Dr. Matthew Lederman: From Disillusioned Doctor to Holistic Healer

What happens when a doctor realizes that medicine is missing something vital? Dr. Matthew Lederman didn’t just question the system—he rebuilt his entire approach to healing.

In this enlightening episode of The Glen Merzer Show, Dr. Lederman shares his unique journey from a conventional medical career to founding a revolutionary nutrition and lifestyle clinic. The catalyst? A bowl of rice and beans—and yes, vegan French toast that “did it.”

Disillusioned with symptom-based treatment, Dr. Lederman leaned into plant-based nutrition, emotional awareness, and nonviolent communication to help patients heal from the inside out. “Pain is not tissue damage—it’s a message.” His clinic not only improved lives but slashed healthcare costs by 20%.

But this isn’t just about food—it’s about connection, vulnerability, and spiritual health. Dr. Matt believes that true wellness comes when we create safe spaces to feel our emotions and expand our emotional vocabulary. “I had only three feeling words: good, bad, angry.” After just three months of emotional work, his own chronic pain disappeared.

Whether you’re plant-curious, health-conscious, or just trying to manage stress, Dr. Lederman’s story offers a refreshing look at what healthcare should be: whole, compassionate, and connected.

📌 Watch the episode here: The Unique Medical Journey of Dr. Matthew Lederman

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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here:  The Unique Medical Journey of Dr. Matthew Lederman

Welcome to The Glen Merzer Show. can find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube. And please remember to subscribe. And you can find us at RealMenEatPlants.com. Dr. Matthew Lederman is a board certified internal medicine physician and a pioneering thought leader in holistic health. With his wife, Alona Polde, he has co-authored six books.

including this one, Keep It Simple, Keep It Whole, the New York Times bestseller, The Forks Over Knives Plan. And he was featured in the acclaimed documentary Forks Over Knives, which has created who knows how many thousands of vegans. Dr. Matt is the co-host of the Weeby Parents podcast. That's W-E-B-E.

A platform dedicated to equipping parents with tools and insights to foster emotional connection, resilience and well-being in their families. His latest book, Wellness to Wonderful, I had the honor of being the editor on this book and it weaves together medical science, psychology, spirituality and life wisdom to guide individuals towards lasting health, vibrancy, peace and joy. As the co-founder of Connection Docs,

That's connectiondocs.com. Dr. Matt integrates the principles of nonviolent communication and emotional health with practical tools to enhance rational, relational and self connection. Dr. Matt, good to see you. Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for being here. I appreciate it. Thank you for including me and wanting to talk. All right. Well, thank you for wanting to say yes.

when I asked you if you wanted to talk. Let's talk about your medical journey because you have not had a very conventional medical journey. Let's start with where did you go to medical school? medical school in Philadelphia, Temple School of Medicine, North Philly. All right. And when you went to medical school, what sort of doctor were you planning on becoming? I wasn't sure. My father was a cardiologist, so I thought being a specialist would be

fun. They seem to get more respect than the general practitioners. So I was excited to be some type of specialist, but I wasn't particularly drawn to a specialty other than the idea of it. So I wasn't sure. And at that time, were you eating the standard American diet? Yes, I was eating and drinking and living without health as my primary focus.

It was about survival in medical school coupled with relief and release. So when you work hard and then play hard. Right. So, and you would eat hard. Right. And you wouldn't get to sleep very much in medical school. That was not the focus.

Did it feel like a kind of torture going through medical school and internships when you would have to work super long hours? was there a sense that it was almost like a boot camp? You have to get through this as hard as it is, then you get richly rewarded afterwards? Yeah. My personality, the way I was sort of socialized was to work hard.

and head towards some joy that will come as a result of that hard work. It wasn't about being in the present moment. So I would work hard to get good grades. I would work hard to get teachers to like me. I'd work hard to build up the resume, to get into medical school or to get into college, to get into a good medical school, to get to a good residency and potentially to get to a good fellowship, to then get a good job. And then all of sudden you pick your head up

and you're 30 years old, 35 years old, and you're like, is that worth it? So it's like this 35 year experiment. And what happened to me when I completed that experiment was conventional medicine was not meeting a lot of my needs. wasn't meeting my needs for really contributing to patients in a meaningful way from my perspective, it wasn't helping them get healthier and happier and living better. And it wasn't, I didn't

I didn't feel an integrity with a lot of what we were doing. We would have patients come in and I would say, we'll try this pill. And if that didn't work, they'd come back and say, I'm still miserable. I said, well, try this pill. And would just, we would just circulate them through different pills. So it was, it was hard work and you just got good at it. Selects, I think medical, the medical profession selects for people that can work hard and delay gratification in hopes of something better to come.

and they can memorize things really well and they can do what they're told and follow directions really well. that ultimately was not, I was good at doing that, but I picked my head up after this 30 year experiment and realized that's not what makes me happy though. So let's go to that moment when you're starting to feel disillusioned. You're about 30 years old. Where were you working? What sort of practice? I was in

residency. I started to think in, got really good grades in the beginning of college and then I was starting to get tired of working hard just to get good grades. But I still did well enough to get into medical school. In medical school, I was a average student. I wasn't top of the class, wasn't bottom of the class. Although they, you know, the joke, what do they call the person who graduates last in his medical school class or her medical school class? What?

doctor. Right. So, know, any everybody in medical school has already been selected to be quite smart and effective and skilled. But it's it's I was about average. And then I was like, yeah, I'm not really loving this, but maybe it'll get better when. So was still hoping that when I became a resident and I had more power and autonomy, it would be better. And then when I was a resident, I was like, I'm still not really loving this.

Maybe it'll get better when I'm attending and I have my own practice, but it just wasn't getting, it wasn't getting better. And about the end of the beginning of my third year of residency is when I was pretty unhappy. And through a series of random events found a book that was basically telling me, I remember halfway through saying, you're going to feel better if you're vegan. And I was having,

It was called the easy way to lose weight. And I was interested in this book because I really liked this guy, Alan Carr, who wrote books on stopping smoking and stopping drinking. And he wasn't a medical professional. He was just a guy that had this technique. And I thought, and it was ultimately like natural hygiene. I learned later, that's what informed his weight loss book. But I remember him reading, I remember reading through and thinking, wow, this is really interesting.

And I liked to experiment on things. I wasn't feeling great. I had all sorts of gastrointestinal issues. had fatigue. Were you by any chance overweight yourself? Cause you're a very standard guy. I was probably, you know, 10 pounds overweight from eating and drinking too much, eating unhealthy foods, but it wasn't the main focus. was, ⁓ I was doing the Atkins diet with a bunch of friends at the time too, which was funny because we thought that was the healthiest diet.

you know, our expert opinion during the Atkinson and we would tell patients to do the Atkinson because that's what we were doing. Not because there was evidence or that we were anybody any of my part, any of my colleagues were familiar with the any evidence on it. It's just what we told them and they would listen to us. So it's a testament to the power of doctors to be influential. Unfortunately, here I think that was harmful influence. But we and at this time you're you're a resident. A resident.

beginning of my third year of residency. And I read this book and I said, you know, this sounds crazy. I don't want to be vegan, but they're promising some pretty amazing things. So I'm the type of guy that also likes to experiment and think outside of the box. So I tried this. said, I'll do rice and beans for a week. And I did rice and beans for a week because I had to mix my rice and beans to get the right amount of protein in theory. And I felt fantastic.

And I was actually disappointed that I felt fantastic because I couldn't lie to myself that it didn't work. I felt really good. And that's what they said would happen. And I was sleeping better and my bowels were functioning better and my indigestion went away. And I'm like, damn, this is, this is unfortunate because I don't want to be vegan. And then I, I did the, said, well, let me come up with another excuse. said, well, you're, I would, even though I feel better, you can not pick it up protein. You're going to die for protein deficiency. And I said,

So I got a book to learn about that and it turned out you got more than enough protein. I'm like, damn. All right, well, what about calcium? I don't think you can get enough calcium. I'm looking for reasons that this can't, I can't do this. And they kind of said, Oh my God, you get enough calcium too. So I'm like, damn. And then I said, well, you can't, I can't live off rice and beans for the rest of my life. So I got a vegan cookbook and I said, there's no way this is going to, you know, this is going to be possible long-term. And I tried making vegan French toast. took about five hours and

I had to shop for all these ingredients I'd never heard of. And it tasted delicious. And that point I said, damn, I'm going to do this. And I was just, from then on, I said, I don't have to be vegan, but I'm going to try and make everything I love vegan. And if I can't make something I love vegan, then I'll use animal products at the last resort. So that way I didn't force myself to be vegan, but I had to try everything else first.

And that helped me stick with it. And I have been vegan ever since and Whole Food Plant Based was shortly after that. after 30 years and after some research and some reading, you got hooked by Vegan French Toast. Vegan French Toast is what did it. Who knew? Wow. And I was... I've even ever had vegan French toast. I remember French toast as a kid, which had some kind of like eggy thing. Yeah.

Right? Exactly. What do you use to replace the eggs in vegan French toast? This was like a, there was like an egg replacer that was vegan and they, something was, I remember, I actually remember back that I don't eat the French toast now actually. But it was, it was at the time I remember liking French toast. said, let's try this one. And I think there was some kind of flax seed mixture in there and the egg replacer and, and he couldn't, you know, didn't use butter. So it was, but it was a really good bread.

And I still could use syrup and there was this mixture coated the bread really nicely and it was delicious. And I said, Whoa, who would have thought? that vegan French toast recipe influenced vegan history. You went on to do forks over knives and all these other things. it's a great, thank goodness for French toast. Yeah. And to this day, we still, that will still happen where you crave something.

The other Kylie for her birthday, Kylie is my daughter. She's just turned 13 and she wanted, she, we walked by a Cinnabon at Universal Studios and she said, ⁓ my God, what's that smell? That's delicious. And we go, that's Cinnabon's. And she said, I said, you know, one of those has like 2000 calories and if it's enough for the entire day, it'll, it'll, it'll kill you if you eat this thing, but it's delicious.

And she said, well, I want one of those. So Alona figured out and and Kylie and Kylie has Crohn's disease. So Alona figured out how to make this. She wanted to give Kylie still meet that flavor that needs for the food without doing it in an unhealthy way. And Alona made a gluten free without added. She was date sugar, no added oil, no other added sweeteners and no added salt, no added sodium. And she made this thing. It was so delicious.

that me and Jordan were eating them and were telling her she'd make them again. They were so good that they were supposed to put this vegan frosting on them. And we didn't even need the vegan frosting. So I was like, this is even how many years later is this? This was a few weeks ago. And I haven't had cinnamon buns for decades because I used to eat cinnamon buns and or something like it. I don't know if cinnamon, but I remember eating these things that were like these big things with those.

the white frosting, drenching it, and we were able to do it. And that's what's so exciting is that nowadays you can make anything you want. And a lot of people don't have the gluten-free limitation. And if they just want to be vegan, they don't have to worry about added oil or added sodium. And Alona did this with all of those factors involved too. So it is so possible now that you don't have to be deprived at all. Did you meet Alona in medical school?

I met Alona when I was attending at Kaiser. She was a resident. And I met her there. It was a little bit of like Grey's Anatomy type of drama. So I saw her and pursued her. And then we eventually started our own clinic together. This was before Forks Over Knives. We had a little concierge nutrition lifestyle health clinic.

When you were at Kaiser, were you already vegan? Yes, I was vegan. In fact, I remember telling one of my partners that we were I was a hospitalist at Kaiser and a hospitalist means you just work with patients in the hospital. So you don't do outpatient. You just deal with patients that need internal medicine care in the hospital. And one of my partners, I was walking out the door at them. I'll never forget.

And I said, I just got my cholesterol back and it was my total cholesterol was 125. And I said, I'm pretty excited by this. And she looked at me with a little bit almost like snarky, almost disgusting. What are you vegan or something? And I said, two things just showed me right there. One is that vegan is a bad word. That there's something wrong with vegans. It's frowned upon. And two, that she knew.

that you could get your cholesterol down that low, but you had to be vegan. So it's not news. So that was one of the very memorable experiences. shortly after that is when I went to head of the hospital's group and I said, I'm gonna leave and start my own nutrition and lifestyle medicine clinic focused around this. And he said, if you don't take insurance and are people gonna pay for this? How are you gonna survive? How are you gonna make this work? And I said,

we'll figure out a way. So it wasn't, it's not easy, but, ⁓ it was, I felt much more in integrity than going in. And I would see all these patients that either had, you know, heart, you'd see some of the heart attack. It's directly related to what they're eating, or you would see people with other issues that were much more difficult to heal because of their suppress your dysfunctional immune systems. They're being so overweight.

and the impact that the diet and lifestyle has and how all of that puts them in these pro-inflammatory toxic states that make diseases otherwise, that usually would be reversible, much harder to reverse. And I was just so frustrated trying to throw medicine at a problem where they were eating, basically putting gasoline on the fire three times a day. And I'm trying to put that fire out and we couldn't. All right. Let's go back to that.

first week when you had the rice and beans, you had been having some digestive problems and you felt so much better after a week of rice and beans. And you said, damn, this seems to be working. At what point do you say to yourself, wait a minute, everything I was taught in medical school, everything about the way I'm treating patients is related to what I've just learned on the rice and beans diet for a week.

And so this is not going to just affect the way I eat. This is going to affect the way I practice medicine. When did that revelation come? first I was just doing this for me. I wasn't clear on the impact on health to the extent I learned that actually I watched. I don't remember what got me to watch this documentary. I don't know if you heard the documentary, The Rave Diet by Mike Anderson. No. So he did something and he had

Esselstyn and Campbell, I believe Campbell was in it, but he had some other people in there and I said, ⁓ this is interesting. And then there I looked up the China study because that was, it must've been Campbell must've been in there. And I read the China study and that's when I started learning about the impact on health. learned about McDougall. I emailed McDougall. still have the email today that I sent him.

saying that I learned about this. I'm in a conventional hospitalist position and I wanna do this work with you. Are you hiring? He said, no, I'm not hiring, but he sent me a bunch of stuff and DVDs and books and things. And I reached out to Joel Furman and I read his Eat to Live book. And I remember being like, wow, this really can help people's health. But I, at the time, because I was so disillusioned with

conventional healthcare, but I still need to make a living. was going to leave. I was going to go and become a palliative care physician. So I had a palliative care fellowship set up in and because that's what I was going to do. Even though I was eating a plant-based diet, I didn't think about helping other people with it as a career. So I was going to go into palliative care and my stepmother was visiting and she said, man, you know, because I was at that point telling them all about

the impact of diet and my whole family knew about it. And they said, Matt, palliative care is great that you can help people. Cause I liked palliative care. Cause that was where medication actually, in my opinion, really helps people. They're struggling. You have time to talk to them and connect with them and you can give them medication to make them more comfortable. We could do that really well. So to me, the tools that we were given and the training that we employed aligned very much with the patient values.

as well. There's a lot of alignment. So I was interested. I was like, at least I could do that and feel good about myself. And then my stepmother said, Matt, know, palliative care, can't really, it's a little late to help people. You could help people much earlier. And she said, why don't you do this diet and lifestyle stuff for people before they need palliative care? And I said, oh, that's a good idea. So that's what got me to reach out to John McDougall and Joel Furman and say, are you hiring?

And that's when I told my palliative care fellowship that I'm not going to come and then I'm going to do this instead. ⁓ actually almost flew. I was in Los Angeles at time. I almost flew to New Jersey cause Joel Furman was gonna, I was going to work with Joel and, but that's when I met Alona and we were just dating and she did not want to go to New Jersey and it was too early. We were just started dating.

And I was going to go out there and I said, you know, Joel, I met this girl. So I don't think, I don't think I'm going to come out. I want to see where this goes, you know? And I'm glad I did because it went, it went as high as you could imagine. So that's, but I was almost going to move out and work with Joel at least to get out. didn't have to do palliative care. could get into practicing this way full time. And, um, but that didn't happen. So then I stayed in Los Angeles and we opened this clinic.

Well, as I'm taking in your story, Dr. Matt, it seems to me that perhaps the two greatest influences on your life were your stepmother and French toast. who would have thought now when you when you met Alona, was she a vegan?

It was, think, like a pretty clean Mediterranean diet. She would still have olive oil. She would still have like chicken once in a while, but it was easy. She would have these big salads. She would have like the processed veggie burger, let's say, the soy based veggie burger. she never, she ate a much healthier diet at baseline. But I remember one of our first arguments was over olive oil.

So she, early on, mean, she didn't have any of this, she hadn't read any of the books. She just was preaching conventional wisdom and olive oil was healthy. So I was telling her she was wrong and I did not have the skills of nonviolent communication at the time. So I came in and told her how she was wrong and I was gonna enlighten her and that doesn't go well. There are a couple of vegan docs out there who

promote a diet that you and I would basically agree with, but for some reason they allow olive oil or even promote olive oil. So there are still some advocates of olive oil out there. And to me, olive oil, a little bit of anything isn't going to make or break you. It's what you do most of the time that really matters. But this idea that you can take an olive, extract one single macronutrient, fat,

isolate that into a bottle and just drink that. And it's the most calorie dense thing on the planet. No nutrients really. And somehow that's a health food. But if you take another macronutrient out of another whole food, let's say all the carbohydrate out of corn and you create corn syrup, that is the most toxic thing on the planet because you have a bottle of corn syrup instead of, which is the macronutrient carbohydrate.

versus you have a bottle of olive oil, which is the macronutrient of the fat. And I'm like, what's the difference here? You're extracting from this whole food, this one little thing. And people are carrying on like that's the most amazing thing. And you got to pour that all over your food. It doesn't make sense. And when things don't make sense to me that way, even if I don't understand it, I'm going to explore it and look it up and try and make sense of it. And it seems like some people don't do that.

That's exactly right. And that's the way I tend to think of nutrition is that when you're eating whole plant foods, you're getting all the macronutrients. You know, even fruit has a tiny bit of protein. know, yes. Oats have fat, you know, so you're getting everything and you don't have to worry terribly much about what percentage of the macronutrients you're getting. mean,

you should have enough consciousness not to eat coconut all day long, because you'll be getting too much fat, but, and too much saturated fat. But in general, if you eat a range of plant foods, you don't even have to think about that. How much protein I'm getting, how much fat, as long as you're eating whole plant foods, you're generally good. Yeah. I give people the challenge to create a diet of whole plant foods that meet your caloric needs.

and show me some, some nutrient that you're deficient in, whether it's an essential amino acid or an essential fatty acid or some other nutrient. And it's, ⁓ I have yet to have somebody come up to me and show me a diet that's incomplete. Now B12 would be one, but we can talk about that if you want, but that's other than that, you get all of your nutrient requirements. In fact,

A lot of people with this protein craze are getting too much. In fact, people are saying, how do I get enough protein? I'm, I'm worried about getting too much protein. Right. I want to get less. Right. People look at me like I'm crazy. Right. No, I think you're right. And the body doesn't store excess protein. So what is the purpose of a, of a surplus of protein? Yeah. People think that if you eat it, somehow it gets jammed in your bicep.

How does that work? It doesn't work that way. Well, I don't think so. Now, you began a practice then, and you were giving your patients food therapy. You were working with your patients on their diet. Is that right? Yeah, we did a whole, I mean, just like the Forks of an Iconome, we would take people, educate them.

Tell them what to do, help them plan and then help them transform their kitchen, take them shopping. Cause a lot of it is they don't know what to buy and where it is. So we would take them to their local supermarket, show them exactly what to buy. You know, there's a wall of barbecue sauces. Here's the one rather than having to read each label, we would just point it out for them. So you, you removed a lot of the, the weight and then I would take it home and we would.

cook these foods and show them here's how you make this real quick and here's how make this snack and this is a basic cooking technique and like put it in their mouths so they could actually taste it. And then all of sudden they're like, okay, this is doable. Because you've taken them, instead of them thinking about it and there's this big barrier to entry, you've actually sort of dragged them through the process from making decision and leaving their house to buying all the products to preparing them to tasting it.

And if you take them through that process, it's much more likely they're going to be able to do it and continue doing it. And where was this practice that you set up? In Los Angeles. In Los Angeles. We were working at it. We converted a guest house from Alona's grandfather and we'd use that. OK. And how long were you practicing medicine that way before you moved on to

I think was the next position, which was with Whole Foods. So we started, Alona and I started in the fall of 2007. So we had a clinic from 2007 to 2000, basically the summer of 2010, not fall of 2010. So about three years. And then we switched over to Whole Foods and shut down the clinic. Okay. And so tell us what you did with Whole Foods.

So with Whole Foods, it's funny, I met John Macchiato at a McDougal conference, the CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods. And I had our first book, Keep It Simple, Keep It Whole, that we self-published. And I followed him during a break to the bathroom. he goes, here I this book, I think you're gonna like it. Because I knew he was into the diet and lifestyle. And he said, hey, man, I'm trying to go to the bathroom here. So I said, sorry.

And, he took the book. I walked out, I came back and remember telling him, don't know what's going to happen. He didn't seem to be happy that I followed him into the bathroom, but he, ⁓ did, ⁓ come back the next morning. He found me sitting in the conference and he came up to me and said, I read half your book last night. And I ran in there. You wrote that you want to open clinics like this all over the country. And I would love to do that too. Let's talk at lunch. So we met at lunch, had a great time.

connected around what we wanna do and very quickly decided that we're gonna try and work with Whole Foods Market to create clinics that support patients in this way. And where were those clinics and did they, how successful were they? We had two clinics. We had a clinic in Glendale and we had one in Austin. And they were successful in the sense that they decreased healthcare costs by about

20%. They were whole foods for whole foods on employees. Yes. was for health foods employees at the time. And it was also, um, uh, patients loved it. The doctors that were treating patients in there were happy. had health coaches, we had, um, acupuncturists, we had mental health support. So it was a very enjoyable experience.

And then it was a matter of testing. Like there was a lot of people that believe that more healthcare is better. So I got to, you know, it's, got to get all of the treatments that conventional medicine, all the testing when in fact you and I know that that can actually cause harm. So we had to create a health plan that incentivized being educated and learning how

this all works so that they were financially incentivized to take the time to learn so they could make a more informed decision. And when that happened, they were actually quite grateful. And then we found specialists that would align with what the evidence really showed versus just trying to push more treatments, more surgeries and things like that. So you had to find the specialists that the doctors all knew about, they would send their family to.

And that's the one that we wanted to work with. And we created a network that way, but it took time. So we had to not only create the centers, then we had to create a health plan and we had to create a health system network. We had to find hospitals that would support. And this was with very little resources because it was a grocery store.

and we were doing it grassroots. We were setting it up ourselves. we even talked to at the, you know, later in, so it was doing well, everybody was happy, but we, to expand as quickly as we wanted was, would be challenging. So we talked to Amazon had recently bought them and we talked to them and Amazon wanted us, you how do you help, you know, hundreds of thousands of employees at a time.

and we didn't have a system set up to do that. So we wanted to try and figure that out. But in the end, don't think that was what they wanted to do. I'm not sure whatever happened with Amazon. I believe they bought or partnered with One Medical. I don't know if you heard of that company.

We actually met with one medical early, early on at Whole Foods. They were just starting their clinics at the time. And this was one of the founders of the guy who had created an app. I think it was a Pocketees, which was a well-known app for the PDAs, not for the iPhone. This was before the iPhone. And you could look up drugs on this little PDA thing. know, smart guy driven. But in the end, we had to find

a way to grow and have people support that growth in a way that still maintain the integrity of what we're doing. Because if you just grow using the systems in place, you're going to use systems that are broken, that are pushing care that is not helping patients, that is not, in my opinion, evidence-based. And then creating a system that can support patients to learn this new information. It's almost like going through a McDougal program and people go and say,

I don't want that care anymore because they know how it can harm them. But that's an evolution. So we wanted to create a system that supported that. And after a while, we were lot of rolling a boulder uphill with all the systems that were in place, legal, HR, with the health plans. And they wanted to do things conventional. were sort of squeaky wheel on the side, couple of centers, and they're trying to deal with.

hundreds of thousands of employees. And we're working with thousands of employees instead of hundreds of thousands. So Alona and I said, you know, we'd like to do something where we can evolve and create and grow quickly and try new things. And that's after about 10 years, that's when we said, Hey, let's, let's go do our next evolution. also wanted to bring connection into this, into it, connection and interpersonal relationship.

as a much more foundational principle of optimizing health next to the diet versus a little add on afterwards. And that was not as aligned with people that were just focused on medicine or food. And we wanted to be, there's medicine, there's food, there's interpersonal, there's connection, there's how we communicate. All of that affects your physical health. And that wasn't as aligned. So that's where Nalona and I just said, you know, let's just do it ourselves. It's been a fun ride.

John actually, our boss at Whole Foods and John, everybody eventually left and they're doing something right now outside of it as well. So everybody is trying to Amazon pull the plug on these clinics? I believe they did. think they, that's when they partnered with, I think one medical and systems that could manage hundreds of thousands of employees at a time. I don't know, when I left the clinics were still there.

But my understanding is that they're no longer functioning or maybe it's all centralized. And were the clinics attached to the stores or in a different location? One was below the store in Austin and the headquarters in Austin. And one was in Los Angeles or Glendale. That was not, it was near the headquarters, but not.

So at what point do you and Alona begin to feel that pure attention to the physical body and to nutrition is not enough? That there are these other factors at play that you wrote about in Wellness to Wonderful that have to do with connection and spirituality.

and nature awareness, being in nature, that all affect your health.

had issues where would have aches and pains, I would get bloating or gastrointestinal and I would think it was a food sensitivity or I can't eat gluten or something like that and I would make a change. And it was around, I would say, the fall of 2017 when I'd always been interested in interpersonal work just with my marriage and with

raising kids, but I didn't connect it to my physical health so much until we were trying to move and we were going to buy our first house and it was new construction. It was in another city and boy was that stressful. I don't recommend that being someone's first house experience at all, but it was all sorts of problems. I was stressed out and it didn't end on time and it was costing more. It was a whole mess and we were relocating away from Alona's family.

which the kids loved and it was just so many stressors. And I got the worst sciatica back pain I've ever had. I don't remember, I had back pain off and on, but this was just unrelenting. It was constant and I was trying all sorts of physical therapy and I was like, maybe it's inflammation. So I was doing like, diets and I was doing everything that I knew and I couldn't.

I couldn't get this and I would see the doctors and they'd say, there's, could do surgery, but we're not sure it's going to help. But like we could try messing around in there. And I would, and I read it I was like, there's no benefit of doing surgery. It's clearly not going to fix this problem because there's no neurological deficits. There's no weakness. It was all pain. And I remember somebody telling me a friend of mine who was in the hip. was a hip does hypnotherapy and we were meeting.

And she said, Matt, you should read this book. And I'm like, boy, here we go again. And she said, and she said, Matt, might be in your, it might be something that's going on in your head. And I was like, what are you talking about? was my back and on my head, got very defensive. But again, I can't just let those things go. So I remember listening to this book. And as I'm listening to this book while I'm driving, they're describing the person that typically has this problem. And they called it, they called it.

TMS, but it's sometimes called neural pathway pain or neural circuit pain. But I remember reading, listening to it. I'm like, oh my God, this is like the, I'm like the poster child. They're describing me. And I'm like, damn, you know, just like with the diet, I'm like, damn, got to, got to. Characteristics like being driven and hardworking. Type A high stress overachiever.

you know, perfectionists, struggles with, know, wants approval, self-worth, you all sorts of social things. And I'm like, ugh, you know, like this is so me. And I'm sort of like annoyed that I'm gonna have to try this because I can't just let it go. And that's when I call, and but what they were saying was it wasn't about like eating something, which to me was easy, just eat this instead of this. They were saying that there's these suppressed,

emotions like rage and anger and sadness that you're not feeling. And when you suppress these emotions, your body starts to interpret that as dangerous as a threat that you can't share them and that and the more stress you have, the more your body is interpreting that as dangerous and threat. And when you do that, it body creates pain signals as a way to try and help you manage threat.

So for example, when you have a broken hand and you're, and you're needed to cut on your hand and your body wants you not to keep hitting it so that it opens up and you want to leave it alone. So it heals, it's going to generate pain around that area until it heals. Or if you have a broken foot, it's going to make it hurt when you walk on it. So you don't walk on it and cause more damage. So pain is actually trying to protect us. So this idea, and I'm simplifying it, but basically

your body can, when there's social and spiritual and mental threat or danger, your body can inappropriately activate old pain pathways. Because once you create a pain pathway, it's there for life. It's a neural pathway. But when the tissue heals, you stop sending traffic down that pathway. But when you have this suppressed or suppression of emotion or

this increased stress they call allostatic load. It can reignite an old pathway as your brain's attempt to try and deal with this threat. And I remember being like, first, it was super hard to understand. It was even harder to believe that that actually existed. That was actually a thing. And then on top of that, I'm like, well, what do I do? Okay, let's say I believe it. How do I deal with it? How do I, how do I, I'm ready. I don't want to suppress it anymore. Let me, how do I get it out?

Okay, I'm angry. do I, but it wasn't, it wasn't as clear to me what to do. And I called, I had a nonviolent communication coach that I knew just sporadically. We had talked to her about some stuff with kids and parenting, but I didn't work with her regularly. And I texted, I emailed her and I said, I need to feel supposedly I'm suppressing feelings. And I said, I need to, can you help me feel these feelings that I'm suppressing? It's supposed to help my back. And, and she said, yes.

And I said, great. So I started working with her. And at first I had, I didn't realize this, but I had only three feeling words. I would say I felt good. I felt bad, or I felt angry. And she said, that's not, that's not all the feeling words, Matt. You got it. We got to expand your feelings vocabulary. And that's when I started learning that I was suppressing. I was either, it was good and I got to go after it. It's bad. got to make it go away or I'm angry and the hell with everything.

So that was enlightening. And then I started working with her. Every week I would meet with her and I would talk and we'd figure this out and I'd learn how to communicate and learn how and she would talk about self-connecting to your body. like, what the hell does that mean? Like, what do you mean feel my body? What are you talking about? But she taught me how to do it and she helped me experience it. And I started to get it. And I started talking and we're interacting with Alona differently and my kids differently. And about three months in my pain went away.

And I was like, this was like months and months and months. And it was starting to get better quickly, but after three months, I remember being like, holy crap, I don't have any pain. And I couldn't believe it. And I said, there's gotta be something here. This is just doesn't. And then I started learning more. And that's when I was loving nonviolent communication that I said, you know what? I wanna become certified as a trainer so that I can teach this and I can learn what I don't know and become really skilled at it.

And that's, and that's when I started adding it in. And then I, because I was lowering my threat load, my, was sleeping better and I didn't, I didn't realize I used to wake up and my body would feel tension almost like I finished exercising or I was sore when I woke up and I'm like, why am I sore when I wake up? And that went away. And so there were so many things that started my, my mental health, my outlook.

continue to improve. And then I started learning, I would read more and I would learn about Ollivagal theory and the cell danger response and the CTRA response. And all of these were people in their own little silos, learning about how you interact with the environment affects your physical health. It affects at the cellular level, whether you create pro-inflammatory cytokines or anti-inflammatory cytokines at the cellular level.

at the gene level, that's another guy who was talking about how you interact with the environment, turns on and off different genes in the immune system. So if you are lacking meaning and purpose in your life, that actually increases inflammation, decreases your ability to fight cancer, it increases metastases, decreases your ability to fight viruses. And he would have data on that. And then there was another guy talking about how your autonomic nervous system and how what you hear and how the messages that go to your gut to tell it to function or to

to sort of slow down are dependent upon how you're experiencing your environment and how safe you feel in your environment. And it's not mentally, like you can think you're safe, but it's actually the part of your body that can drive a car and get somewhere 10 minutes later, you have no idea how you got there. Cause you're, you just sort of look your mind wandered, but you somehow didn't wreck the car. part of your body is what needs to know that it's safe. And a lot of times it doesn't care what you think.

It'll say, you can think you're safe, but I'm interpreting the environment and you do not feel safe. So if you're going minute to minute from project to project and you over schedule yourself and you got people that are angry at you and you're watching violent movies and you're also your body's taking that in and saying, I don't care what your head thinks. This is not a safe environment. We are going to have to protect you because you're going to hurt yourself. And that's when it can turn on.

these pathways inappropriately and if you can help them feel safe and then also learn that there's a cycle. Because when they get the pain, then they think that pain is dangerous, there's something harmed, there's some harm in their body that's happening, and then they feel more danger and more threat. So you also have to help them understand that pain is actually not tissue damage and that it's real pain, but it's not because of tissue that's damaged or gonna be hurt. And then they can start to feel safe around that. So there's this whole process.

that to me is so powerful and has helped us help people where diet alone couldn't help them. And there's so many people out there that are just doing this neural pathway pain treatment, but they're not getting the diet. And I think they're missing out as well. Well, I was going to say that I see an analogy to the rice and beans, because when you started the rice and beans, you were almost hoping it wouldn't work. You weren't expecting it to work, much less expecting it to change your whole approach to medical practice.

And when you learned about emotional awareness, you weren't really thinking that that was the cause of your sciatica pain and wouldn't be able to treat it. But you were. Do we need to pause here? Yeah, she came in, but that's exactly that's exactly it. So let's let's let's pause and you can say that again.

All right. We just took a brief pause, but I was saying that Dr. Matt, I see an analogy to the rice and beans that you had experimented with for a week years before because you weren't really expecting it to change your health, but it did. You hadn't even been rooting for it to change your health, but it did. And it not only changed your health, but it changed your whole approach to practicing medicine.

And similarly, you probably didn't expect that emotional awareness would make your sciatica go away, but it did. And it also, again, changed your whole approach to practicing medicine. Is that right? Yeah, it was very much like that, where I didn't want to have to do something that seemed so crazy to me at the time when I first heard it. But thank goodness I am open enough to at least try it and experiment and really dive in to test it out.

And it's that openness that I really hope people will consider because it can make a huge difference in your life. So I get both sides. get thinking like, this is crazy. And at the same time, if it can help at the time, I didn't even understand the science behind it. Now there's actually a lot of science behind how this can work. That you got nothing to lose and everything to gain. So now when you work with patients.

It's an integrative approach in which you're dealing with their physical health, with their blood work and their metabolism, and you're also dealing with their emotional health.

Do you sometimes feel like you're a psychiatrist and an internist at the same time? I think that the ideal health system doesn't separate mind and body. I think that the ideal health system will. Support it all and give people, ideally, primary care positions, give them the basic skills to approach.

different areas. And then when you need specialists to really dive in or spend more time in that area, you can do that as well. In fact, me and Alana have areas that we both specialize in. I really focus, I enjoy the nonviolent communication, helping couples, parents with kids, helping dual leadership coaching and work teams, but all of that affects your health. In fact, one of the biggest indicators of our predictors

of chronic pain is how happy you are in your job. So it's all connected because one affects the other. I think leaving one out and focusing on the other is not helpful or ultimately effective. There's also Alona who loves women's health and nutrition and helping people navigate weight loss. The funny thing is she'll get people coming in who want to lose weight and they wind up fixing

all these issues with their family, they find new meaning and purpose in their lives. And then using food and the way they were using food that caused the weight to stay on is no longer an issue. So it's stepping back, just like with diet and a lot of the plant-based doctors say, we're not, the conventional healthcare system is not, it's focused on the symptom, not the problem. So you gotta step back and change what you eat. But what I would say is just focusing on what you eat.

is still sometimes a symptom and not the problem. You gotta step back further. And then when you get all of this in order, if you know what you should be eating, then you'll be able to eat that food more successfully when you get the rest of your life in order. Now there's a group of people that don't know what they should be eating and you tell them what they should eat and they just do it. But there's a much bigger group that knows what they should eat and has trouble eating it anyway. And that's the group that needs to step back further.

Now you use the technique of nonviolent communication. Could you define that for us? I will try. It is a hard thing to define what the essence of it is. I can tell you that there's sort of two frameworks of interacting with people. There's a framework of I know what's right. I know what's wrong or I know what you should do or what you shouldn't do. This is good. This is bad.

That's one framework, who's right and who's wrong. There's another framework, which is let's care about each other's needs and try to meet everybody's needs to make life more wonderful for everybody. The way you think, the way you talk to other people as well as yourself can shift, can shift that.

So if I think there's such a thing as a good person, a bad person, someone can do something right, someone can do something wrong versus I think, hey, this person is doing something that's really not meeting my needs and I would love to be able to do it differently. And I know that this person cares about these needs, even if he's not connected to that care in the moment. Sifting how I think creates that nonviolence, shifting how I see the world, because the way you see the world right now,

is determined by how you were brought up. It's not your choice. Any more than what you eat was not your choice. It was what you were brought up eating. The way you talk, the way you think, and the way you see the world is also because of how you were brought up. You can choose to shift that, but it takes some work to create those new habits, to think differently and try doing it differently. So nonviolent communication is more about how you think and how you...

perceive other people and then how you communicate in a way that's going to focus on the connection between the two of you versus I'm going to talk in a way that's going to tell you what's right and wrong, diagnose what your problem is, blame you, criticize you, guilt you, shame you. That would be considered violent communication. I'm going to stop there because like I said, it's more of a

a way of relating and connecting than it is a specific technique. OK. Now, is there a relationship between the fact that the diet that we advocate is a nonviolent diet doesn't require the slaughtering of animals? Yes. And the

communication approach that you advocate is considered nonviolent in, guess, in its lack of judgment and, and, ⁓ blame and guilt thing. do you see the two as being related in that? I do. ⁓ I see them related a hundred percent. My, one of my mentors in nonviolent communication was also a dietitian and she's to say,

⁓ she cares about what goes in her mouth and what comes out of it. ⁓ huh. Yeah. And that's how I think about it. And I have a hard time. There's the whole nonviolent movement. That's all the nonviolent communication movement is all focused on talking and thinking and compassion to other people, but they eat animals and I'll say, how can you eat animals and preach that compassion is your true North now?

I have to watch because just saying that can actually come from a violent energy. And so if I think it's wrong what they're doing and I think they should be vegan, I am now in that sort of that violent communication paradigm. So I have to do some work myself before I even open my mouth so that I can get to compassion for them and understanding for them as well as communicate not from a should energy, but from a

Hey, this would meet more needs. What's your reaction when I share this? So do see how I have to sort of shift internally before I can even communicate to them with nonviolence? I mean, is there anything wrong with having judgment feeling, ⁓ what this politician said is wrong or what this person did is wrong. It was cruel. It was uncaring.

And if you have that thought, is that a violation of nonviolent communication? No, our judgments, were, but I want people to understand is that you don't choose to have judgments. You are taught to

communicate your feelings and needs through judgments. That's how you were brought up. That's how you've been educated. That's how everybody around you talks. That's how what you see in the movies. So it's the same as if I all of a sudden come to you and say, well, speaking Japanese is a much more connected experience and speaking English is not. Is speaking English wrong? It's just a different experience. So I would say to you is you judgments are how we

get connected to our unmet needs. But then what I would say is don't share your judgments if your goal is connection. Translate your judgments into feelings and needs and you're more likely to connect and as a result, get your needs met. Sharing your judgments is gonna decrease the chances that you're gonna meet your needs. So for example, if I said to Alona, I think it is early on.

Let's use our example. It is wrong to eat olive oil. It is unhealthy and you shouldn't do it. So I just gave her a should. I gave her a moralistic judgment. It's wrong. I told her, I told her and I diagnosed her as uninformed. So then that's, am I likely to get my need met? More often than not, you're not even clear what your need is.

My need there is probably, I would love to have a shared reality because if we're gonna work together, it's gonna make things more effective. I also would love for her to be open and curious about new information. And because this is enlightening to me, I would love for her to be interested in not only openness, but growth and learning. And if she doesn't experience it the same way when she reads it, I would love to be able to dialogue.

collaboratively, maybe there's something I can learn. Now, if I want her to be open and learn, is the sharing my judgment that what she did is wrong, is that going to increase her openness and desire to learn or decrease it? It's going to decrease it. So if my goal is to get my needs met and to care about her, judging her doesn't do either of those things. But if I share, hey, know, Alana, I really want...

you to experience this with care and connection. And there's some things that are coming up to me around some of the foods that you're choosing to eat. And I'm just wondering, how does it feel if we even talk about this? Because I don't want you to feel defensive or any sense of judgment.

So you see how I'm starting through the conversation just to get some alignment and some connection with her. Why am I talking? Am I trying to change her? Because if I think this is right and I want to change her, her need for autonomy is going to come up. So I'm aware that I want her to have a lot of choice. And then I want her to know, why am I talking? Am I judging her? No, I really would love to be a partner in this and explore this together and maybe see if she's open. And she's like, you just want me to be open, but you're not demanding that I stop eating olive oil? If she trusts that,

then she's going to be open. So all in how I think is going to affect how I communicate, which is going to affect how she receives and perceives it. And it's going to affect how we connect back and forth, which is going to affect my needs being met. So do you try to ever, do you try to always avoid saying you shouldn't do this?

In a perfect world, I would not use should and shouldn't. I would communicate differently, but I would say 50 % of the time I'm able to connect to my connection skills and 50 % of the time I fall short or I make a mess and then I have to clean it up. part of that if someone were to say, yeah, honey, this is your choice. Do whatever you want to do. But in my opinion, maybe you shouldn't do this.

Can you get away with using the should word if you give it nuance? it's not about the words. If your belief using should is that there is one way to do things and anything else is not the right way, that energy behind the should word is the problem. If you're saying, hey, this is should, you know, maybe you should or shouldn't do, but it's this is what works for me. Even if it doesn't work for you, that's a different energy.

So you could use the word should, know, hey, it doesn't work for you, so maybe you shouldn't do this, but it works for me, so I should. That's a different energy than you shouldn't because what you're doing is wrong. So it's not so much about the words as it is the energy and the intention behind the words. That's what people don't understand with nonviolent communication, because they will learn the words, but the energy behind them is still that sort of violent energy, if you will.

And then the words fall flat and they'll come back to me and say, the words don't work. And I'll say the fact that you're trying to work it on somebody is the problem. You're trying to connect with that person and explore collaboratively and share what works for you and not be attached to what they do or don't do. Does that make sense, Glen? Yes, it does. Now, in wellness to wonderful, you have nine pillars to health and one of them is connection.

the missing key to optimal health. So is is that the pillar that we're talking about now when we're talking about the should problem and how to relate to to people? So what we're talking about now is is connection. And there's sort of three fundamental aspects. There's nine pillars, but there's the self and regulation of your nervous system and getting grounded.

and feeling safe so that you can then resource your internal world, which is sleep and nutrition and activity and play. And then when you're resourced and grounded, then you can connect to the external world. And that's where connection, it's almost all of those four pillars, which is connection to your family and friends, connection to your work and how you contribute to society, connection spiritually to something greater than yourself.

and connection to the natural world, all the life on this planet. Right. So that's how connection is part of it infuses everything that you can. I talk about connecting to yourself and then connecting to your external world. Right. I'm realizing now the connection was actually a factor in several different pillars. another one is what you just mentioned. Play. So play the idea of

Playing can affect your health? Yes, very much so. And play was actually the pillar that was most out of balance for me and the one that I spend the most time because I have a very industrious personality type where I'm all about productivity and outcome and efficiency. So this idea of play is like for a long time was a waste of time.

It was, even when I was playing, I was competitive to win or I was competitive. would bet on sports games. I couldn't just watch the sports game for fun. would want to, I would want to, there had to be some value of winning almost. So that was a big turn for me. And most recently, actually Chef AJ got me to do this. I've always wanted to do improv and comedy type stuff.

And she said, Hey, Matt, you know, I'm helping, I'm helping her with the cancer. So a lot of we're talking about is chemo and radiation and surgery and says, Matt, you know, people are lining up for chemo radiation and surgery and, they're, they won't even, they're scared to death of improv. So I'm scared to death of chemo radiation and surgery, but improv never killed anybody. And I said, you know, that's right. And she asked me if I want to do it. And she said, let's do it. I.

took a class, I was terrified and it's been the best thing. Now I'm doing multiple classes and it's really helped me on so many levels of my personal and emotional growth. I couldn't believe it. It has nothing to do with being funny and I could tell you more about that if you're interested, but it's been so impactful and something I look forward to that I didn't realize until I added it in how much it was missing from my life.

And I think for a lot of people, especially adults, play with something that kids do and stop playing around. Let's be productive. got to do. Don't don't fool around. Let's let's make sure this is not this is you're not a kid. This is not playtime. All that type of messaging. So it's missing in a lot of people's lives and it's harming. Well, it's interesting that that Chef AJ brought this element of play into your life.

For those who don't know, AJ, with whom I was her co-author on a number of books, announced, I don't know, maybe two months ago or so, something that I was aware of, that she has a lung cancer diagnosis. And she has done a number of videos now that are available on YouTube in which she

talks about that diagnosis and she has effectively chosen you, Dr. Matt, to be sort of her co-host when she discusses her cancer. And she was reluctant to come out.

as having lung cancer because she feared the haters out there who might say, ⁓ you're a vegan. You see what happens or something like that. How have you felt about your role in kind of holding her hand as she has come out and discussed this publicly? It's something that we do with different clients.

we call it the crisis concierge. And it's basically helping people navigate healthcare crises, because it's so overwhelming. There's so much information, there's so many doctors, there's so many people telling you what to do, there's so much internal wholeness and fear and pain. And then how do you advocate for yourself and communicate with family and communicate with doctors? And then how do you...

navigate all of this so that you can figure out what really works best for you versus just doing what you're told. And the doctors...

try to care for the patients the best they can. But it's very much sort of a conveyor belt of this is how we treat this and do this and here's the protocols and fall in line and next patient. And that's not, in my opinion, the best way to treat patients. So I've really enjoyed working with AJ and helping her get clear on information. And we look at studies and we talk about them and I help her

for any questions for specialists, I'll join some of her specialist appointments. And then I help her figure out what works best for her. It's not what I would do. It's not what anybody else would do. It's what would she do. And then I help advocate for her so that she can get that done and support her along the way. And that's really important. And it's very different than being the treating physician.

Well, I've admired how brave she has been in discussing this and how her, it seems that her, her attitude is very positive as she's confronting really a life threatening situation. Yes. Yes. And it's, and she feels the whole range of emotions. She feels, you know, she'll feel pleasant excitement inspired, like, you know, ⁓ hopeful, optimistic, and then still feel

sad and beaten up and down and disappointed. And so it's this whole range that we feel. And if you're not trying to block them and stop them or make them go away, it's this beautiful experience that they just sort of pass through. And you can be there and support that passing without it ruining your life. And you get to this place of inner peace that you can experience no matter whether the, the

emotion is pleasant or unpleasant. Right. I haven't seen all her videos on this subject, but those I have seen, it seems like her more positive emotions are what come through on YouTube. for the public, think she is.

displaying her, her brave and optimistic side. Yeah. Well, let's go to one last pillar of health, is spirituality. And how, how, how do you incorporate spirituality in your practice? That's a very personal question for different people as far as what resonates for them.

It's the idea of connecting to something bigger than you. And that can be a spiritual journey that's internal. It can be how you interact with other people. can be religious, can be completely secular. can be, have something to do with God. It can have nothing to do with God. It can connect to the universe energetically, but there's something bigger than

us. We're sort of all waves in the same ocean. And the more we can care about other people, and that we connect to the fact that caring for other people is caring for ourselves. Interdependence, that's another one that's big and non-violent communication. Non-violent communication is actually a spiritual practice. If you get to the core of what it is, there's a book actually, a little pamphlet book.

called Practical Spirituality that Marshall, the creator of NBC wrote. And I think that describes it, NBC is better than any of his books. And the closest I can get to this concept of caring for someone else is like caring for myself is having children. And when you give them your food because they're hungry, you feel like you're giving to yourself.

In fact, I feel better than if I'm giving to myself. So if I have something that I'm gonna eat and they're really hungry and I wanna give it to them, and they're super happy, or I hug them or I contribute to them, I feel like I'm giving to myself. It warms my body up. And it's very hard to do that for you, to feel that way for your neighbor if that's not how you were brought up. I was brought up in a very independent framework.

where it's just us, it's just our family, take care of us. No one else is gonna help you in a time of need, so you better be able to care for yourself. Build up savings and money so that you can have money if you need it, because if you don't have money, no one else is gonna help you you're gonna be on the streets. So there's this concept of take care of yourself first and foremost. And I...

It's very hard to break that conditioning. Alona is much better at that than I am, for example. Alona is also much better at trusting the universe and that there's a, you know, to me, when I can trust the universe, when I want something to happen now and it's not happening the way I want, and I'm like, I understand what it is, so let's do it now. And she'll say, no, we gotta wait. It's not ready yet. Like there's this sort of this trust that it's gonna unfold in the way it needs.

That's hard for me. At the same time, I like thinking about a baby and that it takes nine months for a baby to develop. So if at month four, I'm like, I want the baby now. If I take that baby out at four months, it won't even survive and it'll look really funny. So I know that I gotta wait nine months and that if I wait nine months, something magical is gonna happen. But if I don't wait nine months, it's not gonna happen. And I just trust.

And I don't know how it happens. I don't understand how it happens, but somehow everything falls into place and there's this amazing baby nine months later. That to me is almost a spiritual experience. That ability that we sort of take for granted that it just happens. But for me, that's the type of trust that I would love to have in all aspects of my life. And it's a practice. It's something that you can cultivate. In fact, there's times where

I'll want things to happen right now or I'll want to just take care of myself. And when I give, in fact, my kids, they love getting presents for their friends. And I was more of like, I should, you know, take care of me and myself. And it's been an evolution for me to, I knew I would give presents because that was the right thing to do. But my kids give presents because they get so much joy.

and seeing and picking it out and seeing their friends be happy. And if I'm being honest, I would have gotten presents, you know, in the past because of. It's the right thing to do, and I know what's accepted is getting presents for people on their birthday and on the holidays or whatever, but I want to connect to that part of my body that's giving because I'm receiving what I give in a nonviolent communication. They talk about how.

true connection and nonviolence leads to get you can't tell who's giving and who's receiving. You're both giving and you're both receiving. To me, that's part of spiritual practice that has nothing to do with God, but it's something that's greater than myself. It's bigger than myself, but it can include God. It can include all these other things too. So don't know if talking about that helps clarify. Does that make it actually more confusing?

What's your reaction to all that? Well, everything you say is compelling. I find myself wondering when you're talking with patients who have different issues in their lives, physical and emotional, does this come up? Is this part of your practice? Yes, definitely is. And it all unfolds. And that's why every visit with every patient is different.

And we work with people over a period of months and years, and it's weekly. And sometimes the focus is just, what am I eating? Sometimes the focus is how am I communicating? And sometimes it's play, and sometimes it's around spiritual practice. Sometimes it's a combination, but it's figuring out based on what's going on in that person's life, what do we need to bring in from the nine pillars that will support them most in their ongoing journey? And you never get to a place where all the pillars are figured out.

It's like having nine kids and expecting to never to get to a place where you don't have to worry about them anymore. You're always going to think about your kids. They're always going to need support. And sometimes one, one kid needs more help than another. And that's one pillar needs more attention than another sometimes. So think of it as these nine beautiful children that you have to give attention to. And when you give to them and you give attention to them, your life becomes more wonderful as a result. And it's a lifelong process that

The doing the work is the reward. It's not do the work and then you'll get a reward afterwards. Doing the work is actually the reward in that moment.

Well said. And I think that the people you work with are lucky to have you to be working with.

It's been a pleasure speaking with you, Dr. Matt, and it's a remarkable journey you've had from training to be a conventional doctor to discovering how disillusioning that could be to finding a way to make it work, to practice medicine in a new way, practice nutrition and practice connection.

and integrate it all into a whole new way of caring for people. People can find you at connectiondocs.com, you and Alona. And we will put a list of other links in the show notes where people can find you. And thank you, Dr. Maff. Yeah, can I, do you have time if I give?

One of the devices, can I show people the device that- the WeBe Calm device? Yeah, the WeBe Calm device, is- Yeah, show us about that. So this is a device that I'm very proud of that Alona and I designed and have brought to fruition. And it's a device that helps people calm their nervous system, And it's practicing this breathing every night. We have them put it by their bed and do five to 10 repetitions.

where it forces you to slowly exhale, holding the ball up and this focused attention on the ball with some white noise. All of that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system to calm the body. And by doing it every night before bed, you train the body so that at any moment during the day, you can take what we call a weeby breath, because this is a weeby calm. You take a weeby breath and your body immediately knows how to calm and can jump into

to turn on that calm neural pathway or that calming muscle. And that's the key is that part of the body, remember I told you, the part of the body that can drive the car without you paying attention. We have to train that part how to turn on and feel calm. So even if your head wants you to be calm, that body won't turn on without this practice. And this is a great way. if you blow, watch the ball, so you blow on it. And as I'm blowing out,

watch the ball go up and I try to hold that ball up for 10 seconds. So here we go, in through the nose.

and then it out and I repeat that 10, five times and then I can do another set of five and then you can put it by the bed. Just do that every night before bed to practice and then when you need a weeby breath, you just do that in through those slow exhale and your body over a period of months will have that conditioning, that muscle memory of calm.

And it works great for kids. works great for it. We marketed it towards kids, but it works just as well. Same device for adults. And it's been super helpful. But that's the key is that calm is not a coincidence. It's a practice and just practice. And it doesn't take a lot of practice to really change that trajectory as far as your ability to calm down in the heat of the moment. So it becomes an emphasis on breath when you're under stress.

And it helps. Yes, but it's it's training. The key is not just knowing how to take the breath in the heat of the moment. It doesn't work as a spot treatment as well. It's doing it every night so that in the heat of the moment, you've developed this muscle that when you do a slow exhale into the nose and a slow exhale, it triggers that pathway that calms the body. OK, that you've built up and you've sort of accumulated sort of calm.

and an ability to turn on that parasympathetics that otherwise has not been worked out as well. So then the access to that pathway will become autonomic. It will be automatic if the access to turning on the parasympathetics, which is part of the autonomic nervous system, that will be that will just start happening automatically. OK, all right, we will put a link to the Webecom.

device where people can get it in the show notes. It's been a pleasure talking with you, Dr. Hey, you too, Glen. I enjoyed myself. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Be well.