that is an important message to convey.

The other one is also huge, especially in functional medicine, is the interaction between the practitioner and the patient, a bidirectional, ever-evolving interaction and relationship where both the practitioner and the patient learn each other and grow together and personalize the approach, and it’s probably not going to happen overnight.

Ayurveda holistic approach to health, wellness, and life

[00:24:46] Dr. Jacobson: It’s a journey. Yeah. What I find really exciting is when I first meet with someone, and they really are here to optimize, and they’ve seen maybe a family member or a friend or another loved one in their life go through a healing crisis, they want to come and learn.
They just want to come and learn about health and cells and lifestyle and how does this all work? And they come with this curiosity about things, which I think is refreshing.

I also work with people that are in a health crisis. They want to talk about how am I going to take a supplement, how am I going to exercise, and move my body?

They might be seeing a therapist for the mind and the emotional stuff.
So you digest your emotions and your thoughts. If you don’t, you’re just going to store up this stuff in your body if you don’t let it flow in out. And if you’re a person with deep spiritual questions, then you need that teacher to help you work through the spiritual questions, the soul questions, if that’s part of your healing path.

And sometimes that’s what’s needed because the person finally addresses their soul questions. I love it. Whether they go to an ayurvedic treatment center or their Buddhist meditation week, they return and are transformed.

Top tips for a long, healthy, happy life

[00:25:53] Dr. Patti: Beautiful. That’s really a nice way to up the wisdom of Ayurveda, the importance of mind, body, and spirit, addressing health on all the different levels. On that note, what’s your best advice for people as they’re looking to find balance in their lives and work towards having the longest, healthiest life they can?

[00:26:15] Dr. Jacobson: We talked about healing begins with honest self-reflection. So come from that point, what are you ready to honestly look at and get feedback from a practitioner. You can get more than one and decide what resonates with you. Explore it and see how your body feels.

Think about what it means to be whole. Like fully living as a human being and not just, are you well and fit?

The two key tips I probably recommend to everybody I work with that’s pulled directly from ayurvedic medicine are sleep times. 10 to 11:00 PM in bed to sleep is a go-to, and then get up no later than seven. So there are these circadian rhythms that are central.

And along with that, I often write this into my plans, eat a light, vegetarian breakfast between seven and nine, and a big lunch. If you have meat, cheese, or dairy, have that all at lunch. You need a light vegetarian dinner between 5 and 7 PM, and if you need a healthy snack in there, great.

If your blood sugar drops at night, you can make a nice little golden milk healthy bedtime snack. But most people wouldn’t probably need that. Get into a healthy 13 to 14 hour overnight fast and do a couple of days of light eating a month. You’re just going to feel great. You’re not going to turn on the dangerous signals in the body, and you’re giving plenty of nutrients to make those mitochondria, little powerhouses in your cell. You are going to sleep great. It works. That’s all I can say.

[00:27:34] Dr. Patti: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming and sharing all of your wisdom, the many different healing modalities that you’ve studied, and all of your journey. Thank you so much for sharing that with all of us.

[00:27:44] Dr. Jacobson: You are welcome. You’re very welcome. Glad to be here.