Why Cultural Competency Is Key To A Healthy Population

Years ago, I met a woman who changed my life. A mutual friend introduced us and we went to grab a cup of coffee; but I didn’t realize how life-changing that day would be. That woman was Lauren Zander, and though she’s now a best friend of mine, I was a bit scared in the beginning of our relationship. She saw right through my exterior persona and instantly challenged me to think about the things I didn’t want to address in my life—I was overworking, unhappy in my marriage, and worried so much about doing for everyone else that I wasn’t really being okay with myself. But those uncomfortable truths brought a lot of thought out in me, and months later Lauren finally convinced me to dive deeper into that darkness. Today, Lauren joins me on The Doctor’s Farmacy to talk about my own personal journey with life coaching—or what I call Functional Medicine for the soul—to discover happiness, success, and so much more. Lauren Handel Zander is the Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Handel Group, an international corporate consulting and life coaching company. Her coaching methodology, The Handel Method, is taught in over 35 universities and institutes of learning around the world, including MIT, Stanford Graduate School of Business, NYU, and the New York City Public School System.

24 Apr 20191h 4min

When it comes to medicine, many of us want immediate results. What if just one dose of medicine could dramatically shift your perception, decreasing anxiety, depression, fear of death, addictive tendencies, and so much more? It might sound too good to be true, but the therapeutic use of psychedelics is showing us it’s possible. Now, I’m not talking about taking magic mushrooms at a Grateful Dead concert. The medicine used in psychedelic trials is created in a lab, carefully dosed for the patient, and administered in a specific setting with a trained guide who is present throughout the entire process. This highly controlled process can yield some pretty amazing results and we will be seeing much more science emerge on the safe use of psychedelics for a variety of disorders. This week on The Doctor’s Farmacy, Dr. Anthony Bossis joins me to elaborate on using psychedelics to expand our sensory abilities and relax our experience with death and illness. Anthony P. Bossis, Ph.D. conducts FDA-approved clinical trials in the reemerging field of psychedelic research. He is a clinical psychologist and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine investigating the effects of psilocybin, a naturally occurring compound found in specific species of mushrooms.

17 Apr 20191h 6min

These days, we hear a lot about fasting. Intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating, and water fasting are just some of the many terms being thrown around in support of better health. And we can’t forget about the high-fat, ketogenic, and low-carb approaches that are gaining in popularity as well. Which one is best? What does it all mean for our longevity, brain health, and overall wellness? My guest on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy is here to sift through the terminology and confusion around fasting. Dr. Valter Longo is internationally recognized as a leader in the field of aging studies and related diseases. Known as a “Guru of Longevity,” Dr. Longo is currently Professor of Biogerontology and Biological Sciences and Director of the Institute of Longevity of the School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, as well as Director of the Oncology and Longevity Program at IFOM in Milan. He is also the Scientific Director of the Create Cures Foundation and the Valter Longo Foundation. Valter is the author of an extraordinary new book, The Longevity Diet. The culmination of 25 years of research on aging, nutrition, and disease across the globe, it provides an easy-to-understand, accessible and implementable road map to living well longer through improved nutrition.

10 Apr 20191h 30min

Every time we eat, we have a chance to boost our brain function. In medical school, we’re taught the brain is immutable, that we can’t grow new brain cells or change the brain once dysfunction or injury has occurred. Now, we know that’s just not true. The decisions we make each and every day, like what we eat, how much sleep we get, and how often we move are all steps that can dramatically shift the health of the brain for the better. And there’s so much more we can do, too. Dr. David Perlmutter joins me on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy to talk about an empowered approach to supporting the brain, starting with food first. Dr. Perlmutter is a board-certified neurologist and four-time New York Times best selling author. He serves on the Board of Directors and is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and as a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. His books include the #1 New York Times bestseller Grain Brain, The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs and Sugar, with over 1 million copies in print. He is the editor of the upcoming collection The Microbiome and the Brain that will be authored by top experts in the field and will be published in 2019 by CRC Press. Dr. Perlmutter’s new book, Brain Wash, co-written with Austin Perlmutter, MD, will be published in January 2020.

3 Apr 20191h 17min

Our food and healthcare systems are broken; they are not serving public health and are even putting certain communities at a disproportionate risk. We are up against social, economic, environmental, and political dysfunctions that contribute to chronic disease. Heart disease, cancer, and stroke are the leading causes of death, and premature death at that, in the US. These diseases all have several risk factors in common, like smoking, physical inactivity, and poor diet, which policy often views simply as personal choices. But you can’t make healthy choices if you don’t have healthy choices available. There are social and cultural inputs at play and many reasons we need to begin looking at health beyond the individual and on a community and population-based level. Today’s guest on The Doctor’s Farmacy is the perfect person to weigh-in on these issues. Dr. Sonia Angell is a Deputy Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), overseeing the Division of Prevention and Primary Care. Throughout her career, she has overseen nutrition-related policy initiatives, including restricting trans fat use in NYC restaurants, launching the National Salt Reduction Initiative, establishing food procurement nutrition standards for NYC government agencies, and establishing sodium warning labels in chain restaurants and expanding calorie labeling regulations.

27 Mars 201959min

A new study published in the medical journal JAMA says, ‘Eggs are bad,’ but are they really? In this episode, we take a look at the specifics of the study. This particular study is an observational study; it does not prove cause and effect. An ideal nutritional study would take 10,000 people and have them eat eggs for 20 years, then take another 10,000 people, and for the same time period, keep them from eating eggs to see what happens. Of course, this would be incredibly difficult and very expensive to do. This recent study surveyed 30,000 people over a 17 year time period, with each person completed one questionnaire about what they’ve been eating. During the time this study was conducted, eggs were considered bad. We were told not to eat eggs; to avoid cholesterol. So people who were eating eggs were likely people who weren’t otherwise health conscious. It doesn’t mean the eggs caused the heart disease.

22 Mars 201915min

I never get tired of saying it: real food heals. Food has the power to prevent and reverse disease, and the more we know about it, the more power we have to curate a targeted diet to help us reach our health goals. The catch is that we have to choose the right foods, the ones that elevate us, and simultaneously ditch the poor-quality ones that harm us. There are powerful compounds in foods—like curcumin, genistein, catechins, lycopene, resveratrol, quercetin—that have medicinal impacts on the body. That’s why I call the grocery store the drug store; we can literally eat our medicine at every meal. My guest this week on The Doctor’s Farmacy, Dr. William Li, is here to tell us all about eating to beat disease and making the idea that food is medicine second nature. You may also be surprised to find out that angiogenesis, or how the body forms blood vessels, is a common denominator in creating optimal health. William Li, MD, is a world-renowned physician, scientist, speaker, and author of Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself. He is best known for leading the Angiogenesis Foundation.

20 Mars 20191h 23min

Think about walking into a room full of people who are giving off good energy. They are smiling, kind, welcoming—you can feel what they are putting out into the world and want to be a part of it. Alternately, think about a room full of people who are scowling, complaining, angry, etc. The energy in that room does not feel good and you are going to want to get away from it as soon as possible. This is a small glimpse into the powerful energy fields within all of us at work. My guest on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, medical anthropologist and psychologist Alberto Villoldo, is here to expand on that notion and what it means to support your luminous body. He is a longtime friend and colleague of mine who has spent decades traveling the world to learn ancient shamanic wisdom. Alberto has made it his mission to learn from the people who sense the spaces between things and perceive the luminous strands that animate all life. Alberto is founder of the world-renowned Four Winds Society and of the Light Body School. In his teachings and writings, he shares the experience of infinity and its ability to heal and transform us, to free us from the temporal chains that keep us fettered to illness, old age, and disease. Alberto has authored several incredible books and his latest, Grow A New Body, was just released.

13 Mars 20191h 1min