EPISODE 34: Plant medicines, Sleep & Gut tools…Finding Your midlife flow

00:00

When I work with these medicines I it's transcended for me I grieve deeply I find myself in utter bowing down of music, of love of beauty of my daughter of the relationships in my life of the love in my life of the struggle and the challenge and the heartache and experience of the loss of experienced all of that feels very meaningful. It feels transcended.

00:27

Hey, peeps, welcome to the flexible neurotic podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Sarah Milken. Yeah, you heard that right. I'm a real PhD doctor. Long, long ago, like last fucking year. I was sitting in the midlife funk wondering, was this it for me? That day, I realized I needed to get off my ass and start my midlife remix. I dusted off my PhD wipe the menopause sweat off my forehead, rabbit and my golden shit shovel and started digging deep to all my midlife pitches. It's not just luck, coffee and hormones that get you through your midlife remix. It's action steps. Let's do this. Hi, good peeps. This is the next episode of The flexible neurotic Podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah Milken, the flexible neurotic. Today's guest is a perfect combo of ivy league prestige and alternative medicine woo woo. She is a holistic psychiatrist with her private practice in New York City. She follows a holistic approach that blends lifestyle changes. Eastern medicine woo woo with evidence based medicine, this practitioner creates a customized plan for each patient listening to their exact needs and symptoms and some intuition. Her name is Dr. Ellen Vora. She graduated from Columbia University Medical School and undergrad at Yale. She's a board certified psychiatrist who is certified in acupuncture, yoga and nutrition. Her functional medicine approach to mental health is focused on getting to the root of the problem, not prescribing medications for everything. She specializes in depression, insomnia, anxiety, autoimmunity, adult ADHD, bipolar and digestive issues. So she's pretty much covering midlife. Bam, but you guys can relate to a bunch of those just like me, it's like midlife. Bingo. RIGHT? Ellen is nailing it all the hot topics. I'm so excited to have you here. You've been on so many giant podcasts like poop and Dave Asprey is bulletproof. And now the flexible neurotic, welcome here.

02:34

Thanks so much there. I'm so glad to be here.

02:36

I'm so happy so you can help us dive into some midlife shit. Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay, so Dr. Hora wants her patients to take ownership in their physical and mental health and CO create the lives they want with meaning, relaxation, and fulfillment. We're going to solve all of these in less than 60 minutes right? Back there, right? Totally. My intention for this episode is for us to dig deep with our golden shit shovels and an edgy conversation. And we're going to talk about how to become in the sweet spot between neurotic and shell. With the help of personal connection, lifestyle changes, and potentially plant medicine. Ellen, you're a junior psychiatrist, treating many people and midlife women in New York City, you must have hundreds of golden shovels because you must be the queen of asking why, why? Why it's like the flexible neurotic. Why, why? Why. And I also want to mention that I read about you that Beyonce is your true God.

03:37

Stand by that, you know, it was like awkward wording that I used one day in a podcast. God, it was so funny. After it came off the racket, I was like, Huh, that's not it.

03:47

I know. But it was so good, though. Because it's kind of true.

03:49

It was kind of true. I mean, I think of her I mean, we're gonna get into plant medicine. make more sense soon. But basically, I feel really lucky that we're alive at the same time as Beyonce. I think she's channeling the divine. And it's a gift to all of us.

04:04

And I think she's looking good. She's feeling good. She's feeling like she's found her life's passion. And I think that's so much a part of kind of like this whole midlife remix self reinvention journey that we're all on. I'm hoping that listeners by the end of this episode will have a sense of psychedelics I told you before we started this podcast. I am like a drug nerd. Like I've never even smoked marijuana. My kids don't believe me. But here I am to say that it is true. But I do really want to know about psychedelics and the use of plant medicine. I had so many women DM me and messaged me and they're like, You should do this topic. You should do this topic and I'm like, God, this must be like, on a lot of people's minds. And I keep reading about it too. And I'm like, God, I but I want to hear about it from a doctor and I'm like, Okay, Dr. Ellen Vora she went to Columbia. She's like a real medical doctor. She has a real grounding and like the evidence of what's going on. So I want to dive into that with you. We're going to talk about ketamine, psilocybin magic mushrooms, ayahuasca and how can how it can help us reduce inflammation, our bodies, reverse rigid thought patterns and OCD and undo some trauma, anxiety and depression. I know there's like a huge caveat in all of this. And we're going to get to that. So before we do, I want to give a brief snapshot of Ellen Vora she went to Columbia medical school, like I said, she became disenchanted with what she was saying. You said that it was sort of like a disease care with medications. And no one was asking your favorite Jewish doctor question of why. And then so tell us what happened. You were in a surgery with a surgeon who was taking on a pendeks. And what happened?

05:51

Yeah, this was like a very telling moment of my medical school journey. But I was on my general surgery, rotation and the third year of med school, you're standing around in the O R. And even though surgery is intense, and you know, it's high stakes, but there's actually a lot of time you spend standing around sort of shooting the shit while you're doing certain steps. And, and I'm standing there always thinking like, well, you know, like, what's going on here? Why do people why are we all unhealthy? Why is our country so unwell, and I'm standing over this appendectomy, I was like this general surgeon who's probably in his mid to late 50s. He's probably given this topic, a lot of thought, the like, who better to ask and I was like, Why do you think people get appendicitis in the first place? And I was expecting some like nuance. I thought he'd be like a kid in the candy shop, like, oh, I can't believe someone finally asked me this. I have so many thoughts on this. Instead, his answer was, we don't ask why we just come. And to me that encapsulated where we're getting so much wrong in conventional medicine is we don't ask why we take for granted that our population is unwell. And we react to it. And I'm not knocking the ways we react, I think we react in really wonderful ways. I'm glad that we have developed these technologies. If you have a heart attack, a cardiac catheterization is terrific. You're in a car accident. I'm really grateful for Western medicine. But I think just more of us, those who feel called to it need to be asking why? Why are we unwell? Why is there so much metabolic dysfunction? Why is there so much cognitive dysfunction? Why is there so many mental health issues? And we just need to be asking why? I think, you know, I now have deep thoughts on why appendicitis happens. But it's sort of the least of our concerns today. But it's not Western medicine,

07:40

strength. Okay, so you took Western medicine, and then you got trained in a million other things that are sort of more in the eastern part of like, acupuncture, nutrition, yoga, and you checked all of your siddur certification boxes, because you're probably a huge nerd like I am. And you wanted to feel like you had all of that. And so I've heard you say that some of this is like intuition, witchcraft mixed with obviously Western medicine, like what does that mean?

08:12

Yeah, I think I'm glad that I have that sort of foundation of conventional medical training, med school and residency. I'm glad that it I think it did give me a lot of understanding of the mechanics of the body about what's possible, but how to think about epidemiology and biostatistics. And honestly, some of the biggest things that it's offered is that it has allowed me to talk the talk, and kind of like be able to talk in that way that legitimizes your case, but then also gives me this weird authority to be able to say we don't have it completely, right. And the fact of the matter is naturopath, Chinese medicine practitioners, health coaches, like they all see what I see they have the exact same insight. But having that MD after my name, for some reason helps people it makes it a more credible statement, because I'm kind of like saying it from the inside. And I think, you know, I think my role in this is to be somewhat of a bridge. And I'm glad I guess, and I went through 10 years of soul crushing training. I really each passing year, let my freak flag fly more and more. For so long. It was like self loathing misogyny to not embrace my own intuition. I didn't want to be seen as irrational. I didn't even want to see myself that way. And now I find, like, reconnected to my intuition. I realize it's this compass that offers so much value in the treatment setting when I'm trying to understand what's going on with a patient where we should turn. And now I'm really just grateful to have that tool. And it's not like I've abandoned objective reasoning. It's just that I bring both to bear.

09:52

Yeah, and I think an important part of all that is like taking that time having the time wanting to create that time for the patient. because that requires a lot more listening from your, from your shoes. Yeah,

10:05

it's a problem with our healthcare. So

10:06

yeah, I was gonna say usually like medical appointments are so quick and dirty, but my understanding of you is like you're really trying to understand like, Where's the patient coming from? Where's the root cause from all of this? It's not just like they woke up one day and they're depressed. Like, where does this come from? I don't mean to like

10:25

romanticize the 1960s, or the 1970s. There was a lot that wasn't right at that time. But at least for the perspective, like how a medical visit might go, there was a lot more time there was a lot more listening, there was more of a physical exam, there was more observation. And doctors were less burned out, they felt more of a sense of satisfaction in the work that they did. Patients felt less like they were just on an assembly line being pushed through being invalidated, dismissed and bullied. And quite frankly, the system we have now that squeezes out of the exchange between doctor and patient time, that's the commodity that's been squeezed out the most. It turns us into providers, not healers. And we basically have eight minutes to be like, Okay, what's the problem? Well, this person's crying in my office, therefore, medication, it's pretty much the only solution, we can arrive at an eight minutes. And we think we're solving a problem, we think they're a happy customer. And they're leaving satisfied. And we really just created a lot of miscommunication between doctor and patient misunderstanding. Nobody's feeling held and heard and witnessed. Doctors are burned out, we don't feel that sense of satisfaction or morale in the work we do. And our population just keeps getting sicker.

11:41

In terms of thinking about the whole person, and thinking about like, our accountability as our own beings and in our health and advocates for our own health, I know you talk a lot about epigenetics, and like, it's so easy for us to be like, Oh, my mom was diabetic. So I am too so fuck it, I'm just gonna eat the sugar that I have to eat or whatever. Like, what are you? What are you saying to your patients about this sort of like, Hey, you guys, you have to take accountability, and agency like you can't let all of this shit happen to you. Like you do have some control over it, it's so much easier to just say fuck it.

12:19

It's It's surprisingly controversial, right? So and this is something I didn't realize until the sort of reckoning that we've been living through for the last year and a half. But to me, it used to feel like I was making an empowering and helpful statement to help people realize like, yes, genetics matter. But it's a predisposition. It's not a destiny. And even within genetics, we have epigenetics, and that's where our diet and lifestyle, our stress levels, what we experience and think and go through, that's impacting how our genes are expressed. And something that's out of our control is even like, what our mom went through, or even what our grandmother went through, when she was pregnant with our mom who had the egg, that became us in her little fetus, ovaries while she was in our grandmother's name, like, all of that is impacting our genetic expression this lifetime. But its students, which is not the whole story. And we have so much more control than we realize, what we eat, how we move, how we sleep, how we manage our the stress in our lives, all of this has an impact. And and I thought I was making a helpful statement. And what I've come to realize is, well, some of us get really triggered by that because it's overwhelming. And it's a nicer story to tell ourselves of like, well, it's out of my control. So easier and and then also like it to some people comes across as a denial of the structural factors that are making some populations less healthy than others have less access to good quality food are under systemic stressors. And so it's really important to recognize all of this as a both and the structural realities are undeniable, they're very real, that's a part of our health as a population. And it does a disservice to everyone. If we don't acknowledge there's still things we can do things that are in expensive and accessible. Like we can all pause and take 30 seconds to do a breathing exercise. We can all get more sunshine, you know, if that's safe for your you know, how melanated your skin is? We can all prioritize sleep. It's not always easy for any of

14:12

us. But like why do we all know all these things? But so few of us actually do them? Like how do we get a get from like seeing all this hearing all this and like actually internalizing it and making it a personal habit? Like what's going to be that leap for us? Is it like a traumatic event? Is it gonna be a health scare? Like what is it going to be?

14:34

The watered down answer there that you hear a lot is like, well, behavioral change is hard. So you kind of have to get strategic and smart. What I found was true for me in my life is I had to figure out all the ways that things were addictive to me. And like we have our conventional understanding of what's addictive, like we understand cigarettes are addictive or heroin is addictive. We understand but look away from the fact that alcohol is addictive, right. Increasingly, we're tiptoeing out into an awareness of like phones. are addictive. But I had to realize for me processed food was addictive gluten and dairy are actually addictive for me certainly sugar scrolling on the phone late at night, like all the things that were where I was shooting myself in the foot of the goals I said I had, but I set out for myself the reasons I wasn't able to carry this out and make those behavioral changes. Wasn't lack of motivation wasn't last lack of strategic behavioral change strategies. It was really just that I was addicted to a bunch of behaviors that were standing in the way. So I kind of had to figure out like, where could I arrive at a place of abstinence or come to a different more like a freedom kind of relationship with certain things. So that I wasn't always falling into pits of addictive cycle. So

15:42

did you give just 100% Go go cold turkey and give certain things up? And then other things you're like, Okay, well, I'm just gonna eat pasta on Fridays. Like, how did you do it?

15:51

I guess well, it's been a journey that wasn't like one moment when decision Yeah, but I think that like with food, for example, i What i Looking back now, what I realized is that I had to be abstinent from the foods that were most addictive to me, which is basically combinations of gluten and dairy, like pizza, like grilled cheese.

16:08

Oh, my gosh, I love that. Like, the mean bath. Yeah,

16:13

yeah, that just keeps you after me. It works in a number of different levels. It's inflammatory to dietary intolerance. It kind of because I had leaky gut at the time, it almost behaves like that, because it gets into the bloodstream crosses the blood brain barrier. It behaves like an opiate, act even on opiate receptors in our brain, so is like a little baby dose of morphine, and we get addicted to it. And we get kind of strung out and wanting more afterward. and processed foods, which all have their flavor crystals that make them addictive. So I had to be abstinent from these foods for a period of time. So that I was really, I arrived at a place of freedom. And then when I come back to them sparingly, I do it at a without falling down that hole. And there was a lot of psycho spiritual work I had to do in the interim, where what I was doing was filling a void. I was filling a hole where I wasn't getting my basic human needs met. I wasn't feeling grounded and connected and community wasn't feeling heard and understood witness and loved all the needs that I had. I had to get those met the real way, the old fashioned way, not this sort of artificial way through food. And so abstinence from the foods that were just behaving like drugs in my body, getting my fundamental needs met, and then I can like re approach a mulatto cookie and instigate a binge.

17:30

Yeah, the whole bag. Now how do you think cleanses play into that?

17:36

Mostly, I don't I think that it's tricky. I do think like, there's a lot we can do to support our body's natural detoxification. I think it's wonderful and infrared sauna here. A dry skin brush there. I

17:47

know. I hear a coffee enema. I have to say it's so so funny. I read that about you. And then I was like, I've actually done that. I mean, not at home but I did this whole like week of ru VEDA. And you have to go through all these like different you know, eat this. Don't eat that blah, blah, blah, the coffee enema, I'm telling you Wow, that is called like an evacuation of epic proportions. God so deep, but I have to tell you that it for that like it really cleaned up a lot of liver drama that I had. And now I'm thinking like, Fuck, I gotta go back.

18:23

I love the way you express things. So yes, liver drama about it is that in general, and a big part of my practice is supporting patients who are getting off of psychiatric medication. So for that case, like clearing up liver drama is a critical part of the process. And so coffee enemas have a role if you're listening at home and you are generally healthy like you don't necessarily need to be putting coffee up there but if you want to it's a great deep detoxification but if you wanted to dry skin brush and Epsom salt bath and jump on a trampoline and EUPOL like that, you know keep it mellow that's okay too. But all this is to say a cleanse I think that a lot of us teeter with like a ever so slightly light relationship to disorderly eating and yeah, cleansing can create a restriction mindset which can then be get a binge mindset. It's often just calorie restriction, which does never it just never ends. Well, from a weight loss perspective. I think like something like an a mild intermittent fasting as a gentler way of resting your digestion, allowing your body to switch its kind of metabolic state. I think that can be great.

19:32

Midlife women, like what are you seeing? I mean, this show is predominantly listeners like myself, you're a little bit younger than I am, but we're like in the same range ish. But we're talking about menopause hormones, emptiness, marital shit, libido, anxiety, depression, like what are you seeing in midlife women? Yeah,

19:53

everything you just listed. I mean, I think and then you add to the pandemic, where there's so many interesting tensions and pressures on women right now. like it's been a real pressure on the family unit and the relationship. I see a lot of fear right now. And I think I mean, I have deep and somewhat controversial views on that. But basically, like, we need to take the pandemic, seriously. Absolutely. But I think we also get into a bit of a dopamine addictive cycle within mainstream media and the news, right?

20:23

Oh my God, my mom, honestly, I'm like, Please don't call me and tell me what you saw on the news. Because I'm not watching the news so that I can sort of protect my nervous system. So I don't want any of your nervous system garbage dumped on me, I have enough of my own. But it's not like MSNBC loop.

20:40

It's, it's a little freaky. And, and I think it's if you wanted to create as vulnerable of a population in terms of our immune competence, then like, that's what we've done. I've put everyone into a fear response. We've kept everyone indoors, we've made us all vitamin D deficient, not sleeping, staying up doing scrolling or watching TV late into the evening. binging on process comfort foods binging on alcohol to sue their frayed nerves. And this makes us a very sick population in the face of a formidable virus. And so what's better in my mind is like if the news came on 120 minutes slot every day and was like, just a reminder, make sure that you're prioritizing sleep, go to bed early tonight, get some sunshine to active in nature, call a friend have sex, don't forget to laugh, listen to music, dance. You know, eat fruits and vegetables, get vitamin C and do a little strength training, build some muscle. I think that that would be the public health statement that I could stand behind. And then it's like, this program is over and your TV is shutting off. Now. You know, that would be the public health message that could actually help our population. Instead, we have something really grim.

21:56

In terms of anxiety, and sleep and menopause, what I mean, obviously, those are huge issues for women in menopause. But like what is your advice for women who are coming into your office and they're like, I'm such and such years old, and I just can't sleep and I feel like I'm on a fucking hamster wheel. Like, how do we just break that?

22:16

Yeah, I don't think we completely can. And so and I specialize like sleep is an area of focus in my practice, yeah, and everything. Like, when I talk to people about their sleep, I basically caveat it as most of my sleep strategies can fix insomnia, with the caveat of menopause or perimenopause, shift, labor jetlag and certain actual sleep disorders. And so everything I do can fix the milder stuff. And then when it comes to perimenopause and menopause, it's not going to 100% solve the problem, but it's still worthwhile, it still makes it better, it's going to make it as better as possible. So it's worth doing. But I think I have patients who get frustrated, they're like, Well, I tried that and helped a little bit, but not a lot.

23:01

But how long did you do it for? Like, that's the thing with me, I'm like, oh, yeah, I did it for three days, you know, but that's not gonna work. And I'm guilty of it.

23:09

If you were the upholder. And did, you know, even still, we can't solve the sleep issues and menopause in my opinion. I think just having lower progesterone, and hot flashes at like, it means we're going to sleep less. But I think I approach it with a little bit of a different perspective, I still do everything I do to fix sleep for the general population, which has to do with being strategic about light, making sure your brain blue blocking glasses after sunset, powering down electronics, getting blackout shades, wearing an eye mask, limiting caffeine, pushing it a little bit earlier in the day, taking magnesium glycinate at bedtime. All of that can help. But specifically for perimenopause, I do think that a certain amount of like making sure you get enough actual dietary cholesterol, like eating the egg yolk. So I do think that that's part of how we get healthy levels of progesterone. managing stress is how it falls on deaf ears. You know, we're all like, yeah, of course, manage stress. But we actually have to, we have to like, get down to brass tacks and make changes, we need to say no more, we need to do less. We need to have energetic boundaries for all the ways that the world has conditioned us to say yes, and put everyone's needs above our own. All the things that we do that deplete us and actually leave us stressed, we actually need to say no more often. And then I think we need to be gentler with ourselves during the day, we're not going to sleep as efficiently. We're not going to get that consolidated eight hour block of sleep every night of the month. And so we can't expect ourselves to just like bounce out of bed in the morning and take on the world and the way we used to and the way our society like so positively reinforces though if we need to nap if we need to be a little bit more sluggish at phases of the day. We just need more gentleness and more compassion during the day. We need more space.

24:55

Well, it's like I won't wear a sleep tracker because I'm like if you give me some kind of trick Cool, that's gonna like measure the shit out of me like even more measurement that I already do to myself. Like I don't want to wake up to know that like, you know I snored from two to 202 and I didn't sleep well like I'm I already know that I didn't fucking sleep well,

25:17

I'm with you and I think there's actually a no SIBO effect to sleep trackers like we know about the placebo effect that's going to help you and you start to feel better because expectation is powerful, the no SIBO effect. Basically if you you know, we're asleep much of the night but then you wake up and you see that your sleep tracker says like actually you were asleep boy, let's talk now I'm gonna have a bad day. Oh, and previously I thought I kind of slept okay. Yeah, and so it's it's not always helpful to know more. I think the best sleep trackers you wake up you're like how do I feel that I feel rested and make changes accordingly. But sleep trackers I do have this one benefit, which is a gives you objective backup to what like people like me say it's like alcohol impacts the quality of your sleep. Caffeine impacts the quality of sleep, going to sleep too late is going to make your sleep worse. Like sometimes people need the tracker to prove that to themselves

26:12

in terms of like midlife and women like I think for me what I found through this whole process including with myself, is there sort of this sense of disconnection, lack of vitality, the kind of blahs the hum drums were fucking bored. Like, like, what can we do about that? Yeah,

26:30

maybe that's where we pivot to psychedelics. I think that

26:34

I'm teeing it up LM.

26:37

Fellas, nicely done. This world, it just like, it's, it's so hard what it asks of women. And it's like, in the younger years, it's like, okay, now pour everything first. It's like pour everything into work, and then pour everything into children. And then children need us a little bit less. And then it's like, okay, what are you left with? And now suddenly, you're not sleeping and your hormones are funky. And our world celebrates youth and and your sex drive is kind

27:01

of an Yeah, you've been married for 1000 years.

27:06

And so we need to tap back into this transcendent creative source energy, that it's something that it's easier to tap into when the estrogen is flowing when we're younger and juicy and more fertile. And we sort of know that field. I love

27:22

that word juicy, because I always am like, are your midlife juices flowing? Well, not really sometimes. So how do we get those midlife juices flowing? Ellen?

27:33

Yeah, so I think that it can be you can take a lot of different paths up this mountain, I think that it is really important to make sure that music and creativity and play are still part of your life, like goofiness, dance art, it has to be part of your daily life. So if that has somehow like through mortgages, and focusing on troubleshooting zoom school for your kids and taxes, like if you have eliminated play, and goofiness and art and music and joy, all of that, like you just need to build it back in and it kind of has to happen in a really purposefully uninhibited way. Ideally, if your partner can be along for the ride, that's great. But so that just needs to be part of the MO of your household. And I think psychedelics play a role in that. Like, there's just all this cultural. There's the ways we've all been trained to comport ourselves and to go through our days in terms of how much we emote and how much we hold in, and how much we let ourselves be ourselves how much we even let ourselves celebrate ourselves, how divine we feel how divine the outer world feels. And I think we actually kind of lost the plot with some of this in our modern culture. And so I think psychedelics help us access that again, whether it's through giving you this very freeing experience of like, I mean, I'll have big emotional releases in a ceremony, big crying, big grieving experiences, sometimes moaning or chanting or sounding and it's stuff that would be super weird. In humdrum life.

29:08

It'd be like, what's happening with Ellen, the neighbor, nervous breakdown, and there are like natural childbirth. like running a concert. And so yeah,

29:18

and so and I live in an apartment, there's a lot of neighbors. And I think that we we need, we need that what I've learned is like, I feel better after a night like that than anything else I could possibly do any regimen of like Pilates or green juice. Like I need to have a big cry and then a big chanting experience and shaking. But but

29:39

let's define what plant medicine is. Who's it for? Who's it not for and you know, what it can do to help our bodies our minds?

29:49

Yeah. So in a way plant medicine is not even the most specific term because, you know, like, cannabis is plant medicine, but like, you know, so is Arnica, you know, like, herbalists have like The whole arsenal of plant medicine that's not all, psychedelic, I think of a better term is psychedelics and some people call it and theologians I usually just say psychedelic,

30:07

I think of like tie dye. Yeah, when I hear psychedelics, I'm like tie dye the 60s, so does

30:14

my editor. Yes.

30:19

Nice shirt today. So what was floral, because I was like, it's kind of the vibe,

30:24

you'll see what I mean, my my book cover comes out. So anyway. But um, so basically, when we're talking about psychedelics, there was like, the 1960s, this sort of like more first wave of this, and it's these medicines have been around their tails all this time. Most traditional cultures have some relationship to some psychedelic substance, all these indigenous cultures, they have a relationship to it. In fact, it's almost proof of concept that one of the few indigenous cultures that doesn't have a connection to psychedelic, actually, the Inuit Eskimos, because nothing psychedelic grows in there. Interesting. So if it did, they'd be tripping. So basically, this is something that like more modern culture has squeezed out of day to day life and what's considered acceptable, then you have this revolution in the 60s, where people are saying, like, hey, like, we need to float downstream, and everyone needs to do acid, and this would help us all and, you know, be peace and love rather than war. And it seems kind of like, you know, the government did a pretty effective PR campaign to be like, That's crazy, that's dangerous. Those are criminals. This is bad. You're gonna get yourself killed, you're gonna think you can fly and try to jump off a building. And so we thought tie dye and dangerous and like, we think I'm a drug nerd. And so therefore, I won't ever do these.

31:43

So how do we get to this rebranding right now where people are like I you asked ketamine magic mushroom,

31:50

it's to the credit of these incredible professors and researchers, people like Rick Doblin Robin Carhartt. Harris, there's been this whole new like, it's called the third wave. But basically this revolution of very smart people who push this so strategically, and they're like, this needs to be airtight, evidence based. And they approached it studying populations, like people with terminal cancer diagnoses terminal illness. So it's sort of like this is an acceptable population to do some of these experiments. And they found things like N like a decrease in end of life angst and anxiety. And then they started looking at populations like the vets with a substance called MDMA, more popularly known as ecstasy, where there's a really big PTSD problem that we know we're doing a lousy job of addressing. And with MDMA, we're doing a much better job of addressing. So there are now these incredible organizations, researchers, academics, are doing airtight research. And it's basically it's a credible science right now. And we're seeing it as this, I think, the most revolutionary and hopeful thing that's hit the mental health field in many decades. And what's interesting is that it's kind of, you know, it's sort of the people that might have been in the age range experimenting with psychedelics in the 60s, are now really in these positions of power. And so it's a, it's a little bit of a potential for a new approach.

33:10

I like that. So what is considered like what in your experience is considered in that kind of psychedelic? Still, you know what I mean? Like or the psychedelic toolkit? It's like ketamine magic mushrooms.

33:24

So there's like classic psychedelics, which are things like psilocybin, the active ingredient, magic mushrooms, so called Magic Mushrooms, yes. And then an LSD or acid, and it gets a little murkier as you start to talk about things like ketamine and ayahuasca, and then sort of psychedelic adjacent is this substance, MDMA, which is not truly it's not a classic psychedelic by any means. But these are, this is sort of the toolbox that people are talking about right now is ketamine is the legal psychedelic, that's the one that's legal right now, there are ketamine clinics, and you can go and have a, you know, something that pretty well approximates a psychedelic experience in a legal clinical setting, then we have psilocybin, which is still not legal. Just today in Canada, I think, like somebody's got their first approval for use, but in depression, but basically, that's coming down the pipeline, but we're not quite there yet. And then MDMA, there's, we're likely to be sort of on a fast track process with the FDA to have that for use for PTSD. That's pretty much what's in the mix. Acid is not as much talked about it for like clinical indications. And I WASPA is still it's probably going to remain kind of more of a religious sacrament and underground substance for a while it's not really in the conversation just yet for substances to use in a clinical setting.

34:44

So what's in your toolbox that you can help patients integrate or you know, use in their life to sort of achieve this sense of flow or more engagement in their real lives? Yeah.

34:59

So in my toolbox I don't facilitate anything directly in my practice, but I refer out and then I help patients integrate the experience. If I have someone struggling with PTSD, I generally want them to go for MDMA work or for many of them actually, psychedelics, like ketamine and psilocybin are also really helpful for trauma. If I have couples that are just stuck, I like them to find an underground MDMA therapist and do that kind of work. If, if I have somebody who is struggling with depression, struggling to get off of a psych med, that's where I start to think, well, do they want to stay above board and work in the ketamine pathway? Or should I refer them for somebody underground for psilocybin work? Or should I recommend that they head to South America and have a proper Ayahuasca experience in the jungle, and each patient has a slightly different need preference, but it's going to benefit the most. And I bear in mind, there are contraindications. There really are. And that's not just like a medical, legal caution. But I think a lot about like, I have patients whose in my mind, they're serotonergic systems, they're how close they are to depression. If it feels too fragile to me, I don't necessarily want to point them towards MDMA. If their brain tends more chaotic, like on that sort of diathesis or spectrum towards psychosis, I'm not going to point them towards a psychedelic. So it's, you know, you have to kind of know, who are these substances going to most benefit? And that's where anybody thinking about doing this work, would want to talk with a really knowledgeable practitioner who has a good sense of what are the real contraindications? So

36:29

is it true that if you're taking an SSRI or a benzo, like Xanax or valium that you can't do these psychedelics

36:38

and so things like ketamine, many practitioners find that they are safe in combination with the SSRIs they would say that benzos I think compliant the effect that's not necessarily a contraindication psilocybin, it's a little bit more case by case but there's a lot of medications that are not contraindicated with psilocybin. Ayahuasca is really the one where those don't mix. And if you are on any psych meds, it's really not safe to work with Ayahuasca.

37:04

Can you tell listeners what Ayahuasca is because I think most people know what mushrooms are. But I Bosca is a fairly unique, or remains to be unique term that not a ton of people know about, at least who I know,

37:18

basically, like full reverence and honor to these traditions, typically in the Amazon, where they combine I believe it's a leaf, from a vine with the root and make this brew or this tea that inhibits what the part that enzyme in our body that's going to break down DMT and then they also provide DMT, which is this more psycho psychedelic psychoactive agents. And so it's, it's medicine, you know, in these traditions, it's a religious sacrament, it's medicine, none of this like none of the psychedelic work I'm talking about here is like recreational or for fun, it it ranges from medicine to spiritual and, and that's really how these traditions approach it. There's a lot of different traditions, sprinkled throughout

38:06

WASC like with ketamine, you're essentially going to a doctor and they're giving you the ketamine but with Ayahuasca, you're sort of part of this whole, like ceremonial retreat with people who are sort of, you know, helping you ease into it. They're there while you're having the experience. They're there. While you're, you know, it's like a whole thing, right? Yeah,

38:26

yeah. So like ketamine, you might have a sublingual or an im intramuscular or an IV treatment, and then that could last about an hour and you're in a generally clinical setting. And I Alaska, I do think of it as deeper medicine. And it's a little bit of more of a vulnerable state in many ways. So there, you want to do this with a very skilled practitioner steeped in tradition. Who knows how to hold that soon

38:55

as the that's what you did in Brazil, right? Back way. Yeah. So can you tell us just like a little bit about that experience from like, not just as a practitioner or doctor but like, as a firsthand? Yeah. person that did it? Yeah.

39:07

And where I did it in Brazil, it was actually that Banda sort of an afro Brazilian tradition, many people you hear about going to the Amazon, they're going to more places like Peru, sometimes Costa Rica, and it's what's called a Shipibo tradition. I've actually sort of transitioned more towards the Shipibo tradition at this point, but I got my first experience with this one Banda tradition. And it's incredible and you it's there's a lot of reverence. It's a very sacred experience. It's a spiritual experience, basically church and I was there for a Jew, even for to you, you go and you you know, you basically have a long conversation about it. You set intention, you prepare often for sometimes 10 days leading up to it, making certain dietary changes, but making changes to your lifestyle to really get you into the mindset when you're there who you are. serve the tea from a shaman type figure. And then for about five or six hours, you're really transported into a different a different view of this reality. And it can be so different person to person and Sarah, are

40:15

you seeing images? Are you hearing voices like what what's happening?

40:20

It can be so many different things, at least for me personally, typically, I start off feeling somewhat nauseous. And then I kind of think of it like, if I'm lucky, I'll have a purge, which is often called getting well, it does feel like a very deep cleanse. And that will usually help me drop in even deeper. And then I'm really in a pretty deep space where music, it's sort of more awe inspiring and incredible. Sometimes there's a kind of synesthesia quality, or you're hearing the music, but sort of seeing it in certain ways as well. There can be incredible visual things happening, you're transported to a spirit world, and you are seeing things that you don't ordinarily see. And then it feels in many ways, like there's a presence there, like a teacher, like a guidance, a very benevolent, loving presence. It's not always easy work though the lessons are not always gentle or easy. I often feels like it's coming from a place of love, and it's exactly what I need. But it can be really hard work. It shows you your shadows, it shows you your patterns. It shows you where you have work to do. And always surrender feels like a really good way to approach anything that's coming up. Because we often want to resist it. Whether the nausea is uncomfortable, whether we're afraid of the unknown, whether we don't want the lessons about our shadow, we want to resist it. And I keep learning more and more how to surrender into it, to trust it. And to really just go with the flow that it's taken me

41:50

I think midlife is an interesting time in the sense that like, we're getting all these messages that, you know, we should learn to surrender and to be in the flow. But then at the same time, it's like some of us feel like disengaged or not vital or disconnected. So it's like this weird dance between surrender, engage, surrender, engage, like, how do you find that balance?

42:14

Everything is just so held in tension, isn't it? I think that our culture really disconnects us from, like our true essence in many ways. And I don't know how to explain this in a way that doesn't sound hippie dippie, I love when I work with these medicines, I reconnect to it, it's transcended. For me I grieve deeply I find myself in utter bowing down of music, of love of beauty of my daughter of the relationships in my life of the love in my life, of the struggle, and the challenge. And the heartache and experience of the loss of experienced all of that feels very meaningful. It feels it feels transcendent. I

42:53

have a lot of statically you do it, but your husband doesn't and he's never had that experience before. So then are you like coming back to real world going? Buy the fuck? Does he not understand why this is so beautiful that the wind is blowing through the trees? Like, is there a discount? Does it ever create a disconnect if not everyone in the house is sort of on the same page.

43:14

And I think in general, I can't really hurt for one person to reconnect to what is sublime in their life, what is transcendent, you can just get that benefit just for yourself, you can model that. And then a good relationship with good communication and to people open to growth and understanding what lights each other up, hopefully paves the way for when the other person feels called to it, they might make their way towards it. But not everyone is going to feel called to it not everyone is it's not what's indicated for everyone. But even one person in a partnership, connecting to creative source energy connecting to spirituality in this way. It still benefits both

43:53

because then you're probably creating a vibrational energy within your house that sort of has that ripple effect.

44:01

Definitely. And you handle it, there are specific ways to handle it. Like you don't want it to make you feel like I'm special. And now I get it and you don't you know, it should just be alienating, and righteous. Yeah, I think that it's instead it's more like, hey, like, hey, like I think it can soften your heart. It can make you better able to listen, it can make you able to sort of courageously go first and say like, I want to talk about what feels vulnerable. It can make you say like, let's stand up and dance, but on goofy music and dance together.

44:33

So you can bring your partner along through some of the learnings whether or not they've had the experience and how like, I mean, obviously Ayahuasca is kind of like a big deal. Like, I mean, is that something you're doing once a year? Is that like, how was that incorporated into one life versus psilocybin or ketamine?

44:53

That's, that's what's so annoying about people like me in the psychedelic space is like it's literally when you feel called it's like it has to be in it. intuitive knowing of like, what's the right amount? And you don't even really start to explore that knowing until you kind of embarked upon it? Yeah, do actually get a sense. It's really nice. It's very different from our western way of thinking about things like, Okay, so what's the right dose? What's the evidence basis? And I think that, you know, for me, sometimes I go two years without connecting to Ayahuasca as a medicine, and sometimes I go to month. And yeah, you have to kind of learn to listen in a different way and go

45:27

to different places, or do you pick the same place over and over again, because you have a connection to that location, I have a connection to a couple of different places at this point. Let's talk about micro dosing. Yeah, like I don't really understand what that is. And when you would do that, and when you wouldn't do that, and do you have to have had sort of a big first time experience first. And then the micro dosing is sort of the maintenance of it. Like I'm a very linear person, sometimes I'm nuanced, but linear. I don't get it, Ellen. Yeah,

46:05

there's, there's no have to for sure. And I would say I need more data points to feel firmly about the statement I'm about to make. But here's what I've observed. Thus far. Many of us who come from a Western background, we want micro dosing to sort of be the solution. It's like, okay, I was on Lexapro, I got off Lexapro, and now I am on psilocybin, basically as my new antidepressant. And so I have a lot of patients who wanted that to be the thing for them, they've tried micro dosing, and had very few patients actually find their sweet spot with micro dosing. But I have many patients at this point who have found a sweet spot with punctuated macro dosing. So more of my patients seem to be benefiting from a once a month, or once a quarter macro dosing ceremony, which seems to have a laugh, banter, depressant effect, but then puts things into perspective. It's deeply healing, it's a different vibration afterward. And so just doing that, with some regularity, seems to be helping more of my patients than the daily ingestion of a small dose of

47:07

because I'm like, if you're taking psilocybin, it's a micro dose, like people are saying, like, you can still drive and live your life and all of these things. And I'm like, wait, what?

47:16

Is that true? I'll be micro dosing. It's, by definition, sub perceptual, although there's interesting research into the fact that it's not that perceptual, I do think that if you're doing it properly and cautiously with a good prescriber, you're probably able to go about your life, but it's something you have to know for yourself in terms of operating heavy machinery and driving and driving as intolerably safe under the best of circumstances. Yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't want to be micro dosing and driving personally,

47:46

right? Because I met one woman who says she does it every three days, because she has a very sensitive system, but like her adult son does it every day. And they seem to have like similar outcomes or the way they feel. So I thought that was kind of interesting. It is,

48:03

yeah, I mean, we do share some brain chemistry and certainly learned habits from our parents.

48:14

Now in terms of plant medicine, and longevity, and the brain and aging, like what are what is the research showing about that? Yeah, with respect to the psychedelics, or just in general? No, with respect to the psychedelics? Yeah.

48:30

So a lot of the research is on ketamine. And what we see is that there seems to be a bump into something called BDNF, which stands for brain derived neurotrophic factor, which can make the brain more neuroplastic. And can sort of promote neurogenesis. These are, this is a lot of like,

48:49

help me learn the technology of doing a podcast better,

48:53

actually, you'll learn how to make the blurred background on Zoom and post it

48:57

notes.

48:59

So basically, it makes our brains able to learn and change, grow and adapt. So this is a good thing. And I think it's a particularly good thing when someone has certain entrenched pattern, whether it's OCD, addiction, melancholic, depression, PTSD, these are all things where shaking the snowglobe, so to speak, and letting the dust settle in a new way can be really beneficial. And so it's something we're still in somewhat of a like in the we're in the realm of hypotheses, but it does seem that promoting BDNF is a beneficial thing to do to our brain. And then we of course, see on the other side of that people able to have a real lasting benefit to their mood, or to certain behaviors. And so and how

49:45

many times would you I mean, not the exact times but how many exposures Do you think you would have to have to ketamine to kind of capture those BDNF benefits?

49:56

So there's a ketamine clinic in the city that I refer to called Ember health and they have kind of like stuck to the most very evidence based protocol, I believe it's four treatments in the first two weeks, and then it's a little bit variable person, a person, how much you do in terms of maintenance. And that seems to be the right way to ramp up for most people. I do find that when there's all this buzz about psychedelics right now, so we're all just thinking like, okay, it's a silver bullet, it cures you have depression? And I, I think yes and no. And I think, yes, but it's a long road,

50:28

and you have to be willing to do the work. It's not just like, you swallow the mushroom, and you're like, Whoa, I'm fixed now. Hard work. I'm going through feelings and imagery from your past and trauma and all of these things. It's a lot. Yeah,

50:43

it's a lot. And I mean, as the I think some people want to grow, want to change, and some people are like, you know, what, I'm barely holding it together, I'm good. And there's no right or wrong there. But if you know that what you need or want in your life right now is to go into it, and to be faced with the shadow and to move through the challenge and to grow and learn, and, and sort of do that hard work and chip away, then it's really good work. But it doesn't all happen in the first ceremony.

51:13

Yeah, so for someone like me, like I have Alzheimer's, in my family, autoimmune issues in my family, like big ones. I have very high cortisol, my inflammation is off the charts. I mean, like, I need to do like 1000 different things. Would something like that helped me kind of counteract some of those things along with lifestyle changes.

51:39

Yeah. And also sometimes makes it easier to make some of those lifestyle changes. But yeah, I'm interested in for you. I mean, when I look at the autoimmune risk, you know, that's, to some extent, genetic, and to some extent, has to do with all these exposures in modern life, the things that are like glyphosate in Roundup, which is giving us leaky gut, which is giving us an immune response to a lot of foods that we're eating, you do want to get off of things like conventional wheat, dairy, and manage stress, easier said than done. But it really does matter. Detox support is helpful in gut healing up the wazoo, like all the bone broth and the glutamine, and just keeping your gut as healthy as possible. In terms of the Alzheimer's risk. I think I would focus most of all on blood sugar and inflammation. And sleep. Sleep is really when our glymphatic system, which is like our lymphatic system for the brain does the clearing away of the tau proteins, and the all the mirrors. So that's really when we kind of clean out our brain. Rather than letting things get stuck.

52:34

There is not why the autophagy with like fasting works is because you're sort of like cleaning out your whole system can be helpful. But

52:43

this is sort of its own thing, which is just when the lymphatic system opens up the channels for cleaning up the brain that happens when we sleep, though interfere intermittent fasting or not. Basically, it's all about the duration and quality of sleep, which there's a lot we can do to protect that it's not a reason to feel down on ourselves when it's hard for hormonal reasons. Yeah, just another reason to prioritize it. And inflammation, you know, and I think think about that all the way from diet choices to our exposures and access to fresh air and good water all the way to like the floor and the mouth and to make sure that we don't have some kind of slowly brewing notice of infection and a cavitation in the mouth and flossing and that we're sort of making sure we're keeping pockets of latent infection addressed throughout our body.

53:30

And what is the number one thing or there's probably a few in terms of like gut health? I mean, like everybody's talking about gut health. But if we're not going to a gut health expert like you, what are a couple things that we can do in that?

53:44

Yeah, more bone broth, less gluten. Less stress,

53:48

when you say more bone broth? Like, is that one cup a day? Is that Is it just part of your day that that's what's healing? What What aspect of it has the healing property? And what

54:00

day would be great. It's more just making sure you're consuming it consistently. And there's a lot of aspects of it that are helpful for the gut, but most of all, it's like the real food source of collagen. And that calendulas matrix helps us rebuild a healthy gut lining. It is also just very nourishing, and so that's another way that it's helpful.

54:20

Is it different, like doesn't matter if it's vegan or chicken or beef, or any of those things

54:25

does matter if it's vegan, because then it's not bone broth?

54:29

I don't know. I don't know one other version I've seen a bit like is a grass fed? No idea.

54:36

I think of it like I think variety is beneficial. So sometimes I've had chicken broth and sometimes I'll have beef bone broth. I really like the Grand proto. I like their hearth broth, which is kind of a combo of

54:46

different things in what do you incorporate into your day?

54:49

Yeah, so we will cook with it. So we'll make a lentil soup with it, or we'll make kanji with chicken broth. And then occasionally I'll walk by the burrito store in my neighborhood and just get a glass of milk

55:00

It's like you're instead of diving for the Motrin at 330 You're like mom wants some bone broth. That sounds good. It does. Now, can you tell us is there in terms of going back to the psychedelics for a minute? Is that what's the downside? Like, can you overdose? Like? What about the environment that you're in? Like, what are the the O's with it? Yeah, so

55:23

neuro chemically, that most of these substances are nearly impossible to overdose on. But there are potential problems. And like we mentioned earlier, if you have, if you have a family history, first of your relative or yourself psychosis, bipolar disorder, it's something to be wary of. And then setting setting is really critical. And you do want to save setting. And that's where, like, in the proper set and setting, you're not going to be able to do anything unsafe. And if you find something really challenging, like a challenging content comes up, you have support, to be able to face that feel empowered to face that or you support to kind of help you shift out of that if you're feeling stuck, and you really don't want to surrender into it. And so you want to save setting. And ideally, you're doing this like either with a facilitator or with part of a ceremony where it's like a group where there's people holding the space and keeping it safe, or in a clinical setting. But if you're doing this casually, recreationally in certain sense like it then that lowest common denominator setting, having like a babysitter, like having someone there who's sober, who's like, I'm looking out for everybody. Yeah, and somebody who knows their way around a substance like that and can be responsible.

56:37

Now, I've read that you've said that, and some of the research talks about this, that it's the the plant medicine or the psychedelic is as effective as, like the setting that you're in, and like the enduring quality of it. What does that mean?

56:52

I feel like if I said something to this effect, it might have been around the importance of integration. Is that okay? Maybe, but basically, like, we all think, like, Okay, go have this big peak experience. And that's the medicine. And that's great. But that can do nothing if you're not focusing on integrating it. And that's where you want to have, what is the integrating mean, you're sort of have a structured setting where you're talking to an integration therapist, or you're talking to one of the practitioners who facilitated the ceremony. And you're basically talking about, well, here's what came up for me, here were some insight through so I'm still not sure how to make sense of your something I'm not sure how to integrate into my worldview. And you talk it over with someone, ideally, someone really wise, who knows not to, like, have a facile conclusion.

57:38

Yeah. So these are the sort of Ayahuasca retreat experts who are people who are doing this all day long. Yeah,

57:45

or an integration therapist, which there are now so sort of growing army of that there are even integration groups, like on zoom at this point, was talking about it with people that have been there done that are kind of like, yeah, there are some mysteries here that are hard to explain. But you want to keep remembering, and maybe you journal, maybe you come back to your notes. But you don't want to forget the insights, you want to come back to it and keep, it's not always easy. You have the sort of like, Oh, I'm one with everything. And the only thing that's real is love. And you have that big experience, you have a nomadic sense of it in the moment. And then you go back to your life and you're stuck in traffic, someone cuts you off, and you're like, I can't happen. So you kind of want to come back to it on a day to day basis and be like, No, I really felt that. And I really believe that and the modern life really distracts me from that. But I want to keep coming back to that. Now,

58:35

do you think that there are going to be like, there's going to be more done with teenagers, let's say, instead of putting them on SSRIs that there will be an application for teenagers to do some of these things. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that teenagers go to their underground network and get it but I'm just asking you as a physician, like perhaps instead of a kid taking ADHD medication or anti anxiety medication or some of these things, will this come into play?

59:04

Yeah, I'm a little hesitant to think about it in the growing brain. I think that the the growing brain I kind of think it doesn't necessarily need psychedelics it needs all of its basic fundamental human needs met. So in a way like better for all the parents to do psychedelics totally stop

59:21

being so better parents. Yeah, answer

59:24

we can hold space for our teenagers emotions and we can validate and we can model self love and ease and you know, a lot of different radical views and I think that might be the more helpful approach.

59:37

So let's just say before we wrap up like a midlife woman comes to you she's like, I'm generally okay my kids love for college. I'm, you know, kind of bored, dissatisfied my sex drive and libido. Everything is kind of like, my husband and I are like, kind of not into each other. Like, what are you going to say? So I would say

1:00:01

it's a we I play the long game. So basically, I would want to assess like is this person like we would start with a low hanging fruit, get your body healthy take off the burdens of inflammation and nutrient deficiencies sort of get somebody really juicy and robust on a physiologic level. And then, in terms of relationship satisfaction, I'd want a couple to work on communication, I would want to make sure both people are paying attention to their partners dreams, their partner's needs, coming back to nonviolent communication. And if the relationship isn't meeting all the needs, bust out of all these conventional ideas of what we think our partner should be to us, you know, maybe it's spending more time with friendships, maybe it's actually opening the marriage in certain ways. And then I do think psychedelics have a role for a lot of people just to reconnect us, and maybe it's one or two ceremonies. And then what you do is you're saying every day or you dance every day, or you make art or you go to nature, and grounded in nature for 45 minutes, every few days. But I think there are a lot of ways to reconnect to the glory and the transcendence and this precious gift of what it is to be a human body, including the suffering, including the challenging aspects, the immense loss, the grief that we go through. I'm not here to sugarcoat what it is to be in a human body, right? I think we need to feel at all we need to be wide awake for the whole the full catastrophe. When we're wide awake to that. There's it's not boring, you know, we're not disconnected.

1:01:23

It is boring and good enough answer to do psychedelics. Sure.

1:01:31

Summit in Brazil basically say, Are you feeling sick, drink the medicine, you feeling happy? Drink the medicine. And I think that there's something to be said for this as medicine and it reconnects us to truth that we sometimes lose touch.

1:01:44

So is this like something you do on a Friday night with your husband? And then you like move into like a tantric sex zone? Like what's happening with

1:01:51

us that I didn't?

1:01:55

Because we all want to learn Allah and come on share the secret.

1:01:59

This, this medicine has been absolutely life changing in for my relationships. And

1:02:06

when do you see this medicine? Which one? Are you referring to

1:02:09

all of them, all of them? We all of them have played a really pivotal role. And it's been transformative,

1:02:16

because you guys are physically doing it together? Or because you're both doing it and coming back to the marriage with this sort of. I don't even know what the word is, like, more heightened sense of the world. Oh, both are happening. And both are really valuable.

1:02:32

And is it like bleakly No, no, no, really, when we feel called to it. And when we have space for it. We have a young child, we both work there. We don't have like, we couldn't do too much of this. We simply don't have the time.

1:02:42

Do you explain that to your now almost, you know, five and a half year old? Like at what age? Like is it okay to say like, you know, plant drugs are okay.

1:02:53

I have no idea.

1:02:55

If you call me when you do that, because I'd love to know.

1:02:59

But I think like in a way, you know, I think that we're drunk. And I do, because the moment that we're drunk is part of our problem here. And we just need more granularity that what we mean, is the physiologic dependence that pull us out of our lives that numb us out that make us monsters when we're coming down from them. I think that there's so many substances that are true that that I really don't want my daughter to ever touch that I would never touch. And then I think of this work as medicine, which is not to say it's always going to be safe or indicated in every setting, just like medicine, medicine has to be prescribed thoughtfully with intention for the right people at the right time in the right setting. But this, these substances are medicine to me, they're not drugs, can you get addicted to them? So most of them are actually considered anti addictive and that they actually I keep hearing that and I'm like, That's so interesting. I mean, if you ever do do I also you will say, wow, it would be really hard to get addicted to this. It's not easy. Yeah.

1:03:54

Hard the purging and the emotions and the elation and like the roller coaster. Yeah, I totally get that. It's

1:04:01

spiritual, and it's religion. And it's medicine for me and I work and so. But yeah, I have found it to be really transformative for my personal development from a relationship for my work, my practice. Not all easy. It's not all perfect, but I do think it's worth pursuing for many people as long as there aren't any contraindications.

1:04:30

Before we wrap up, I want to ask you, Ellen, is there one thing that you want women and women in midlife to know about self reinvention and finding our way and the second half of life?

1:04:41

I think we are systematically cut off from our own divinity. And it impacts how much we let ourselves feel joy, how much we let ourselves be weird and be ourselves how widely we let ourselves smile. How am I We let ourselves honor our own needs. And I think the sooner you can eliminate all the miseducation that our culture has given us, and just recognize your own divinity, honor that be true to that, and just a wide awake into the full catastrophe of this existence. I think that that's how we reconnect.

1:05:20

I love that and you should lead your own Ayahuasca ceremonies or meditations because you have the most beautiful, soothing voice, I feel like I'm on like a boat. And I feel so relaxed. I'm like, maybe you're part of my meditation. I want to thank you for helping us understand plant medicine, and so many of the psychological components of midlife and mental health. And if people want to find you, where can they find you?

1:05:45

You could find me on Instagram at Ellen for MD and my websites, LM for calm. And then my book The Anatomy of anxiety. No,

1:05:52

I want to just I want to quickly talk about that. So you have a book coming out in the spring. And it's called one April.

1:05:57

It's called the anatomy of anxiety. And it's a holistic approach to managing anxiety.

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And so are you talking about plant medicine and everything that we just talked about? Or some of it that comes up in it? Yeah, I can't I can't wait for that. I want everyone to think about what should they can start doing today. One small step I want to thank Alan for sharing her medical holistic and integrative approach to mental health. And hence this podcast. Thank you, Dr. Ellen Vora thank you so much. Hey, peeps, it's me again. I listened to this episode with Dr. Ellen Bora. So I could summarize the golden nuggets for you to have actionable items to start using today. I know that when I listened to a long episode, I'm like, oh my god, I love that. But then I can't even fucking remember the specifics. This is why I come back and do a quick Golden Nugget summary. In this episode, we discussed the power of plant medicine on the midlife body and mind and why every woman could think about potentially going on a plant medicine trip at least once in her life to discover what she actually wants and who she is Golden Nugget number one, okay, I'm Jewish so I can say this Jewish doctors always ask why why why why why why? So, during this episode, Ellen and I Ellen is also Jewish joke about how Jewish doctors always ask why this why that why you're feeling a certain way whatever. As to Jewish women were almost destined to ask why and recommend that you do too. Well, in this case, it was more for medical purposes of asking yourself why and getting to root issues. Many times you can just ask yourself why to help understand yourself those around us society's expectations and more. It might even help to learn to give less of a fuck about things if you realize the Why isn't actually that important. Golden Nugget number two mix intuition, witchcraft and traditional medicine. ln mentions that while Western medicine is great, sometimes it's better to also combine alternative medicines, Eastern medicine or a combination of both. That's where plant medicine like ayahuasca, psilocybin, aka magic mushrooms, LSD, etc. Come in, listen to your intuition. If certain medicines don't feel right for you, in your body, do some research on alternative options. Golden Nugget number three, knowing to do something versus actually doing it. So the question is, why is it that we know we should be doing stuff for ourselves and then not actually do that? It's because the act of knowing is way easier than actually doing. Just knowing something takes minimal effort. It requires some mental effort to gather information on that thing. But doing it is so much harder, because you have to take active steps in creating those things, those steps and new habits. Remember that taking small steps is better than taking no steps. Golden Nugget number four genetics matter but they don't make up the whole story. When it comes to your health genetics do matter. But they're not the end all be all. A lot of times we want to say Oh, my mom had that or my dad had that so that you don't really have to do the work. Believe me, I'm guilty of it. Think of your genes as more of a baseline to follow as they're a predisposition, not a destiny. By knowing your genetic makeup. You can tailor different aspects of your life either to help avoid certain circumstances or make you feel better altogether. If you know you have liver issues at run in your family, that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have liver issues. But you might have to eat more foods that are in line with someone who may have liver issues. Gold is dripping off these nuggets, grab it use it there are so many things you can do first you can subscribe to this podcast on on all the podcast platforms second, you can share it with some friends who like midlife shit. And third, you can write an apple review send me the screenshot and I'll post it. Thanks so much for listening. Talk soo.