 demands that I go with a big exclamation point, whatever. We are back for another Recovery Monday. This is episode 70 of Recovery Monday. I feel like we haven't done one of these in a long time. We haven't because I skipped the one on Memorial Day. This is 2023, by the way, because it was Memorial Day. I just wanted a day off and I had some family stuff going on. So we are back for Recovery Monday. Let's put the chat overlay up so you guys can see each other as usual. Hello, Carol. Nice to see you. Everybody just give me, somebody give me a wave or something so I know that everything is working and you can hear me and all of that good stuff. So what up, B? Hello, everybody, welcome back. We'll wait for the usual suspects to sort of file in here. I think that's an official YouTube, thank you, Becky. Becky, wait so we know that they can hear me. This is like an official YouTuber thing. Let's wait for everybody to come in that's required. The other thing that I don't have that's required is evidently a little IKEA plant has to be on my desk to be an official YouTuber. Did not know that. Anyway, let everybody let me know how you're doing, where you're coming from, how everybody's doing today. The summer is starting to arrive here in New York. It's a little bit warm and humid today, but that's gonna happen. And today we are going, thank you, Carol, appreciate it. Jackie Treehorn, Jackie Tree, this is a Lebowski reference. Thank you, Jackie Treehorn. You literally just made my day with your screen name. It's good to see you here. Hey, Ivan, how's it going? So today we are gonna talk about that thing where, especially if you're new to this, people will often say, when are you gonna talk about gut health? How come you don't talk about diet? How come you don't talk about natural herbs and supplements and anxiety stuff? And well, we'll talk about that in a little bit, okay? But that requires going to IKEA, no one wants that mess. That is true. But I was actually in an IKEA again, I'm in an IKEA in Jersey, I don't know, somewhere around the end of May, I think. IKEA is just, it's just like a bad science experiment. I'm on fire here in the UK, hey from New Hampshire. I guess you guys are having a heat wave over there from what I understand. It's not a heat wave here yet, it's not even close. But yeah, geez, I'm sorry. Anytime I got to go into IKEA, I'm not happy about it. I just, I hate that they make you, they really make you, they want you to walk through the rat lab and I don't wanna do it. So anyway, today we're gonna talk about the idea that we should be talking more about diet and supplements and I get asked questions like, when are you gonna talk about vitamin deficiencies? And how that causes anxiety or, when are you gonna talk about gut health? You know, second brain in your stomach and all that stuff. So let's get into that. Oh my God, when you said IKEA on one of your podcasts, I almost lost it. IKEA for an anxious person is a super challenge. Like maybe one day we'll do one of these just on like the most challenging places. And if you wanna throw those in the comments, most everybody would agree. And if you do not have IKEA where you live, you don't even know what you're missing. Like it is a total, it is an anxious person's nightmare because you are trapped in these huge, huge warehouse stores and there's no direct way to the exit because they force you to go through all the displays. And I don't know, the Swedes are supposed to like have it together in terms of happiness and quality of life but they also created IKEA. So I'm beginning to question that but the meatballs are good. Anyway, so yeah, IKEA is a thing. So let's get into today's topic. I wanna say a couple of things about this because I know that a lot of people, especially if you followed along for any amount of time are probably like rolling in today with like, ooh, here comes like one of those classic Drew Rantz about like gut health. Not really, not really. I'm not gonna go down that road because the very first thing that I wanna say about today's topic is that everybody gets to do things the way they want. Like everybody gets to pick their own way and personally I will respect anybody's choices. So if anybody is listening to this live or on a replay and decides, well, this guy's never gonna talk about gut health so he's not for me. I would be like, okay, that's totally your right and I respect that and you go do the gut health thing. And you know what, if it somehow makes you better I would be thrilled for you as one human to another and we should all adopt that policy. So everybody gets to do things the way they want. That's totally allowed and that we gotta put that right up front. That's part of the deal here. We also have to know that everybody is welcome here. Everybody is welcome here. So if you like to take supplements and you like to regulate your gut biome because you think it's good for you and it's healthy, go for it. Like if you are doing those things it doesn't mean you are doing recovery wrong. It's very important for me to say that. So I don't talk about these things because my orientation to these particular issues tells me that this is not the way to recover. However, there is literally nothing wrong with trying to be healthy and taking care of your body. There's nothing wrong with that at all. So you can do both of these things at the same time. You can try to take care of your gut health and also be working on things like exposure and acceptance and surrender and willful tolerance and all the stuff we talk about all the time. They can go together. I just get concerned when we try to use things like diet supplements or gut health or whatever you wanna call it that sort of thing as recovery that's going to fix my anxiety disorder. I do not believe that that is true. So, but if you're doing those things alongside everything else because you just like them and you like to try to be healthy, big thumbs up. I'm a huge fan of being healthy, right? I am also not denying in any way that anxiety is a thing you feel in your body 100%. So when you are terrified because your heart is pumping or you are terrified because you feel a little disoriented or because you feel nauseous or you're having rapid, rapid thoughts, those things really are happening. That's not just in your mind. Those things are truly happening in your body. So anxiety is 100% something that you will in fact experience somatically, right? So you will experience these things in your body. And we do know for a fact and I will be the first person to admit that you can do things to your body that make it feel different. That is 100% true. If you wanna eat a certain way there's a chance that you can make yourself feel a certain way if you really go extreme with it. Although my argument and a lot of people will back this up is that our bodies are really good at regulating themselves. You can eat a really crappy diet and your body will still tend to take care of itself. I don't think you should do that. But generally speaking, it's very, very difficult to drive your body into some state where your diet is literally causing a problem like panic disorder or OCD. I would say almost impossible. But again, you are free to disagree with me. What we care about here is that thing where we become afraid of our bodies and our thoughts. That's the part that we care about here. So for instance, I would say, let's say caffeine is a very basic example. And I spend so much time talking about coffee and alcohol. I never thought I would talk about these things, but I do, I talk about them a lot. So caffeine is 100% gonna change the way you feel. It's gonna make you jittery, it's gonna make you feel keyed up. People who love caffeine and coffee will say it wakes them up. So caffeine is a thing that will make your body feel a little bit different. Some people feel like if they eat a lot of carbs they start to feel sluggish or bloated. Some people will say if they eat a lot of sugar they feel sluggish, whatever. So you may eat things or ingest things that change the state of your body that happens all the time. What we care about is the part where you intend, then you say my body has changed state and now I am going to modify my lifestyle and build a huge 72 foot long list of avoidance, coping, safety, and escape strategies because I'm terrified of that. That's the part we care about. So while it may be true that certain nutrient deficiencies or eating too much of a certain food or drinking a lot of caffeine or engaging with a lot of alcohol will make you feel different. Billions of people in the world to do those things but billions of people feel those things without ever turning their lives completely upside down because of what they feel. That is primarily why I do not look at this as we need to regulate our gut biomes to get better. That's just not a thing in my theoretical orientation. So we do acknowledge that what we eat and how we treat our bodies can change the way we feel. There's no doubt about that. But think of all the people out there that are walking around with either weight management issues or nutrient deficiencies and people who like to talk about doing things like diet supplements and gut health for anxiety also like to point out that our diets are full of toxins and we don't eat whole foods and it's processed and they're killing us and this is bad and that is bad. Science tends to say they're wrong and they sensationalize most of these things but they are so quick to point out that our diets are so horrible and full of toxins yet a reasonably small percentage of the people who eat those diets develop anxiety disorders. Why would that be? So we can't have it both ways. We can't wave the toxins horrible diet flag and also acknowledge that like, well, even though a lot of people in the US will have panic attacks this year a very small percentage of them will develop panic disorder for instance, right? So that is why I don't tend to talk about those things not because you shouldn't take care of your body. I like to take care of my body. I'm a big gym rat. I try to eat healthy. I often fail, especially when I get lazy but I'm a huge fan of taking care of your body. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I would even go so far as to say if you take good care of your body it gives you a little bit of a leg up in a lot of instances. It might make you a little bit better prepared to do difficult things. It helps you be a little bit more resilient even mentally like taking care of your body is a good stress management tool. All of those things are true. We just don't have to go to let me go and try to regulate my gut biome to try to solve my OCD problem or my panic disorder problem or I'm agoraphobic because I, you know there's something wrong with I need more fermented foods that's not a thing. One of the reasons why I think it's important to not hang your head on that. And again, you may choose to disagree and think, okay, well, this guy's not for me and that's totally okay. But one of the problems that comes up when you go down that road is people wind up in management mode like I'm okay as long as I take my probiotics and as long as I get my 10 hours of sleep and as long as this and as long as that. And they build this very fragile set of conditions that are based on trying to micromanage their own bodies, be it flora and fauna and their guts or their cortisol levels or they're trying to somehow micromanage their hormonal levels as if your endocrine system isn't automatic and designed to take care of that for you. They try to regulate all kinds of stuff. The firing of their vagus nerves things that we were never meant to regulate. And they start to get into a mindset where it's like, oh, I can get this under control if I eat this very restricted special diet and engage in these special rituals every single day they're revolving around managing my body and regulating my body. But then invariably, life will throw something at you that is too much for those rituals to bear. They collapse and then people wind up shaking their heads and wondering, I thought it was working. What happened? I took all my probiotics and yet I'm having nausea right now because I'm so anxious because that was never the solution, right? You were just trying to go into ultra management mode. So I always, I don't like that because I see too many people wind up in a situation where they start to then judge themselves very negatively and harshly and they draw conclusions like, I'm never gonna get better because they've been trying to do it the body way and then it sort of breaks down and they feel things and then they blame themselves for being broken and I'm doing it wrong. I'm never gonna get better. I'm worse than everybody else. That becomes problematic from a psychological standpoint. And when you think you have to rely on managing your good health or having a special diet or taking supplements, you lose that psychological flexibility that we're after, right, in recovery. So you've heard like on disorder, Josh and I talk about that all the time. Josh kind of talked all the time about you have to get the credit. So if you do something really hard and you meet a challenge and you move through fear and at the other side and you did it, your probiotics didn't do it, your fermented diet didn't do it, you're tapping to activate your Vegas nerve didn't do it, the cold water didn't do it, you did it because even without those things you can manage this stuff, right? So these are the things that I think are really important and why I do not go down the road of like, let's talk about gut health for anxiety. So I can get gut health if you want, that's totally fine, but not for anxiety. It's not an anxiety cure in my view of the world. And again, I will keep saying this today, you are free to disagree with me. I am not going to debate it or argue with you, you're just free to disagree and do it any way you want and I would respect that. So why do people go down that road? I'm gonna give you three reasons. And then we'll go into the comments and we'll see what everybody has to say about this. First of all, I'm sure I haven't really looked at comments yet, I promise I will, but I'm guessing a lot of you were saying things like I've tried all that, I've tried all that, I've tried everything, I'm guessing I'm gonna see that. I'll give you three reasons why I think people tend to go down that road. Number one is that the internet stinks. And I say that the internet stinks because anybody that can fog up a mirror can say things on the internet. Now, that's a good thing because everybody gets to have a voice, that's a positive thing, right? And the evolution of humanity and civilization, that's a good thing and it does democratize things and it gives people a voice and that's kind of cool. But it means that anybody can read any article from any source regardless of how truthful it is or regardless of how accurate it is and run with it as if it's a fact. And then on the internet, if we say things enough times, whether or not they are true, they become facts. So a great example of this and you guys have heard me talk about this is the gut as the second brain thing that you hear talked about all the time. And that grows out of basic research that says there is a lot of signaling that happens between your GI tract and your brain. And yes, the precursors of neurotransmitters are found there but none of that science said that your gut is your second brain. Those were really good headlines that were used to get clicks and eyeballs and reads when some of that science was reported into the mainstream which it should be, it's good for us to know these things but then that gross misinterpretation and that giant overreach becomes fact because we keep saying it again and again and again. And if you have a vested interest, I'm not saying anybody has malicious intent here. Everybody goes into some business or another if you have a vested interest either financially or emotionally in that being true then you keep repeating that again and again and again and you base your entire framework upon the fact that your gut is your second brain when none of that science says that. It just says that your gut does a lot of signaling with your brain first and foremost about things like appetite, food cravings and satiety which shouldn't be a big surprise. That seems like it makes sense. Your GI tract communicates those things to your brain but that doesn't make your gut your second brain. So you see how sometimes misinterpretation of science can kind of go off the rails and no matter how many times the original researchers and people in that field say, well, wait a minute, we didn't say that, it doesn't matter because now the internet has called it fact. So that happens and then that is perpetuated by people that have vested interests. Now, full disclosure or full acknowledgement, you might turn around and say, hey, aren't you in school to be a therapist right now? Yeah, I am. I'm spending a huge amount of time and money to get those credentials to become a therapist. So I therefore have a vested interest in my way of being valid or right. Gotta acknowledge that or otherwise I'm gonna be intellectually disingenuous but you gotta keep that in mind when you're consuming information. And I think the third thing, aside from misinterpretation of science and the fact that the internet gets to say anything it wants is that these sometimes represent gentler ways. This is not anybody's fault. I do not blame anybody for this at all and I was used so I totally understand this but if you give an agoraphobic the choice and I've said this before, you guys have heard me say this before. If I give an agoraphobic person, if I give a hundred agoraphobics, the choice of either getting out of the house and taking a 10 minute walk around the neighborhood as exposure where they get intentionally triggered, intentionally panicked to learn how to get better at doing that or taking some probiotics and tapping on their cheeks to regulate their vagus nerve or changing their diet, what do you think they're gonna pick? That's not a mystery, that is not a problem, it's not a crime but of course they are going to do that. Of course they are gonna do that. I get it and when we hold those things up as possible cures or possible strategies that are primary recovery strategies, frightened people will do that again and again and again, they'll keep choosing that again and again and again and then they wind up getting stuck and then they wind up again in that heartbreaking situation where I watch people beat on each other, beat on themselves and call themselves broken and I'm not getting it right, I'm back to square one, that's just so not fair. So I understand why people do that but I think it's a little bit more problematic than helpful and that's why I don't talk about these things. Again, am I gonna invalidate some of the claims that this is what you do to cure your anxiety? Hell yeah, I am. So anybody that wants to pop on and argue with me over like no, no, if you do celery juice that cures your OCD or no, no, no, a panic disorder is a gut biome problem, bring it and I will debate that. But am I saying that you are wrong if you also try to take care of your body? Of course not, try to take care of your body, you only get one, it's a good idea to do that. So that is my, however long I'm gonna go in here, 18 minutes on that. Let's pop into the comments here and see what everybody is saying. I always love when you guys are like kind of supporting each other and having conversations without me. I kind of, I don't know why I dig that so much but it's really cool. So let's get up to the top here and see where we are. Celery juice is flying for constipation. That's probably fair, right? Let's see, let's keep going here. We are very much dying in the UK, the heat wave anxiety is real. Well, that's that thing where just like if I drink coffee, it makes my anxiety go through the roof. If it's too hot, it makes my anxiety go through the roof because being hot is uncomfortable. It's all kinds of stuff. You know what? A heat wave is physically uncomfortable because it changes the way you feel and it's psychologically uncomfortable because it's stressful. Even people that don't have the anxiety disorders get nasty. We get impatient. We get a little artery with each other like when it's super hot and uncomfortable. We just, not everybody takes a heat wave and turns it into a reason to not leave the house for three weeks. So we got to keep that in mind. Very similar concepts here, right? When you're talking about heat anxiety. Jackie Treyon wants to do a, I'll start to put these up here. I just, if you guys don't know, I'm a huge fan of the Big Lebowski. So this screen name just makes my day. Yeah, we should do a group trip to Ikea as an exposure. Did you ever guys ever see the, there was a story and it's true. It's an actual thing came out a few years ago. There was some small group of, I don't know who they were and they filmed an internet based soap opera in an Ikea. If you Google that soap opera Ikea, they did it for like months. They would go into an Ikea and use a little front of rooms that were set up and they literally made their own little soap opera mini series, which is so awesome. And they did that. So that was really great. We could do that in Ikea. I mean, I could probably film in an Ikea. Maybe should I do a podcast episode walking through an Ikea? I would do that. Cause I, and years ago, I would never, I would never have done it. We have here, let's see here. If you think Ikea is bad, try stew lennards for groceries. We just got stew lennards. There's a couple of them on Long Island. I've never been. I'll give it a shot. Let's see what happens. Red flame. Yes, cause you're going to burst into, burst into flames. That's true. There was a hidden shortcut in every Ikea story. There actually is. If you ask like, hey, how do we get to or if you look carefully, there are ways to cut through. So that is a hundred percent true. They don't want you to do that, of course, but you can do that. Even in Ikea, even when you go through the shortcuts, it takes a long time to get the hell out. Cause just when you think you're out of the showroom, then you wind up like in the crazy, like here's 65,000 square feet of candles and lights that nobody wants. So seriously. Ooh, this is a good one too. So we're not talking necessarily about food and diet here, but that's okay. I live in Casino land, presumably, I guess out in Vegas, right? Or somewhere like that. And I don't get lost in casinos. Ikea needs a lot more slot machines so I can find my way around. Casinos though are very similar, right? So casino design is all about let us make you snake, especially in Vegas where the casinos are gargantuan. We are going to make you walk through like 32,000 square feet of gaming space before you get to the whatever. So similar, similar places. Oh, this is good. Jackie Tree here in front and center today. I once thought Brazil nuts would provide me enough selenium to modulate my thyroid, which would fix my anxiety, didn't work. This is one of those things. And I'm sure that like, I don't blame anybody for trying this because I bet you could probably find 50 articles in 15 minutes about this that will claim that Brazil nuts and selenium are ways to somehow micromanage your thyroid. I would almost guarantee that you could find a ton of articles about that just because they're there doesn't mean that they're actually useful or accurate. So I get that. I don't blame anybody for trying that. I've seen people try to regulate their thyroids. I've seen people try to regulate their pituitary glands. I've people see people try to regulate their cortisol levels through diet, their adrenaline levels through diet, all of those things. I see it all the time, every single day. Let's see here. So Denise says, hello, Denise. I do notice a little difference when it comes to what I eat, but it's a slippery slope if I get too rigid. This is a great comment right here. You might notice a difference. I know that honestly, I notice a difference if I eat a lot of carbs, especially my body reacts a little differently now than it maybe did 10 years ago, which everybody changes over time. I will get a bloated feeling and a sluggish feeling. Does that mean that I have to not leave my house for three weeks? No, of course not. But yeah, that happens. And then it is a slippery slope, right? So it's okay to steer clear from foods that don't agree with you. Like you don't have to intentionally make yourself feel like crap by eating crap or stuff that you don't like. But we have to be careful about being very rigid. Good comment, good comment. Exposure is good after, is a good after exposure to Harry Potter. Okay, I know when I'm, okay, this is a good one too. This is big, like the caffeine thing. I know I'm, I'll know I'm recovering when I could drink my coffee again. A lot of people use caffeine as exposure. I've talked about that sort of stuff. Caffeine and alcohol is exposure. It's another good reference. Every year when winter ends, I turn into Rob Lowe's character from Parks and Rec. If you guys haven't seen Parks and Rec, and by the way, country's in Russia and like banging out Parks and Rec references. So like respect for that. The Rob Lowe character is 100% an optimizer. We're gonna talk about that maybe in a podcast episode. Are you an optimizer? And this plays into that. So, you know what? Let's talk about optimization for a second. Optimizing is a slippery slope because many, many people in this community fall into that where they are constantly trying to optimize everything, not because they're the Rob Lowe character in Parks and Rec and he certainly was an optimizer, but because they think if they can be optimally perfect and have their hormone levels perfectly balanced with the exact amount of sleep and the exact amount of meditation and breathing exercises and relaxation and supplements and their gut biomas order, then they won't get anxious. And if they do, it might not be that bad. So show of hands, who here is an optimizer? Who is trying to optimize every aspect of your life to try to not be anxious? That is that slippery slope of let's talk about gut health. That's why I don't talk about it because I will literally fuel those compulsions. And I know that, but the Rob Lowe thing made me laugh. Yeah, so Cheryl, I get this. It's okay to wish this by the way. This is not a problem. I wish there was a supplement I could take to rid me of my anxiety. Okay, here we go. The optimizers are checking in. If you are trying to optimize yourself all day long because you think that's what you need to do, I must be optimal or I might get anxious, you could stop doing that. I'm not telling you to go and smoke two packs of cigarettes and like drink 60 gallons of coffee in the next week, but what would happen? So if you are an optimizer, so Jackie's trying to steer away from it, Jackie Treehorn, what would happen if you stopped optimizing for two days? Like what could happen? So that is a really good exposure in a way. It's a good path down toward a recovered state. Like I'm gonna back away from my optimizing. For me, that meant magnesium powder and magnesium powder, Natural Com came from the whole. And if you guys are in, I think my Instagram live from my subscribers, we talked about that. Somebody's gonna put up the poop emoji. We talk about magnesium all the time for good reason. I was like, I thought fish oil and a magnesium powder had to have those. I had to optimize my body because there was an article out there called the miracle of magnesium and made the rounds. And like clearly magnesium is the answer and it wasn't. So I get that. But if you stop trying to optimize for a couple of days, see what happens. Maybe I'll eat something that I think I shouldn't eat or I'll stop compulsively eating the things that I'm eating. I don't wanna eat them, but I eat them for anxiety. What if I change that need something different? Instead of eating a bunch of Brazil nuts, eat a banana instead and see what happens. That's, those are good experiments, behavioral experiments. Yeah, there's the poop emoji checking in on the magnesium mentioned. Nobody told me. Nobody told me that magnesium was a laxative. I get the Rishi tea thing. I won't put it up on the screen. I will try to be respectful, but really, really, let's see here. Why do we sound alarms when we feel some different sort of way? So Sonya, only cause I know that you watch these videos and you've been around a while. I know you're in the subscriber group. I would ask, why do you keep asking these questions? Like it's okay to ask questions, but sometimes, but why does this happen? I don't understand. I need to understand why I do it. You're changing the way you do things. That's hard. You're doing it new ways. Leave it at that. One day you will probably be able to look back and start to think about, well, why did that happen? And begin to actually look at it from a rational standpoint. But when we are in the thick of it, I would urge you to stop trying to figure out why? Because the why is not gonna help you. Just do the new things and keep doing them. Stay on that course. You will probably have a much easier time if you abandon the need to know. You'll know later, after, most likely. And by the way, so to follow up on Cheryl's thing, everybody wants a pill that will make them feel better. I get that, but, and it's okay to try those things. I know everybody tried them, but at some point we have to decide like this is not helping me. It's making me lose. This is very good. This is the reason, so I think Bethany is talking about like, when I was talking about the people who may have vested interest in promoting some of these theories, you're right, they will say that. And I've been in some of those debates and they will always have a comeback sort of like this one. Everybody's different. So the particular toxin in your food makes your anxiety trigger when it doesn't in mine because we're all different. And so then they start denying like the universality of biochemistry within a reasonably narrow range. Don't even get me started. I don't claim to be a biochemist. I am not. I'm not a biologist. I'm not a doctor. I'm none of those things, but I do know how to access those people. And when you get them in a room, they all start eye rolling over all of this stuff. And for good reason. I'm pounding sweet tea at the moment. Sweet tea is such a Southern thing, but like caffeine in that, right? Cause it's basically iced tea. Hey Julie, welcome back. When I first started experiencing intense anxiety, I changed my entire diet and completely cut out junk food. Didn't help my anxiety go away. I mean, look, I get that Heather, you tried it. I mean, I don't know, maybe you, maybe you're feeling a little healthier. Maybe you're treating your body a little better this way. That's not a bad thing, but you know, no matter how much of a gym nut I've ever been, I'm gonna eat some pizza now. Like that's, that's okay. Like that flexibility is really important. You're spot on with these diet supplements are beneficial to off the rails. That's true for people in our, in our community. And this is hard sometimes to talk about because people will argue like, I don't understand why you're steering people away from gut health. Because for people in a state of disordered anxiety, gut health will become an obsession and will drive a huge number of compulsions. When you are better, maybe you could spend a little bit more time in your gut health and experiment with those things. You want to be a bio hacker. You want to like follow Huberman lab. Don't get me started on that guy too, but do you want to go along with that stuff? Try stuff. You want to be like a Tim Ferriss guy or who was the guy that had the stupid butter in the coffee? Can't remember that guy. But if you want to go down that road, go ahead but don't do it when you're in a state where you're susceptible to turning things into safety rituals and impulsive behaviors. That's not helping you in any way. That's true. Magnesium citrate is a crappy supplement. Let's see here. So what does Heather say after the cutting out junk food? Couple of days ago, I had my first iced coffee and over here and I fell fine. It was only when I started looking for the anxiety to come that I actually feel it. Love that comment. Says a lot, right? So let's see here. It's a good one too. I was recently fixated on trying to set my circadian rhythm. I used to use these binaural beats recordings. You guys ever hear of binaural beats or binaural audio? I still don't really understand what it is. I've never bothered to look into it because it did nothing for me, so it's dead to me now. I'm being funny. I'm trying to be funny, but I used to do that too to try and regulate my sleep. That didn't do shit. So much of these things to be completely honest with you. And I think we have to recognize this. We will, people like us, and I say us because I was you, right? And I can still experience panic sometimes. People like us will go to great lengths to tell anybody who will listen to us for 20 seconds how extreme our fear is. It was the worst panic attack ever. I had level 10 panic, but what about when it feels so scary? It feels like doomed. So we will go to great lengths to talk about how severe and extreme and strong those feelings are, but then we will literally throw stuff like Brazil nuts at it and think that it can literally make a change. So which one is it? You have uncontrollable, strong, irresistible tidal waves of fear and panic, or you can regulate that with a handful of almonds every day. Which one is it, right? So sometimes we have to really look at the irrationality of this. Mineral beats and white noise. A lot of people love white noise, like so I get it. And if you have some sleep issues and you want to try that, go ahead. But again, this is not a I'm fixing my anxiety. Denise is trying hard to not write these ideas down to Google them, love it. Let's see here. Da-da-da, keep going. I'm going to scroll through the comments. This is the time in the live stream where you watch me scroll through the comments. Talk amongst yourselves. We're 31 minutes in, we got a little time. I'm having oversensitivity to anything around my waist. Okay, so you know what to do there. I guess that I'm assuming I'll put this on the screen. I'm assuming Julie, what you mean is the feeling of a belt or maybe clothing one around your waist, I don't know. Or maybe tummy issues if you feel things in your tummy. I'm not sure what you're talking about there, but you know what to do about that, right? Let's see. Seriously. People thought it was a florist. Sure. Getting my master's degree now too. I hope I'm recovered by then and it's going to be pretty tricky to give people advice. You know what? I'm going to put this up here. So Denise, as somebody who is in a master's program right now and is training to be a therapist, I will tell you this. And I have some tremendous classmates, colleagues, members of my cohort, whatever you want to call them. They're great people. Everybody's great. I love them all. But a lot of people are struggling with stuff and that's just because therapists are also human beings, right? So if you look just on Instagram, for instance, and you find people that have letters after their name, you're going to find a very wide range of those people. Some of them never had an anxiety disorder. Some had it and don't anymore. Some are at the tail end of their own recovery. Some are just flat out, not even close to recovery. So do not put so much pressure on yourself because trust me, ain't nobody going to tell you that you cannot be a therapist because you have anxiety issues. Nobody's going to care about that. But I appreciate what you're saying. Let's keep going here. Celery juice is fine for... And some things, by the way, if we're going to talk about celery juice, some things I am absolutely aggressively going to just dump all over in the most disrespectful way I can imagine. And if you guys have seen me long enough, you know I can get pretty aggressive and pretty disrespectful and I'm cool with that. The celery juice thing and the stinking medical medium, that guy more than anybody else, I'm going to call him out as being a charlatan, a fraud, a fake, and a crackpot every single time. So if you're watching medical medium or any of his fans, come on down, we love to have you. It's not okay, none of that is okay. So some things, yeah, I'm going to call out. Celery juice is bigger than my hate. I was, when I've said that, it's, let me see another doc Aiman comment too. We'll talk about that too. Oh, versus Dr. Aiman. Yeah, anyway, I'll try to be respectful because at least a man earned a PhD. Tell us how you really feel. Yeah, exactly. I think, and there haven't been some interesting comments. People have called me angry and hateful and close minded because I question why a guy like that can say, make outrageous, ridiculous claims that he claims that he got from a ghost from the future. So like, I'm the closed, I'm the problem. Like, really, I'm like, you can say things that by definition you never have to actually prove because you would claim supernatural sources. But if I ask you about that, I'm the problem. I don't understand that. All right, I'm getting personal. Let's get out of that. Rebecca wind up with smelly hair. Let's see here. Okay, so Julie, I get you. Thank you for clarifying a little bit. I'm having issues with tying anything around my waist. I've obsessively tried and purchased so many pairs of jeans. I'm so tired. This is okay. So Julie, you could work on this stuff. I think you know what we would say, right? Or if you were working with a therapist, you know what they would say, spend a little time every day, a little more time, a little more time with that uncomfortable stuff around your waist. Like, you know what to do on that. Now you're all just baiting. I see what you're doing there, GBG. I ain't taking the bait. Let's see. No tips. That screen name really chisage. Come on, come on. We'll take that offline later. White Russians really help anxiety. There's a beverage man here. There's a beverage here, man. Some new shit has come to light. This is great. I'm sorry, I can't see your name because you're on restreamin' in the Facebook group. It doesn't show me your names. You are your own magic supplement. You will get yourself better. Thank you. This one needs to stay up. Please do a video at Ikea. Maybe I'll film a self-operate Ikea. It's been months since my last time. My gut health has always took a hit. Eat too much sweets. Okay, well, this is a little different. So let's put James this guy. Hey, James, good to see you back here. Well, not good to see you back here, to be honest with you. I mean, it's good to see you. I hope you're okay, but I wish you didn't have to come back. Took eat too much sweets late and I'd pray for it in the morning. That's different. So that's a similar thing, but that's different, right? So it's hard to say, and I'm gonna let you have to hook here. It's hard to talk about your gut health if the gut health is based on the things you choose to eat. And I get that. Everybody does that, dude. I'm not picking on you. I'm not saying you're doing it wrong. I'm not calling you weak and I'm not calling you broken. Like that's just part of the human condition. So many people struggle with that. We eat things that we like because they taste good and then we pay for it later. But just be careful about interpreting that as some sort of gut health issue. It's like eating stuff that makes me feel not so bad. I should maybe try not to do that. That's okay. You could work on that, man. You could work on it. Being bloated in sluggish is not an emergency, but I can tell you that if I, like growing up on Long Island in New York City area, it's bagel central here. We have the best bagels. Like anybody who wants to fight me on that. And I love them, but I just have a hard time. I eat a plain bagel. I'm gonna be bloated in sluggish for hours. And back in the day, I wouldn't do that because I would be afraid of that and I would, ooh, they would make me crazy. Magic dot and a magic pill. I'm an optimizer. Any advice with mercury? Yeah, it's bad for you. But mercury is another one of those things that has been marketed into an epidemic that doesn't necessarily exist. So I know people who have spent a ton of money trying to chelate mercury out of their systems. And I've heard some of the craziest shit, and I'll just say shit, sorry, censor me YouTube, I guess. I've ever heard surrounding mercury. The mercury retreats deep into your cells when it knows that the medicine is coming to get it out as if mercury is sentient and somehow operates like it has a mind of its own and it knows how to go deeper into a cell. And a cell is not very deep and a molecule is either in or out. Anyway, don't get me started. My advice on mercury is if you in fact do have testably high levels of mercury where you have been maybe eating a lot of North Atlantic fish or that sort of stuff, there are things you could do about that, but do not be told that your anxiety is automatically because of mercury. It's probably not in many instances. But go check it out, just don't turn it into like this is the cause of my anxiety and I will fix it. So let me scroll down to the bottom here so we kind of get through with this, I guess. Yes, I see you guys shamelessly baiting me now. Well, this is a thing. See, you all bait, is homiopathy, really? I know what you're all doing, I know what you're doing. A doctor once told me that my vitamin D levels were low causing me to be anxious. Okay, so in this situation, we do know that there is a link between in populations where vitamin D is historically low, which by the way is the entire Northern Hemisphere of the world, just FYI, I was gonna say something but I won't. But just about the entire Northern Hemisphere because of the virtue of our, by virtue of our relationship with the sun and like the tilt of the earth, we tend to be lower in vitamin D than we probably should be. And that sometimes is tied to higher incidence of depression and things of that nature. So that is true. However, it's a vast oversimplification to say, well, your vitamin D is low, so therefore you have anxiety. Well, your vitamin D is low and you will experience certain things. But again, it doesn't mean that you wind up changing your entire life to work around how you feel. So again, this is one of those things where yes, there's some truth behind these things but we have to be critical consumers of the information. Oh, broccoli, I did like a video I think or a real or a short about broccoli. Yeah, that went over really well. That went over really well. Let's see here, this is good. To be fair, women's genes are kind of horrible. Maybe so, that might be a thing. Let's see, I think you should do some content where you go to people's houses and pull them out to make, oh, Jesus. So there was, who were the people in the UK? Remind me, UK people, there was like a married couple, they had some sort of reality TV and they were doing some sort, I don't know if they were specifically focused on mental health, they may have been and they did a thing where they put a bunch of agoraphobics on a plane and flew them to Japan and forced them to live in a house in Japan if I remember correctly. Wow, like the fact that that was even an ethical thing to do, although I don't think they have credentials anyway, but no, I would never do that. While I see what Denise is saying here, probably joking a little bit, that would never be a thing. Like I'm gonna make you go on an exposure, pull you out of your house for entertainment. I get it, it's kind of funny, but that would not be a good thing. Some people take Kava Kava and St. John's to help with anxiety, depression, good or bad. I would tell you to go back to the beginning of this video on the replay and you'll see how I went through all of those things, good or bad. I'm not gonna answer that question. Go back and watch the replay when it's over and you'll see in the first 10 minutes I talk about that. Vitamin D brightened my mood, didn't stop my poor thinking or my reaction to those thoughts, very good. That was them. Thank you, thank you, thank you, that was them. Thanks, I cannot do broccoli or other things since my hysterectomy is a true story. Well, you know, that sort of stuff happens. Anyway, so if you guys are here and you're struggling with this stuff, I totally get it, right? Totally get it. If you're trying different things, again, I will recap. If you're gonna try to do things and just take care of your body because it's just a good thing to do. Just take care of your body because we only get one, it's good to take care of it. Take care of your body because you try and be as healthy as you can. That's not a bad thing. Being healthy can give you a leg up in life in general, right? And it avoids nasty stuff. So there's nothing wrong with taking care of your body. If you like to do that sort of stuff and you wanna do it alongside all the recovery stuff we talk about, I'm with you on that, go for it, be healthy and do all the things. Just be careful of the trap where we can compulsively try to optimize our nutrition, our gut health, our nervous system, our vagus nerve, like those become very slippery slopes based on misinterpretation of science driven by specific vested interests and desperate people. And I understand because I was a desperate person too. Just be mindful of when that's happening. And if you find yourself on a hamster wheel where you go from supplement to supplement and cure to cure and magic pill to magic pill and you wind up beating yourself up and thinking, I'm never gonna get better. Something must be wrong with me. You can stop doing that. There's nothing wrong with you. Those pills were never gonna fix it. They might make you feel different and they might contribute to overall health. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't mean you're broken. I just wanna leave you with that for sure. So this will certainly stay on the replay. For those of you who wanna watch this again, the easiest way to do that is really on my YouTube channel. So if you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel, you could do that. There's a playlist for Recovery Monday. You can go back and rewatch all of these. It does stay in the Facebook group. It does stay in Facebook, but they're super hard to find over there. I don't know what happens on Twitch. Becky's here on Twitch. We have one Twitch person. I have no idea what happens to this video on Twitch afterwards. Anyway, so thanks for coming by. I am sorry that we skipped a week, but we do these every other week. So I'll be back in another two weeks. I don't know. Anybody wanna make some suggestions? I'll give you two seconds. I'll give you a minute to pop suggestions in the comments for the next Recovery Monday, which will be two weeks from today. Anybody have anything you wanna talk about? Cause that's what I will come back for sure. What else is going on? Make sure you listen to the anxious truth. Oh, if you're not listening to Disordered, Disorder.fm, that's a new podcast I'm doing with Josh Fletcher. That one's going incredibly well. We like blazed through 40,000 downloads after only like 11 or 12 episodes. So we're cranking, yeah, and that's it. Great topic. Listening to the doctors. Oh, that could be an episode. Okay, that's a reasonable one. Thanks again, you guys are very welcome. Thanks for hanging out with us. And thank you for like all the interaction and the being supportive of each other and the community and the being social and just being friendly with each other. I appreciate so much that you do that cause I think it makes for a very welcoming place and you make that, I don't. So that's really cool. I wish the podcasts were longer. Here's the thing about podcasts. Yeah, I don't think so, Becky. I don't know what the Twitch does. I think these just disappear afterwards. The thing about longer podcasts, it's a reasonable question from the Facebook group. If no matter what the topic is in either my podcast, the anxious truth or Disordered that I do with Josh, the statistics tell us that after about 20 minutes, everything just goes off the cliff. Listenership just dives. So I know a lot of you would love if I did two-hour podcasts first, well, I just can't. And second of all, it's the law of diminishing returns at that point. So I've been trying to keep them 15 at the low end, maybe 25 at the most. Disordered goes about 35 or 40 minutes, but they probably won't ever get longer than that. Anyway, thanks guys, appreciate it. I will see you in two weeks. Have a good day.