The Hidden Reason You Feel Exhausted & How to Feel Better Now

If you’ve been feeling exhausted, tired, bloated, anxious, in pain, or just not like yourself, get ready for an explanation you’ve never heard before. Today, Mel sits down with one of the most respected medical researchers in the world, gastroenterologist Dr. Brennan Spiegel, MD, to uncover the overlooked, invisible force that’s having a shocking impact on your energy, strength, gut health, mood, and every single cell in your body – even how fast your body ages. Whether you’re dealing with fatigue, back pain, swelling, digestion issues, or a heaviness in your body that you can’t shake, Dr. Spiegel says these are all signs you shouldn’t ignore. Dr. Spiegel is a gastroenterologist and the director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, one of the leading medical centers in the United States. He is also a professor of medicine and public health at UCLA. He trained at Cedars-Sinai and UCLA, and is a pioneering researcher in the areas of gut health, the usage of AI in medicine, and tools that help patients with pain, anxiety, and chronic illness. He’s the founding editor of the Journal of Medical Extended Reality and he served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Gastroenterology. Dr. Spiegel has published more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers, his research has been cited 30,000 times, and he is the author of Pull: How Gravity Shapes Your Body, Steadies the Mind, and Guides Our Health. What Dr. Spiegel reveals will challenge the way you think about your body and, more importantly, give you a completely new, practical way to start feeling better immediately. And it may give you the words and the insight you’ve been missing to help your aging parents and other loved ones finally start feeling better, too. By the end of this episode, you’ll understand: -Why a “bendy” pinky might be a clue to what’s going on in your gut -10 foods that boost serotonin production in your body -The most effective treatment for IBS - and it’s probably not what you’ve tried -A quick way to notice how the force of gravity is showing up in your body -How to make yourself taller in just a few minutes -Why standing on one leg is linked to a longer life -How a weighted vest can change your posture almost immediately -A surprising reason rollercoasters feel unbearable for some people -What “gravity management” looks like in real life -One small habit that can improve how your body handles gravity Dr. Spiegel says that powerful, invisible force shaping every moment of your life is one you can learn to work with – and he’ll show you how. This is one of those conversations that will change how you see your body, your health, and what it means to be fully alive on this planet. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/episode-402/ Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelrobbinspodcast I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode. In this episode: 00:00 Meet the Guest 01:53 The Hidden Force Behind Your Health Problems 07:03 Why You Feel Tired, Weak, and Drained 12:16 This Simple Habit Is Crushing Your Organs 15:52 The Warning Signs You’ve Been Ignoring 22:51 The Hidden Link Between Gut and Mood 26:50 The 10 Foods Your Body Needs 29:31 The 10-Second Test That Reveals Your Lifespan 33:46 The Dead Hang Challenge 37:02 Grip Strength Matters 38:47 Your Body Needs More Water Than You Think 40:27 Why You Feel Off: You Were Built For This Planet 43:21 How To Feel Calm Instantly 47:01 How to Know You’re On the Right Track — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:08Mel Robbins?

  I have one of the top gastroenterologists in the world here in our Boston studios, and I cannot wait for you to hear about his shocking research. His name is Dr. Brennan Spiegel. His work is so compelling, so groundbreaking, that as soon as I learned about it, I begged him to come on to this podcast so that he could share this medical breakthrough with you and your family. If you, or anyone that you love, has been experiencing health issues like exhaustion, GI issues, IBS, back pain, fatigue, anxiety, swollen ankles, and even depression, Dr.

• 0:49Mel Robbins?

  Spiegel is here to share with you a mind-blowing fact. There is a connection between all of these health issues and an invisible force that is all around you. This brand-new perspective could explain why you have these health issues in the first place, and more importantly, give you an entirely new angle to think about it and attack it from. Because this is such new information that you're about to hear, I think it's critical to share with you that Dr. Spiegel is one of the most cited medical doctors and researchers in the world. And as he explains this groundbreaking research, you're going to get this connection between your health issues and this invisible force immediately.

• 1:34Mel Robbins?

  And then you're going to wonder, why has no one ever talked about this? By the time you're done learning from Dr. Spiegel, you're going to have a specific playbook for exactly what you can do to start feeling better, even while you listen to this episode. And you're going to walk away with an entirely different point of view about your health, about your life, and new options to consider when you address these health issues. And this episode will serve as a free, life-changing resource that you can share with anyone in your family, so they can start feeling better right now.

• 2:20Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so fired up for our conversation today. I cannot wait to dig into this. It's such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I cannot wait for you to meet today's medical expert, gastroenterologist Dr. Brennan Spiegel, who is here to teach you about this shocking research that connects some of the health issues that you're facing with this invisible force. This is the first time that you're ever going to hear about this. Dr. Spiegel is the Director of Health Services Research at Cedar Sinai Medical Center in

• 3:03Mel Robbins?

  Los Angeles, one of the leading medical centers in the United States, where he holds the George and Dorothy Gorich Chair in Digital Health Ethics. He is also a professor of medicine in public health at UCLA. Dr. Spiegel trained at Cedar Sinai and UCLA and is pioneering research in the areas of gut health, the use of AI in medicine, and tools that help patients with pain, anxiety, and chronic illness. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Medical Extended Reality, and he has served as editor in chief of the American Journal of Gastroenterology. Dr. Spiegel has published more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

• 3:46Mel Robbins?

  His research has been cited 30,000 times, which is a ton. And I cannot wait for you to hear about all of his groundbreaking research today. He's the author of Pull: How Gravity Shapes Your Body, Steadies the Mind, and Guides Our Health. Please help me welcome Dr. Brennan Spiegel to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 4:11Mel Robbins?

  I'm really excited. The team is buzzing. We have never even heard about somebody researching gravity and the impact on our bodies, so I cannot wait to dig into this. And so I'd like to have you start by just telling the person who's listening, what could change about their life or the way they think about some of the health issues that they're dealing with after they listen to all of the research that you're about to unpack and the tools you're going to teach us today?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  If you really take this to heart, the biggest thing that will change is how you see yourself in the world. How you see yourself as a person on this planet. And when we start to think about gravity as a force that we harmonize with to survive and thrive, all of a sudden, there are these unexpected connections. We start to see things like what you eat might affect how you manage gravity, how conditions like IBS, which are so common, may be a form of gravity intolerance. Or if you can bend your pinky back really far, what does that say about your ability to manage the forces of this planet? That's what we're going to talk about today.

• 5:22Mel Robbins?

  You also talk a little bit in this book, which shocked me, about the connection between gravity and things like depression and anxiety and sleep issues, that it has implications for everything. And I think there's a lot of people that are going to listen, and then you're going to send it to like five family members. So I'd love to have you talk to the person who's listening that maybe had this episode sent to them as a resource from a family member to say, hey, Mom, or hey, brother, I really want you to listen to this doctor's angle as a way to look at this issue differently. Could you speak to that person?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  So many of the problems that we experience in life, pain, anxiety, depression, dizziness, exhaustion, swelling in your body, all of these have one thing in common. They're forms of gravity intolerance. And that's just so out of left field. I never heard that when I was in medical school. And so I want people who are experiencing those things to think a little bit differently about their bodies and about their minds and unlock these very simple things that they can do to very quickly change their relationship to the planet itself.

• 6:37Mel Robbins?

  Hold on a second. So as a professor and as a medical doctor and as a researcher, and as a medical doctor that specializes in GI issues, you're saying there's a connection between gravity and irritable bowel syndrome and gravity and constipation and gravity and your serotonin levels?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Gravity and name the disease.

• 6:59Mel Robbins?

  To everything?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Just about. Just about every disease, if you look deep enough, you're going to see that it's a consequence of mismanaging the forces of the planet. It's so fundamental.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  There's only a few things that we have to do in life. The main one is to stand up and stay up as long as we can and as well as we can until inevitably we can't. And it turns out, most diseases, in some way, shape, or form, and I can hear the doctors right now, ready to challenge me, and I'll talk to them. If you think creatively about the root causes of how we break down in mind and body, it's because we're giving in to the planet. We're being pulled back from whence we came.

• 7:38Mel Robbins?

  Wow. Well, before we go further, for the purposes of this conversation, what is gravity in the simplest definition?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're on this planet. It has a force. It pulls us towards the center of it. That was there long before any signs of life, long before the first bacteria, the first fungi. Nothing was here except that. And then life somehow emerged, but the first thing it had to do was to survive on this planet, the physics of this planet. So, gravity was there long before we were, and it'll be here long after we're gone. So, it stands to reason, every part of your body has to manage that force.

• 8:18Mel Robbins?

  Now, I think we all get, gravity is the force that pulls us

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:22Mel Robbins?

  toward the center of the Earth. It's the force that keeps our feet on the ground. But you've said this word a couple of times now, gravity intolerance. What is that?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. We evolved to tolerate gravity, to be comfortable and to harmonize with it and not be hurt by it.

• 8:36Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so meaning, I can walk.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I can stand up.

• 8:39Mel Robbins?

  I can go about my day.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  I'm not going to get dizzy when I stand up and pass out. I'm not falling over. I have the strength to exert myself into the world. The pumps and tubes in my body are sloshing all that fluid up and down against the force of gravity, and I'm perfusing my brain with oxygen so that I can sit here and talk with you. This is what I mean by tolerating the force of gravity, is we're built for it. Intolerance is a consequence of our modern lifestyle. It's a consequence of gaining too much weight on the body, getting too weak, living sedentary lifestyles, eating ultra-high-processed foods, experiencing stress and anxiety, and mental depression, literally feeling down.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  All of these accumulate to undermine our natural ability to stand up to this planet, and we fight with gravity then. And that just makes life hard. The easiest thing that we can do is to find ways to restore our natural abilities to be one with this planet. And it sounds like woo-science, but it's basic physics.

• 9:41Mel Robbins?

  Well, what I'm excited about, and I'm really glad that you're here listening to this, is that it's just a different angle to examine the issues you may be dealing with, with your health and with your life, which also opens the door to either different methods to resolve those health issues, or different motivational factors that make it more important for you to do so.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. So just understanding this unlocks a new way of approaching exercise, approaching diet, approaching adequate hydration, drinking enough water. Why are we doing all these things? Why? We're managing gravity with it. That's what we'll talk about.

• 10:23Mel Robbins?

  Why are you the only person talking about this?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  It's really interesting, because I never expected that I would be talking about this stuff either.

• 10:30Mel Robbins?

  Why did you start researching this?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Well, it actually started with a family member. So my mother-in-law had developed cognitive decline. And she was in an assisted living facility. And she was lying flat in bed all day. And about the time that she started lying down, she developed all these digestive issues: slow digestion, stomach pains, she became quite depressed. And she hadn't changed her diet, hadn't changed her medicines, and my family was asking, like, what's going on with her? And I thought, you know what? We're not supposed to lie down all day. She's giving into gravity. She's being pulled back down. I thought, she has to stand up, right?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  If we could do anything for her, let's get her up and walking again. And so I thought about this, and I was trying to figure out the gut part, because I'm a stomach doctor, I'm a gastroenterologist, I'm a professor, I teach all this stuff. And I started thinking about, well, what is it about the gut in particular? And eventually, I wrote a paper about this called Gravity in the Gut. And I thought this was career suicide because it was such a strange, weird thing for me to write about. And people read it and said, oh, hey, that kind of makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense. And the next thing I knew, I thought, every single part of your body, every cell, every single little cell you have has little tiny microtubules in it that are constantly shifting and moving and keeping the cell from collapsing upon itself.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Your entire body is managing this compacting force of gravity. And when you can't handle it anymore, we give into it.

• 12:01Mel Robbins?

  How did it change the way you, as a medical doctor, treat your patients for GI issues? Once you had this epiphany around the relationship between gravity versus just looking at what's going on in the gut and the intestines?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  This has been the most gratifying part of all this work, is how it changes the way I talk with my patients.

• 12:21Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  So, for example, you know, I see a lot of people who have irritable bowel syndrome or stomach issues. And I'll ask them, I'll say, how's your back? You know, do you have back pain? And almost all of them will say, yeah, I do. Why do you ask? You're a stomach doctor, not a back doctor.

• 12:37Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  I'll say, well, you know, like, the back and the gut are right there. They're not two different systems. Everything's connected. It's about the seams of the body. It's about the connection point. Sometimes diseases are more about the points where things come together than the actual entities that attach, right? This is called tensegrity or tensile integrity. This is about bending without breaking, like a tree that bends in the wind and doesn't snap.

• 13:04Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Our bodies are designed as tensegrity systems that are managing the forces of the earth. And so, if you're not going to be strong in your back, you can imagine how it's going to lead to your gut compressing a lot. And so, let me show you a picture. And I'll show them a picture, how they're connected. And I'll talk about how exercise, it turns out, is the most effective therapy we have for IBS, by far.

• 13:27Mel Robbins?

  Wait, hold on. Exercise is the most effective therapy for IBS?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Tai Chi, yoga, osteopathic medical interventions, strength training, swimming, running, randomized controlled trial after trial, shows that this is the most effective therapy we have. And I'm not saying that's the only cure-all, okay? To be clear. But you bet. And when I put it this way to people, they go, oh, well, no doubt. Like, oh, my God, that makes sense. I can see how these things are tied together.

• 13:58Mel Robbins?

  So what's a quick way that the person listening right now can feel the effect of gravity on their body?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  So we're sitting here together right now, right? Right at desk, even as I'm talking to you.

• 14:08Mel Robbins?

  Sitting is not a natural position.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we do it, but we're not designed to sit all day.

• 14:12Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Right? We're designed to be up and moving.

• 14:14Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Running, hiking, whatever it is. Right now, even as I'm talking to you, I can feel myself slumped over a little bit.

• 14:22Mel Robbins?

  Yes, you can feel like as you're sitting, even if you kind of try to sit upright, you can feel pinchy.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:27Mel Robbins?

  Like in your midsection, like, you know, you're crunching the midsection.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  So if anyone's listening now and maybe in their car, maybe sitting down in a chair, you just think about right now, feel the pressure of your body in the chair and think about how that force is translating through your body. And if you're kind of hunched over or looking at a phone or something, what happens is your upper back moves forward.

• 14:55Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Your shoulders move forward and then your chest, thorax moves down, the diaphragm moves down, and then the abdomen compresses just a little bit. You've got this sack of potatoes in your belly that we call the gut, and it normally actually hangs when you're upright. And that opens it up. And when you sit upright and you think about the muscles between.

• 15:16Mel Robbins?

  Just listening to you, I've noticed like I'm going from my great grandmother's hunchback look to, okay, shoulders back.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:23Mel Robbins?

  You know, like point out.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Literally, think about the muscles between your shoulders.

• 15:27Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  How often do you engage those actively? Like really engage those muscles? Never.

• 15:32Mel Robbins?

  Unless I'm at a gym.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:34Mel Robbins?

  Or unless somebody, or unless I catch myself in the mirror, I'm like, oh, my God, my posture. Okay.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Well, that's it. You know, so you can see it in the mirror. And when you contract, what happens is the diaphragm and the chest moves up and the abdomen opens up. And it's better for digestion, for movement in the belly. And generally, for your overall mechanism to be standing up straight, it's much better for your inner mechanisms, too, the pumps and tubes inside.

• 15:57Mel Robbins?

  So as you're listening, if you just caught yourself slouching.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:00Mel Robbins?

  Or if you've been walking and you even felt your shoulders forward, and even as you're walking, you're a little hunched. Just noticing that is a way to feel, to notice the pull of gravity pulling you toward the ground.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you don't need to be ramrod, military straight all the time, right? But just think a little bit about the back and the spine and keeping yourself upright.

• 16:21Mel Robbins?

  Well, what's already starting to go pow, pow, pow in my brain as I'm, as I'm really taking in what you're saying is this is an entirely different way to think about posture and health. Because I've always just thought about the fact that I should just have good posture, just because I should have good posture. But I've never thought about it as you need to build better posture. Because if you don't, gravity's always going to be there.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:55Mel Robbins?

  To make you slouch, to make you look down, to make you slump in your chair. And then your poor organs are schmush like the bread at the bottom of a grocery bag.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  That's a good analogy.

• 17:06Mel Robbins?

  You know what I'm saying? And so, thinking about it like, it's not even about good posture. It's that developing that strength and that awareness is how you work against the gravity that's pulling you down. Is that right?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And as we'll see, I mean, this is the basis of longevity. It's being stronger. It's being stronger of mind and body.

• 17:31Mel Robbins?

  What are everyday red flags that for you, Dr. Spiegel, are like, you need to change your relationship with gravity?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, these are everyday common things. We talked about low back pain already, for example. Feeling dizzy when you stand up too quickly, feeling lightheaded, having chronic pain, feeling exhausted, feeling mentally down.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Feeling like you're falling, literally or even metaphorically, like you're getting gut feelings in your belly when you're anxious. All of these are signs of what I call gravity intolerance. And it's easy, though, for doctors to say, oh, well, that is disease A or that is disease B. And that's how we think about the human body. But I think about it as all of the systems working in unison to stand up to this planet. And we can diagnose gravity intolerance through all of these different types of symptoms. What's amazing is there's so much literature that literally how you hold your body helps how you feel on the inside. You feel more buoyant. You feel lighter when you stand up straight. So think about when you are in a cathedral.

• 18:38Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  And the ceiling is high.

• 18:41Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  You feel glorious. You feel heavenly. The spires point to the heavens.

• 18:46Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  When you come into Grand Central Station in New York, you look up and think this is beautiful. But when you come into Penn Station, it's been said that it's like you scuttle into the city like a rat. These like low ceilings, it's not glorious. It's not amazing. We have a neuropsychological love of expansive space, the heavens. Even in our language, we talk about how up is good. I'm feeling high. I'm feeling great. And down in the dumps, down on my luck. These are not just figures of speech. These are not just metaphors.

• 19:18Mel Robbins?

  That's true because emotions can be like heavy.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Heavy. People speak of the heaviness, the literal heaviness of something like depression.

• 19:26Mel Robbins?

  Huh.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Okay, on the body itself. It's an existential attribute of our neurophysiology that we love being in expansive, beautiful worlds. And we do not love being in contracted, small spaces.

• 19:44Mel Robbins?

  Now, you say there is one thing that you can do right now to, with your hands, to show your relationship to gravity.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Well, it's worth testing.

• 19:56Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Because I'm going to guess that many of your listeners, when they hear this.

• 20:02Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Will. Find something out about themselves.

• 20:06Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  And so we can try it with you.

• 20:08Mel Robbins?

  Let's try it.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  I'll do it with me. So take your pinky.

• 20:11Mel Robbins?

  Take your pinky.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  And see how far back you can pull it.

• 20:13Mel Robbins?

  So we're gonna bend our pinky back.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Bend it back.

• 20:15Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  And so you and I are at about 90 degrees.

• 20:19Mel Robbins?

  Meaning my pinky's going straight back.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  It's going straight back, but it's not bending way back, right? And that's, that's normal.

• 20:25Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  And the other way to tell is if you can take your thumb.

• 20:28Mel Robbins?

  Take my thumb.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  And bend it all the way back to your forearm.

• 20:32Mel Robbins?

  Wait, you can, people can touch their thumbs to their forearms?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Turns out a number of your staff can.

• 20:37Mel Robbins?

  That's right. We did this with our staff and over half the women that work here.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:43Mel Robbins?

  And we have 50 employees.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:45Mel Robbins?

  Over half can bend their thumb back to touch their arm.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  To touch their arm. And those same people can touch the ground without bending their knees really easily. They may have kind of a double jointed elbow. So if you can do those things, you might then ask yourself, do I have stomach issues? Do I have irritable bowel syndrome? Do I have stomach pains sometimes?

• 21:07Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so hold on a second. Why is there a connection between a bendy pinky or a thumb that touches the forearm and GI issues?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  It's gravity intolerance. If you're stretchy on the outside, you're probably stretchy on the inside too. And our gut, we talked about, it's like a sack of potatoes that's sort of on these suspension systems. And when you stand up and you stand up straight, the system hangs down. It's almost like a marionette on strings. Like you can articulate the marionette with the strings. But if those strings were really, really stretchy, like elastic, the marionette would kind of collapse down. It would be hard to animate it. Well, if you're stretchy in your joints, the suspension cables inside are also stretchy. And the sack of potato gets pulled down by gravity and it compresses down. And you can get some digestion issues like bacterial overgrowth and gas issues.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  You should see a doctor to be clear, but you can check it even with yourself. And that is a form of gravity intolerance.

• 22:06Mel Robbins?

  I can see how if it's super stretchy, especially if you then start schlumping over.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:14Mel Robbins?

  Going in different places because it's flexible and can move around.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is why swimming is a really good activity. If you do have this stretchiness because you're horizontal and you're swimming and you're not like pounding down, everything's going if you're running, for example, it can kind of pound everything down a little bit. I mean, it's still OK, but if you have the stretchiness, swimming is a particularly good exercise.

• 22:37Mel Robbins?

  You can change this?

• 22:38Speaker 01

  You can't really change the stretchiness.

• 22:40Mel Robbins?

  OK.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  But if you get strong abs, strong back, core and upper back, which you then do, start opening up the chest, opening up the abdomen and pulling that sack back up again. So you get better digestion. And then there's a bunch of other important things with diet in terms of changing the microbiome, those, you know, trillions of organisms.

• 23:01Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  That get backed up. If your stomach's almost like a garden hose, if it gets kinked, the water backs up.

• 23:07Mel Robbins?

  OK, so that's interesting.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:08Mel Robbins?

  OK, so if you're slouching and you're having gravity.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:13Mel Robbins?

  Pull you down in your chair or you got terrible posture, you're causing a kink potentially in the garden hose of your digestive tract.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 23:22Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Spiegel, this is fascinating. I'm never going to look at my body the same way. And, you know, I bet, just like I am right now, you have somebody that's popped into your mind. Maybe it's your mom. Your mom has horrible posture. She doesn't mean to, but she's always had a lot of GI issues. Holy cow, you got to share this with her. Maybe it's your kids. You see them constantly tipped over, looking at their phone, and now you want to give them a new reason to start to take this invisible force more seriously. So let's take a moment and hear word from our amazing sponsors and share this episode with someone in your life who deserves to hear this groundbreaking research so that they can live a stronger and healthier life starting today. And don't go anywhere. Dr. Spiegel's just getting warmed up.

• 24:06Mel Robbins?

  We have so much more to cover and dig into and specific recommendations about what to eat when we return, so stay with me.

• 24:24Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today, you and I are learning about this groundbreaking research from Dr. Brennan Spiegel, who is a physician, a gastroenterologist, one of the most cited medical researchers alive today, and the Director of Health Services Research at Cedar Sinai Hospital. And he's teaching us all about the connection between health issues and the force of gravity. I mean, this is fascinating stuff. So, Dr. Spiegel, let's just jump right back in. What is the role that gravity plays in your digestion?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Most people think of serotonin as a happy chemical. You know, it's like the antidepressant chemical. And it is that. But you might be surprised that about 95% of your body's serotonin comes from your gut, not your brain. It comes from the gut. And in fact, it depends upon the microbiome, which is all those organisms. So what happens is when you eat certain foods, particularly foods with tryptophan. So tryptophan turns into serotonin in your gut, and then serotonin circulates all throughout your body. Without it, you and I would be collapsed on the ground right now, like a little baby. A baby has very little serotonin in its body because it hasn't yet colonized its gut.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  To be able to create enough serotonin to prime your muscles, to help those pumps and tubes contract, it requires serotonin. The lymphatic system that's bringing all the waste back up from your ankles requires serotonin. If we look at what serotonin does, it literally elevates you, mind and body.

• 25:57Mel Robbins?

  Wow.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  And it looks like the gut, in part, evolved with the microbiome to allow us to get out of the ocean. We brought our own hydrothermal vent with us to allow all those critters to come with us. And they gave us serotonin, which gave us gravity management abilities.

• 26:16Mel Robbins?

  And gravity, what is a gravity management ability?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  That means a few things. That means your muscles and bones are strong.

• 26:23Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  So that you can stand up. It means the pumps and tubes on the inside are moving the fluid around, the lymph, the blood.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Something called the baroreceptors, which are these tiny sensors you have in your arteries. And they are constantly keeping track of your pressure and your fluid status. How much did you drink enough water? All of this stuff is gravity management. And then finally, the brain itself, the mental gravity. All of these systems work together to allow you to stand up and thrive. That's what gravity management is.

• 26:55Mel Robbins?

  Got it. So your gut really operates in a way

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:01Mel Robbins?

  that it has to be, well, I guess if you think about it, I mean, everything's kind of moving down and out, and then also moving up against gravity.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  That's right. So it's amazing to me, we'll take people who have stomach pain.

• 27:13Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  And we can't figure out what's causing it, let's say. We do a bunch of different tests. And then we find out that on roller coasters, they get really bad butterflies and then even want to ride a roller coaster. And you think, well, what is this thing about gut feelings anyway? Like, why do you get that feeling on a roller coaster? Well, you know why? Because when you're riding a roller coaster, you're practicing your death.

• 27:35Mel Robbins?

  What?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're practicing your death. We're not supposed to fall 20 stories and survive. That's why we do it, because it's exhilarating. We're like, woo, right? People with irritable bowel syndrome, often, not all, do not want to ride a roller coaster because they feel like they're always falling, like metaphorically falling.

• 27:51Mel Robbins?

  Whoa.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  They will white knuckle, hold on for dear life, and go, ah! Whereas other people are throwing their hands in the air, throwing, you know. It's like we have a G-force accelerometer in our gut that is keeping track of your movement and telling you if you're about to die. So literally, when you get those gut feelings, like something's the matter, something doesn't feel right here, that's your body saying, you think you're at risk. You feel like you might die even. Now, sometimes that's an inappropriate feeling. Your brain is playing a trick on you. Your brain is telling you that you're falling. So that's literally how deep the gut feeling gets. And Hippocrates said, "All disease begins in the gut." 2,000 years ago, he said that. What did he mean? This is the core of who we are.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  It's the ultimate visceral center of our selfhood.

• 28:40Mel Robbins?

  I know you have a very memorable way of eating, Dr. Spiegel, that helps you and your body's relationship with gravity. What is it?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Well, I call it stack 10.

• 28:52Mel Robbins?

  Stack 10?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  S.T.A.C.K.

• 28:55Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  T.E.N.

• 28:56Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  And you already got the T. Because you said turkey.

• 29:00Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  So what is stack 10? These are 10 foods, that's why I say 10, that I stack

• 29:06Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  in my diet to try and boost serotonin levels naturally.

• 29:11Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  And we talked already about how serotonin is this gravity management substance. That's how I think about it. And so what are the foods? The S is salmon. Okay. The T is turkey. Okay. A is avocado. C is chicken and chickpeas. Okay. And then K is kidney beans. And then the T is like tempeh, tofu, eggs, E, and nuts. And so it turns out, all those foods, what they have in common is they have a lot of tryptophan, which is the raw fuel that your body will convert into serotonin, which then allows you to stand up to the force of gravity.

• 29:51Mel Robbins?

  And so you just make sure you get a kind of variety of the stack 10 in your diet every week?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:59Mel Robbins?

  And then you exercise?

• 30:00Speaker 01

  And, and sleep. And there are other ways to boost serotonin. Sunlight. We go back to being outside. Sunlight naturally boosts serotonin levels. Sleep. By the way, when you sleep at night, gravity is no longer working against you and your blood flushes up in your brain, flushes out amyloid. Sleep can, for example, reduce risk of cognitive decline. Alzheimer's disease may in fact be a consequence of not having enough fluid in your body, having too high of sodium levels in your body, not sleeping enough, not getting enough exercise, all of those things. Every one of them is associated with cognitive decline.

• 30:36Mel Robbins?

  What do you mean when you're sleeping, gravity's not working against you?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  So all day long, as we're up right now, you're pumping up, pumping down. You've got five liters of blood, which is a lot. Moving all up and down, sloshing through your body, right?

• 30:47Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  And you gotta get it up, you gotta get it down. When you lie down at night, you finally give everything a rest. It's like the shores of the ocean kind of coming up onto the sand, sort of washing up into your brain. And there's some theories that in part, we fall asleep, in quotes, right? We fall to sleep. We fall asleep. We fall down. Gravity is no longer working and the pumps and tubes get that brain reperfused overnight. And that's part of what we're doing by recharging the body is giving ourselves a gravity break.

• 31:17Mel Robbins?

  So what's one quick way that the person listening can improve their body's relationship to gravitational pull?

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:26Mel Robbins?

  It might take a few minutes, but you would be really proud of if you tried this.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a few things you can do.

• 31:32Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  You can stand on one leg.

• 31:34Mel Robbins?

  Stand on one leg.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  See how long you can stand on one leg without falling over.

• 31:38Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Right? Stand on the other leg.

• 31:40Mel Robbins?

  What does it tell you when you have somebody that is losing balance? And why is balance so important?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is important because your ability to balance is a measure of your entire mechanism within gravity. It's a measure of your inner ear and what we call the vestibular system, which is keeping track of your shifts and movements. It's a measure of your strength and your tendons and your bones. And what we call proprioception, which is your ability to kind of feel where you are in space without falling over. And so you want to be able to stand on one leg for at least 10 seconds. If you're struggling to do that, that's something to work on for sure. Because there's evidence that if you can't stand up on one leg, that's actually tied to your survival. It will actually determine in part, literally, how long you're going to live.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  So if you can't do it, don't freak out. Work on it. Do yoga. Get stronger. Work on balance. See a doctor if you need to. Physical therapist.

• 32:43Mel Robbins?

  So 10 seconds is the minimum?

• 32:45Speaker 01

  That's the minimum for standing on one leg. Yeah.

• 32:47Mel Robbins?

  And based on the research, your ability to stand on each leg for 10 seconds tracks directly to your life expectancy?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, particularly for older individuals.

• 32:56Mel Robbins?

  Wow. Why?

• 32:58Speaker 01

  I think it has to do with everything we're talking about. Because this is a holistic measure of your gravity tolerance. And if it's breaking down, that means you're breaking down. You're changing your relationship to gravity. Your organs will thank you. You're changing the movement of sloshing of all that stuff, the, you know, the bread that's stuffed at the bottom of the, now it's at the top of the back. Exercise is about constantly dynamically changing your relationship to gravity, which is why I wear a weighted vest, for example. So that's a really simple thing to do.

• 33:30Mel Robbins?

  You wear a weighted vest at all times?

• 33:31Speaker 01

  I wear a weighted vest. I have one here, by the way.

• 33:32Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so he's pulling, if you're listening, he's pulling out a weighted vest.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is a weighted vest.

• 33:38Mel Robbins?

  Look at his heavy.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And this one's about 12 pounds.

• 33:40Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  And I wear this almost every day. I'm at work.

• 33:44Mel Robbins?

  All day long?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Most of the day, except for sometimes when I'm seeing patients, it's a little awkward to have this thing on. But the idea is you're practicing life on a bigger planet, a planet that has more pull. And if you spend the day standing up at a standing desk, which I do.

• 34:00Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Having your shoulders back a little bit, just be a little bit aware. You don't need to be all ramrod. When you wear the weighted vest, it forces you to really contract between the shoulder blades.

• 34:09Mel Robbins?

  Uh huh.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  And that upper part of the back is really important for opening up the diaphragm. And so I love wearing the weighted vest. Sometimes I wear ankle weights and I have a balance board, too.

• 34:18Mel Robbins?

  Now, why do you wear ankle weights at work?

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Well, I can passively exercise, lifting my knees up, doing some donkey kicks. If I'm on a Zoom call, I'm constantly moving my legs around.

• 34:28Mel Robbins?

  So how heavy are these ankle weights?

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Mine are 20 pounds each.

• 34:32Mel Robbins?

  Oh my God, that is a flex, Dr. Spiegel. 20 pounds each on your, are you trying to anchor yourself to your desk?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  So I run marathons.

• 34:41Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  And, you know, to train for a marathon, you don't train for a marathon, sitting at a desk all day.

• 34:46Mel Robbins?

  That's true.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  And then it's kind of like a baseball player that's about to go up to bat and they've got a weight on their bat.

• 34:53Mel Robbins?

  Oh yeah, because they do that when they swing to practice.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then they go on to home plate. And now they're stronger and faster and can get through the pitch faster. So if you train all day wearing a weighted vest, when you take it off, you almost feel like you're floating. Like this planet's no big deal. I can handle this planet.

• 35:08Mel Robbins?

  That's true, because when I, I wear a weighted vest when I walk incline and when I hike by our house and. When I take that sucker off, oh my gosh, you do feel like the weight of the world is off you.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Literally, the weight of the world, right?

• 35:22Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Just think of that expression.

• 35:24Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Spiegel, thank you for just breaking this down in a way that makes it so easy to understand and explaining why these recommendations are going to make a difference. I am so excited to share this with some people in my life. I'm thinking about my aunt, I'm not going to call her out, but I'm sharing this with my aunt. I have so many more questions for you, Dr. Spiegel. I know you're thinking, as you're listening to Dr. Spiegel, oh my gosh, my mom needs this, my spouse needs this, I need this, I gotta share this with my girlfriends. Please take a minute while you listen to our sponsors and share this episode with someone that you care about, particularly somebody who maybe feels like gravity's working against them. Life feels heavy.

• 36:06Mel Robbins?

  This might just be a new angle that helps them stand up and feel a little bit better. And don't go anywhere, he's got so much more to teach us, including more specific recommendations that you can try today. Stay with me. Welcome back, it's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are getting out of this world research about the connection between gravitational pull and your health from none other than Dr. Brennan Spiegel, who's a world-renowned gastroenterologist and medical researcher.

• 36:51Mel Robbins?

  All right, Dr. Spiegel, there are so many more things I want to ask you, and my next question is this. So, one easy way that the person listening could start to strengthen their relationship with gravity is to just practice standing on one foot or the other. What's another way?

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Inverted yoga.

• 37:08Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Doing the downward dogs, that sort of thing. And then there's the dead hank, the dead hank.

• 37:14Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I've been practicing this.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  You have.

• 37:16Mel Robbins?

  Well, only because one of my goals in life.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:21Mel Robbins?

  We always get a million emails about this every time I say it. I have never been able to do a pull-up on my own. And so, one of my goals is because of the experts on this podcast, I not only host the show, I'm learning right alongside you as you're listening right now, is to learn, I just want to do one. I don't need to do 10. I want to be able to do one pull-up without injuring myself. And that's it. And so, I've been working on the dead hang.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:50Mel Robbins?

  It is so hard.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  It is hard. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

• 37:54Mel Robbins?

  So, practicing a dead hang, which, explain for the person listening what that is.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  So, a dead hang is where you have like a pull-up bar. You can get these on Amazon or wherever. Get a safe one, right? Not the one that falls when you pull on it. It's got to be able to hold your weight safely. It hooks into the door. And then, you put your hands at about shoulder width.

• 38:13Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  It can be forward-facing or back-facing. And take your body weight off the ground. And immediately what happens is your spine pulls. You become about a half-inch taller.

• 38:24Mel Robbins?

  It does feel like you do.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do. You stretch out. Gravity pulls you down. It's really good for strength in the shoulders and grip strength. Because, you know, much of our evolutionary history was like hanging from trees, right? That was how we survived. We defied gravity in part. So, it turns out your grip strength says a lot about your ability to manage gravity itself. It tells me about how strong not just your grip is, but your entire body, even your cardiovascular fitness. We can determine from your grip strength and your ability to hang from a hanging bar.

• 38:58Mel Robbins?

  So, tell me about your dead hang challenge, Dr. Spiegel.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, dead hang challenge. So, if you can hang from a bar for one minute, you're doing great. You are a gravity master. You are defying gravity. Now, the world record is actually one hour. 20 minutes and 14 seconds, I think I have that right. Kenta Adachi from Japan set the world record, the Guinness World Record for the dead hang. Before that, it used to be 16 minutes. That's how much he destroyed that record.

• 39:30Mel Robbins?

  That's incredible.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, defying gravity, refusing to give in despite searing pain on your body. You just hold on and that's kind of what life can be about sometimes. So it's a symbolic gesture to be able to hang from a bar. You don't need to be an Olympian. You need to be able to stand up and feel comfortable and harmonize with gravity. And we evolved for it. We're here for a reason. So you don't need to overcome it. You need to just live with it.

• 39:58Mel Robbins?

  I've never done a minute. I can do, I hold on for 30 seconds. And when I do it, I feel like I'm on an episode of Survivor. Like trying to like in a time thing to win food or so. So a minute is what we're going for.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, a minute.

• 40:13Mel Robbins?

  Why is grip strength such an important indication of your overall health?

• 40:21Speaker 01

  It's been validated in a number of research studies now.

• 40:24Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  That your grip strength, and I have a grip monitor here. It's called a dynometer.

• 40:28Mel Robbins?

  A dynometer. Okay. So he's holding up this thing.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:31Mel Robbins?

  That looks like a big calculator, only it's got a big squeezy thing on it.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  That's right. And so what you do is you basically, I'm right-handed, so I'll use my right hand. Use your dominant hand.

• 40:42Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  And you're going to just squeeze like crazy on this thing.

• 40:45Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Okay. So let me see what I can do. I want to use two hands, but you should only use one hand. So here I go.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:50Mel Robbins?

  Okay. He's like grinning and going, okay, what do you got?

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Well, 125.

• 40:54Mel Robbins?

  Oh.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  125. That is pretty decent, actually. I'm surprised.

• 40:58Mel Robbins?

  All right. I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna think of somebody I hate. Here, let me try it. I'm gonna try it. My hand's 320.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  All right.

• 41:05Mel Robbins?

  Oh, 70.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  That's not bad. That's actually really good.

• 41:08Mel Robbins?

  It is?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 41:09Mel Robbins?

  Really?

• 41:10Speaker 01

  So there are standards that we've both easily exceeded here for men and for women and for your age too.

• 41:17Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  So it depends. You can look on a table online and it'll tell you, but generally if you can get over 35 as a man and over 20 to 25 as a woman, that's good.

• 41:27Mel Robbins?

  I destroyed that.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you blew that out.

• 41:29Mel Robbins?

  Well, let me tell you why. I gotta get...

• 41:30Speaker 01

  All those hanging bars.

• 41:31Mel Robbins?

  It's the hanging bar and it's the fact that there have been a number of medical experts that have come on this show, either talking about longevity or women's health or just overall health. They really convinced me that I gotta start working on the grip strength and I gotta start working on heavier weights and the farmer's carry and the hanging bar and all that stuff. I'd love to hear you talk about how this advice applies to the different ages and decades of your life. Like what's important in your twenties versus your thirties or forties or fifties or sixties and beyond?

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. So, you know, gravity doesn't change, but our relationship to gravity changes. Our relationship does. We get weaker. Our spines might bend a little bit. We might gain some weight. We might have more stressors, emotional weight, and that's not just a metaphor. And so we start to give in. And what that means is as we get older, it's more important than ever to focus on strength training, on balance training, on diet, on good hydration, maintaining like 10 to 13 glasses of water per day. That's a lot.

• 42:43Mel Robbins?

  10 to 13?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  It's a lot, yeah.

• 42:45Mel Robbins?

  Wait, hold on a second. Dr. Siegel, you recommend 10 to 13 glasses of water a day?

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, more or less, yeah.

• 42:51Mel Robbins?

  Why?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  About half your body weight. 60% of your body weight is fluid and you've got these pumps and tubes moving it up and down against gravity. And so if we don't keep those tubes flush with fluid...

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Our brains get tired, we get exhausted. It's all gravity intolerance. And so we do need to replenish. And it takes a lot of water. And most of us don't drink near enough water. I don't, don't overdo it, but enough water to not feel lightheaded and to feel fresh. And even your mental health is tied in part to this.

• 43:21Mel Robbins?

  Well, as you were listening and he was talking about 10 to 12 glasses of water, I of course just subconsciously picked up my mason jar and started chugging.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  I'll do the same.

• 43:29Mel Robbins?

  This is like fascinating to me. You know, Dr. Spiegel, what do you want to say to the person who's spent years blaming themselves for the way that they feel? And like me, has never even considered that the pull of gravity, of all things, may be playing a role in some of the challenges they're facing.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  So the first thing is to say it's not your fault, right? We have this blame culture.

• 43:53Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  That if, you know, I don't feel right physically, mentally, that's something that I did. What this way of thinking opens up is the notion that it's not something that is your fault. It has to do with the way your body is navigating this planet. And now we can move to strategy, not to blame. We can start thinking about techniques to strengthen your relationship to this earth because you were born for it. You are a consequence of it. You are made for it. If you literally feel like you're not made for this planet, that means we have to work hard and fast on rebuilding your sense of self within the confines of this planet. And so that's really what it means is feeling not a sense of blame,

• 44:38Speaker 01

  but a sense of empowerment. You are born for this place. You evolved for it.

• 44:43Mel Robbins?

  Well, if you really even just think about any baby, you know, a baby, I think the research shows when they're trying to learn how to stand up and walk, will fall like an average of 17 times an hour. They don't lay on the ground and go, well, that's it. I'm just going to succumb to. You know, gravity, walking's not for me. There is this internal mechanism, this instinct to stand up.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  We fall down. We have to fall down a lot to stand up again. That said, it's interesting because there's research with babies going back to the 1960s, where they were asked to crawl towards their parent across a glass plane where there was a drop off down beneath.

• 45:25Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so the baby is going to like crawl across something that looks like a drop off.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:30Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  And they don't do it.

• 45:32Mel Robbins?

  They don't do it?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  They won't do it. Even before they've fallen, do you have an internal grabb receptive instinct? That that's dangerous and they won't do it. Now, falling has to happen, but dangerous falls don't. And we know, like, we're hardwired to know to stay away from these kinds of falls, which is why gut feelings are a sign that you are about to fall or are falling. And that's one of the ways that we protect ourselves. And anxiety in part may be a neuro visceral fear of falling. You don't want to fall down. And that makes sense because that's how we're here. We had thousands and thousands of people come before us that somehow survived generation after generation by not falling down.

• 46:16Mel Robbins?

  What role does breathing play in helping the body feel more stable?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  So we know from so many traditions that breathing is a grounding mechanism. What do we mean by a grounding? What is the, we're talking about the ground, we're talking about gravity today.

• 46:31Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  You're becoming grounded. We use that term, you know, kind of metaphorically, but it's a literal one. When you breathe in slowly and you regulate your breath, you're regulating that vagus nerve we talked about before, which is the long winding nerve, the longest nerve in the body that connects your brain to all of your inner organs, the gut that we've talked a lot about, the heart. And it releases serotonin in the brain and in the body. When you slow down and regulate, what you're doing is you're going from a more fight or flight mode to a rest and digest mode. And that is grounding physically and mentally. So breathing is a big part of that, doing these gravitational breathing exercises.

• 47:11Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Spiegel, will you walk me and the person listening through a simple breathing reset that you use with your patients?

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. So what you can imagine, first of all, is kind of sit up.

• 47:22Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  And

• 47:23Mel Robbins?

  See, now I'm like, see, I was slouching again.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's that upper shoulder, kind of keep yourself, but you know, you don't need to get all tense.

• 47:29Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  And you can start by just feeling your body sink into the chair. But rather than thinking about it as being pulled down, think about it like you're being pushed up. Can you imagine?

• 47:42Mel Robbins?

  Push up against the chair.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Can you imagine the chair, the chair is pushing you?

• 47:45Mel Robbins?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Because what physicists talk about is gravity is actually an upward acceleration. It's not a downward pull.

• 47:54Mel Robbins?

  That doesn't make sense.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  I know, it's kind of counterintuitive, but that's what it is. We're actually being accelerated into. It's really wild. It's a total mind mess up. But if you think about it that way, your life becomes one of bounding into the world, like a trampoline effect off of the surface of the earth. When you're running, you're bounding off the earth. You're using the upward acceleration of gravity to bound into the world, not to sink down. So that's a mind shift.

• 48:24Mel Robbins?

  Well, if you unpack that for a second.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 48:28Mel Robbins?

  If gravity is pulling you down, you do have to push against it to stand up.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Do.

• 48:35Mel Robbins?

  And so I can see what you mean. Like, I'm so used to just slouching down in my chair and not even thinking about it and slumping and all these like S words, but I, you're right. If you push against the seat, you take a more active stance in the seat.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  So that's the first part of the breathing. We haven't even got to the breathing part yet. It's just the mindset.

• 48:53Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  That I'm sitting and I'm on this planet, I'm in this chair, and it is accelerating into me, upward into the earth. And so now what I do is, you know, a slow, deep breath and it starts in the abdomen. So it's going to start down and in, and you open up the abdomen first. And let it come up into the chest next. So it's rising up and out. You can even use your hands. And then you come back down again. So you kind of go like this, like

• 49:28Speaker 01

  down and in, up and out.

• 49:31Mel Robbins?

  That's pretty cool. How long do you have to do that?

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Even doing it for two minutes, one minute, right? Longer, a little bit better is enough to start resetting your vagus nerve. When you need that grounding, when you're feeling stressed or anxious or kind of off balance, that sort of thing.

• 49:47Mel Robbins?

  What are some of the signs to look for that indicate that your body is handling gravity better? That your health is improving in this regard, Dr. Spiegel?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  As your gravity resilience grows, your confidence in being a person in the world grows. Physically, mentally, you have strength. You're standing up into the world. You're not slouching. You don't have as much pain. Pain itself is a sign of gravity intolerance. That means that you are being pulled and bent and squeezed in ways that you're not supposed to. Now, there's other forms of pain too, but generally musculoskeletal pain is a form of gravity intolerance. You have less pain. You stand up stronger. You feel lighter, feel lighter. Because your strength is there. Your hydraulic systems, the pumps and tubes, are moving into your brain better. And mentally, you feel buoyant. You feel lighter in the world.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  That means you're succeeding. You're a gravity master.

• 50:44Mel Robbins?

  You know, I think this is one of those conversations that really blow your mind a little bit because it makes you see something from a completely different angle. If, you know, you have somebody in mind that you really want to send this episode to and you think would really benefit from this different perspective on health and on the way to stand taller in life, so to speak, the way to feel bigger, more confident. How would you introduce them to this? Like, because I can only imagine when a patient walks in to your office for GI issues, Dr. Spiegel, and then you hit them with gravity.

• 51:27Mel Robbins?

  You probably have figured out a way to kind of bring this up. How do you do that?

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Well, again, I go back to the obvious things. I say, what does it feel like right now to be in your body? I have pain. My back hurts. Swelling in my ankles. Feel down, feel exhausted. And then I talk about, it sounds kinda like you're on another planet. It sounds kinda like you're on a planet that's pulling too hard. Right? I mean, when there's too much pull, it's hard to get up and things hurt. And you feel down and you feel sad. And it's hard to get out and be curious and, and have energy. And it kinda sounds like that, right? And they say, yeah, exactly. It sounds like there's too much gravity on your body. Yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  I said, well, let's do something about that. That's really, I can deal with that. We've got lots of answers for that. And now we're not talking about your gut or your microbiome or the exact diet that you ate. And that'll all come, right? There's all the, we've been talking, unpacking all. But now it unlocks a new understanding of why those things matter.

• 52:33Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Why should you lose some weight?

• 52:36Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Okay. Why does your back pain relate to your stomach pain? They're not totally separate. They're all integrated. We're one integrated mechanism, fighting this force of gravity and harmonizing with this force.

• 52:46Mel Robbins?

  Well, I'm never gonna look at the act of picking up my phone and looking down at it the same way again, because I now know that is a moment of my own intolerance to the pull of gravity.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:01Mel Robbins?

  And there's something I can do about it. I am never gonna look at sitting in a chair the same way again. Or the way I stand. Like, I literally was thinking about it as like, how do you look? And that's bad posture versus, oh, I'm, there's a pull that pulls me that way. And I can learn how to stand up against it.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  And it's so easy to forget everything we just talked about. Just like it's easy for the fish to forget that it's in water. Because the easiest thing to do is to just go, after hearing this discussion, is just to go right back and forget about it. Cause it's so fundamental. It's just, it's so obvious. That's like, well, okay, I got that, but now I'm gonna go back and slump all. Well, no. Find some little ways every day to stand up to gravity. It doesn't cost you anything. And it makes a huge difference to mind and body. Do a little bit of yoga. Get upside down. Stand on one leg. Wear a weighted vest. Do some sit-ups. All right? Stand up a little straighter. You don't have to change your whole life.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Little tiny things will make a huge difference.

• 54:08Mel Robbins?

  Take the dead hang challenge, right?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Dead hang challenge. See if you can get to a minute.

• 54:12Mel Robbins?

  See if you can get to a minute. Dr. Spiegel, this was fascinating. What are your parting words?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  You know, we've talked about so much here, and I just want to go back to this idea that we evolved for this moment. You and I are here because thousands and thousands and thousands of people before us, just in our own lineage, somehow found a way to stand up and stay up. Okay, a little longer and a little better and a little stronger than everyone else did. And so, we are equipped for this planet, mind and body. You are a consequence of it. And I just want everyone to think about that for a second. And think about what does that mean for the tremendous power that you have to live on this planet? Because when you're equipped with that knowledge, you're empowered to stand stronger and live longer.

• 55:00Mel Robbins?

  Well, Dr. Spiegel, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming to Boston and spending time teaching us all about this invisible force that has an extraordinary impact on the quality of our lives.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Well, what a pleasure. It's been great. Thank you for having me.

• 55:16Mel Robbins?

  Of course. And all right, you and I have to leave the studio because I hear the entire team is outside taking the dead hang challenge.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  I can't wait to see.

• 55:24Mel Robbins?

  Well, apparently, somebody ran out and got a pull-up bar and installed it here in the studio. And I am very nervous.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Just like that. It's already up.

• 55:32Mel Robbins?

  Yes, that's how we roll around here. I'm nervous to see how long mine is.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Hey, you know what? You only can compare yourself against yourself. So you start somewhere and work from there.

• 55:41Mel Robbins?

  I love those ground rules. And I also want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this, to share this with people. Wasn't this like mind-blowing? It gave me a whole new perspective about what it means to live on planet Earth and to stand a little taller and to live a little longer. I cannot wait to hear what you do with this. I hope you go take the dead hang challenge. We're about to bounce and go do that ourselves. But I also wanted to say, in case no one else tells you today, as your friend, that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. And what an incredible thing to consider that changing your relationship to gravity, learning how to stand up, learning how to feel a little lighter, learning how to get

• 56:26Mel Robbins?

  stronger. Holy cow, is that going to help your life be better. Alrighty, I will see you in the very next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'm really excited for this.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 56:43Mel Robbins?

  Oh, wait, you know what, Trace, I need, I need to clean these glasses, they are. I don't touch my glasses.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  I keep these in my, uh.

• 56:51Mel Robbins?

  Oh, here, I, I don't. So, Dr. Spiegel, what do you say to the person who's been listening to all this and is starting to like, you know, let me, let me say that over again.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  We have a little bit of the sea inside of us because we came out of the sea and you've got to maintain your saltwater flowing if you're going to be able to stand on earth. Anyway, I'll stop going nuts and we can, we can start when you're ready.

• 57:14Mel Robbins?

  No.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Is that electrolyte? What do you got in that thing?

• 57:17Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I got electrolyte.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Well, that's part of gravity management.

• 57:20Mel Robbins?

  Well, see, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Gravity management. So good. You're doing so good.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Thanks. You feel lighter when you stand up straight, when you have a smile, which is upward, right?

• 57:29Mel Robbins?

  That's true. It's not my fault, doc. It's gravity.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  I have, I have that same face. Sorry. We should start a club.

• 57:36Mel Robbins?

  Well, it's gravity intolerance. That's what I'm gonna say.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  That's right. My mouth is a little gravity sensitive, I guess.

• 57:44Mel Robbins?

  Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.