122. Dr. Mayim Bialik on Stress, Mental Health, and Human Connection

What if the stress you feel every day is not a personal failure, but a biological response to how modern life pulls at your nervous system? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Mayim Bialik to explore why so many people feel overwhelmed, distracted, and disconnected, even when they are doing everything they were told should make them happy. We talk about how stress lives in the body, how technology quietly rewires attention and dopamine, and why mental health cannot be separated from gut health, lifestyle, and human connection. Mayim shares her path from child actor to neuroscientist, how science and spirituality meet in real life, and why resilience is built through daily practices, not quick fixes. We also unpack trauma, attention, parenting in a digital world, and why learning to regulate your nervous system may matter more than any single intervention. This conversation is an invitation to slow down, reconnect with yourself, and remember that healing does not start with perfection. It starts with awareness. Dr. Mayim Bialik is a neuroscientist, actor, author, and mental health advocate. She holds a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA and is widely known for her role on The Big Bang Theory. Through her podcast and public work, she focuses on mental health, stress, spirituality, and making science accessible and human-centered. What's Discussed: (00:00) Why Modern Stress Feels Different Today (06:12) How the Nervous System Responds to Daily Overload (12:45) Technology, Dopamine, and Attention Drift (18:30) The Hidden Biology Behind Feeling "Burned Out" (26:04) Gut Health and Mental Health: What We Now Understand (33:29) Trauma, Identity, and the Stories We Carry (41:52) Parenting, Boundaries, and Emotional Regulation (50:11) Building Real Resilience in a Distracted World Thank You for Our Sponsors: IM8: Try IM8 today with a 30-day money back guarantee. You can get 10% off your first order with code DRSHAH at https://im8health.com/discount/DRSHAH. Function Health: Learn more and join using my link. Visit www.functionhealth.com/drshah and use gift code DRSHAH25 for a $25 credit toward your membership. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram:@darshanshahmd https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/ Learn more about Dr. Mayim Bialik: Podcast: Mayim Bialik's Breakdown https://open.spotify.com/show/6TgOe2poCdpZtQwKetQmU1 Instagram: @missmayim https://www.instagram.com/missmayim/?hl=en Substack: Mayim Bialik's Breakdown https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/

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

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease and, most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  In this episode, I'm going to be sitting down with the brilliant Dr. Mayim Bialik, neuroscientist, actress, author, and lifelong science communicator. We're going to explore her unlikely path from child actor to trained geneticist, her groundbreaking work studying Prader-Willi syndrome, and how she ultimately merged her love for storytelling with her passion for education. Mayim opens up about the state of modern mental health, the biological costs of our tech-driven world, and why lifestyle, connection, and nervous system balance matter now more than ever. We're also going to dive into trauma, diet, gut-brain health, women in STEM, the science behind manifestation practices,

• 1:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  and how to build resilience in a culture obsessed with diagnoses and quick fixes. This conversation is equal parts scientific, grounded, and deeply human, offering a roadmap back to presence, connection, and true wellbeing.

• 1:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hey, everyone. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to talk about something that you hear me talk a lot about, your biomarkers. And I want to tell you how I'm approaching this situation right now with all of the patients that are calling me from listening to this podcast. So what happens is every day, patients are writing to me saying they feel exhausted, they can't lose weight, they're having brain And they see their doctor and the doctor tells them all their blood work is normal. But the problem is this doctor usually is only checking about 10 to 15 biomarkers. It only tell you if you have a disease developing. Meanwhile, your body has 160 different systems that are running. Then all of these have blood tests that we can test on how effective they're working for you every single day. So if someone is not close to one of my clinics, one of my next health clinics, then I tell them,

• 2:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  go to their local laboratory and get on Function Health. Function Health gives you access to 160 different biomarkers, the same kind of comprehensive testing that we do at all of our next health clinics. And if you try to get this on your own through your regular doctor, it can cost you thousands of dollars. Hormones, inflammation, toxins, nutrient levels, they're all tracked over time in this one platform called Function Health. They can even help you get an MRI scan or a CT scan if you want one. So what I love most about this company is that they don't have a crazy incentive to do this. Function doesn't push supplements. They don't have pharmaceuticals they're trying to get you to take. You're just getting the data and you're getting insights from the data.

• 3:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you can bring this data to a clinic like ours and we then have the information that we need to tell you how to improve your health. Membership is now only $365 a year. Literally it's just a dollar a day. And right now, if you're one of my listeners, you can get a $25 credit towards the membership. You just go to the link in the bio or go to functionhealth.com/drshah and use the code DRSHAH25 for a $25 credit towards your membership.

• 3:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Myam, it's so exciting to have you here. Thank you for joining me.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 3:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, this is fantastic. So I've been a huge fan since the Blossom days, actually.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  You're aging yourself.

• 3:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I am. I am. I'm an older dude. But you know, a big bang is one of those, I would say nerdy pleasures of mine, where I just felt like watching every episode, like that's my life. Like I'm a nerd. You know, and so I've been, I, it's one of those shows also I watch at night before going to bed. So I watch it on repeat many, many times.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yes, it's really like, I would describe it as it's like the show for the rest of us.

• 4:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  You know, the time that Big Bang started, like the people that we were seeing on television were like, very pretty and they were getting together in different permutations and like, that's fun. But no, Big Bang was really a show about like the rest of people's experience. Like especially if you feel like an outsider or are an outsider. And you know, when I first saw a clip of the show, cause I came on in, you know, the end of season three. I was like, oh, this is like all the people I went to grad school with. Like, these are my people, you know, this is very comfortable, this community. So, yeah.

• 4:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So true. And like, it made me feel more like I was normal. Because I was watching other people on TV for the first time ever.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That were nerdy like me, but they were still dating, they were still like, having a fun and, and doing all the things that they love to do with no pressures from the outside world.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  To say who they needed to be like, you know?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that was, you know, uh, when we first went to Comic Con, you know, we go to Comic Con as a cast. Like, and that was something that we would do. And you know, the first year that I went, one of the cast members was like, you know, prepare yourself. It's like a lot of like, you know, it's very intense. And when I got to Comic Con, I was like, these are my people. These are just like the nerdy people who like comic books and superheroes.

• 5:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Um, so it was very comfortable, you know, especially coming from academia where everybody is kind of focused on cerebral things. And those are kind of what the conversations are like. I do think that's what a lot of people related to about Big Bang Theory.

• 5:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And I think it was really like the first show too, that brought science to like a sitcom and just to like,

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  the general public's awareness that it's, we could talk about science on TV. It's probably gonna be fine and fun, actually.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And when, when you think about, you know, sort of how the show started, right? It was Chuck Lorre, who's like this like sitcom, you know, kind of genius. And Bill Prady, who also, you know, had many incredible credits in the industry and he'd worked with Jim Henson's company. But he came from like a computer tech kind of world. So you had these two people creating this show. That was kind of, you know, trying to highlight the best of comedy and sitcom and writing with also the sensibility of science and tech and engineering and all these things.

• 6:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it was a big risk, right? Back then for them to kind of pivot into that because most sitcoms are like family sitcoms.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was very, you know, very special. I mean, I think the nice thing also about coming in, you know, at the end of season three is I didn't have to worry about like, is it going to be a success? It's all on me. I need to worry about it. Like, I was just thrilled to be part of it, you know, in any way. And then I was made a regular in season four and, you know, obviously the show took on a lot more relationship dynamics, you know, for all of the characters at that point.

• 7:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  My favorite episode was when you were proposed to.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Oh, sweet.

• 7:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I watched it like a thousand times.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Sweet, yeah.

• 7:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then I was lucky to be invited to the last season.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the episode I saw was the one where Cal Pen was on it.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  When you were trying to convince the Nobel committee.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a Nobel, yeah, one of the Nobel episodes.

• 7:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So awesome.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It was, and I was so sad to see the show, you know, ending then, but it ended so beautifully.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it had a, I mean, it had a great run and, you know, for us it was 12 years. It was like a, you know.

• 7:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's a lifetime.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like first grade through 12th grade is, you know, how we thought about it. It was like a whole school, you know, school experience.

• 7:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Really. And so I'm curious, oh, good, you're wearing two of the same socks. You didn't do that at the beginning of Blossom, right?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know. No, that was Punky Brewster who wore different socks.

• 7:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Okay, okay.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  I always wore the same socks. That's something I definitely.

• 8:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, sorry to confuse you with Punky, but I remember your transition from Blossom into then, you know, what happened in the future. And, you know, you also, I mean, you have a really incredible career with your education, right? As well, like you became a PhD neuroscientist at UCLA, right?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And so like, how did that go for you as like being a child actor? And then going to school and then still being in the acting world, like that must have been tough.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, you know, I started acting at 11, which is actually Late for child actors. Um, most child actors or most teen actors have been acting since they were little. So I had kind of a different trajectory of getting into the industry. I was definitely an outlier in sort of, oh, I like school plays. And like, I was almost in junior high, you know, by the time. I started sort of like actually, you know, performing and, you know, being a working actor. So I did blossom from the time that I was 14 to 19.

• 8:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Which are, you know, obviously incredibly important years in your life. And I was two years out of high school when it ended. So I graduated high school at 17. Um, my parents were teachers my whole life. They were documentary filmmakers in the 60s and 70s, but they were English teachers. My dad was a drama teacher, not my drama teacher. But I came from a very education oriented family. My grandparents are immigrants from Eastern Europe. So I really wanted to go to college and I had fallen in love with science when I was on Blossom. You know, I had tutors for different subjects.

• 9:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Ah, so you were already on Blossom and that's when you.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I got interested in science, but like I wasn't a natural science student, you know? By the time I started UCLA, you know, at that time there were, you know, kind of remediation classes, they called them.

• 9:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  To get people caught up who had a different high school experience or who, yeah. I mean, back then it was under this umbrella of like affirmative action, which is very controversial. But at the time, what it meant was that if you're not up to, you know, where other people are with calculus or with chemistry, there were classes that would catch you up in, and that's what I did. And so, um, I was part of that program of, you know, kind of getting to learn science. Yeah, I mean, I had to, I mean, I was two years out of high school and I wasn't naturally like a science mind. So anyway, you know, all of those people who I was in class with are now your doctors and dentists and surgeons. And, you know, we all became whatever our, you know, fantastic UCLA education gave us. So I did my undergrad in neuroscience.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  I minored in Hebrew and Jewish studies, which kept my morale and my GPA up. And then, yeah, I went straight to a graduate program, um, the PhD program in neuroscience, also at UCLA. I got married, I had my first kid in grad school and I took my doctoral hood, um, pregnant, very pregnant with my second son. So my kids are now 17 and 20. Yeah, I did a couple of episodes of like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but I was pretty much out of the industry, you know, for all of those years. I mean, it was 12 years that I was in school and had my kids. So, yeah.

• 10:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, so yeah, so when you went into science, do you remember like what sparked your interest? Like what was it that, you know, being an actor and then going into science? It's like a pretty like 180 almost, right? So like, was there a moment you remember?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  I mean, I had a tutor. She was an undergrad at UCLA at the time. She's now a, you know, successful oral surgeon. But at the time, she was an undergrad who had answered an advertisement saying, you know, Hollywood kid needs a science tutor. Like, that's how it worked. And she was my science tutor. She was from a prominent Persian Jewish immigrant family. And she was a very passionate lover of all things science. And she was my biology tutor. And, you know, it was kind of the first time I had had a female one-on-one, you know, mentor and role model in science. And I think that's very important for, you know, for girls in particular. But, you know, for everyone to be able to kind of see what their life could be like if they were to pursue, you know, a career in STEM, right?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  And her name was Fira Zeh. And she was amazing and I'm still in contact with her. And, you know, the cell, like just the mechanics of the cell was very, very fascinating to me. You know, I do have a strong memory, meaning, you know, it's remembering a lot of terms and a lot of functions. And I still remember how she taught me about the Golgi apparatus and the like, you know, reticular formation, like all these things. I just remembered, you know, how she taught it to me. It was very powerful. It was very exciting. And to think about, you know, the mechanism and like the physiology, right? Of like a system that functions that way was very, very powerful. I was in particular interested in genetics.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  I was really interested in nature versus nurture. That's at least what we called the conversation back in the 90s. And then when I got to college, I took, you know, a lower division class. And it was there that I learned about the neuron. And the electrophysiology of the neuron was the thing that really convinced me like this is the level that I want to study. I really want to study this level of action potentials and refractory periods and, you know, the sodium potassium pump. Like, that's really where my brain was kind of happiest. And I trained in genetics. I worked in a genetics lab. And then my undergrad, I actually worked in functional neuroimaging. So I worked with some of the patients who had had their corpus callosum sectioned.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  So these callosotomy patients were very, very special and we did simple reaction time experiments. And I trained in Iran Zidell's lab and he was a really, really phenomenal mentor. And I worked with Marco Yakoboni, who did a lot of the incredible kind of neuropsychology that led to conversations about consciousness and mirror neuron system and things like that. So that was sort of my training, but for my graduate work, I studied obsessive compulsive disorder in Prader-Willi syndrome. So I studied oxytocin and vasopressin. I did psychoneuroendocrinology was my field for my thesis. And I loved it, you know, I'm a vegan neuroscientist, so I didn't want to work with animals. And so there's a lot of amazing human research, you know, that is being done.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, that's where I landed.

• 14:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, and so you were studying Prader-Willi syndrome. And, you know, that's such an interesting, especially now, like, you know, now that we're talking about GLP-1s and everything like that. And it's like the physiology, the neurophysiology of that syndrome in particular is really like incredible to me and to understand the science behind that. Can you talk a little bit about that and like, what gravitated you towards Prader-Willi?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, if you're not willing to work with animals as a neuroscientist, there's only certain labs that you can then work in. And one of the labs was a lab that focused on mental retardation syndromes, developmental disabilities, and so they studied a lot of different syndromes. And one of them was Prader-Willi syndrome. And so I've always had an interest in working with individuals with special needs. So that was very interesting to me. But it just really seemed like, why has no one looked at things like oxytocin and vasopressin in their high rates of obsessive compulsive disorder? And so, so that was sort of my, my interest, but obviously my study included a lot of different aspects of Prader-Willi syndrome.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  It is the leading genetic cause of obesity, which is like kind of how people know it. But it's also a really beautiful, you know, it's a beautiful example, and the first human example of genomic imprinting, where if you Have a region deleted from your mother versus your father, you get a different syndrome. So Angelman syndrome is what you get from the imprinting from the other parent's chromosome. So it's just like a very special and and very, you know, kind of helpful genetically, very, you know, helpful syndrome.

• 15:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  To study, but it had mostly been studied by geneticists because of the imprinting.

• 15:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Or it had been studied by psychiatrists in terms of like, what is this profile? Individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome often have, you know, other combative behaviors and, you know, oppositional behaviors. So it had been studied from that perspective. But my interest was, is there anything we can know about the hypothalamus that relates? And so hypothalamus is satiety, it's how we know that we're full and, you know, very, very, um, you know, prominent feature of Prader-Willi is they don't know when they're full. You know, when I was in grad school, this was already many years ago, the conversations were around Grelin and Lepton. And could these things be involved? And obviously, we know a lot of different things and, you know, the GLP-1 conversation has has really changed the kind of landscape.

• 16:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  But at that time, you know, caloric restriction was essentially the only thing you could do for, you know, a brain that was never full, right? And so it's very interesting. And many of those, you know, kind of things and the fact that many people, you know, with Prader-Willi syndrome can't live in their homes and they need severe restrictions on access to food, things like that, you know, it's a lifestyle decision, right? For many families. So I mean, it's also just a really lovely community to be part of. It's, um, you know, with any syndrome like that where there's family involvement, it has so much better, you know, prospects for, you know, for lifestyle changes and things like that. So it's just a really lovely, um, community. So I was really grateful to be a part of that community for that time.

• 17:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And you were in Los Angeles, so is there a large Prader-Willi community here?

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's a Prader-Willi Syndrome USA, you know, that kind of serves. And there's an international, you know, organizations as well. And a lot of them are focused on research and funding for research. But yeah, when I worked with the individuals I worked with, we would do blood draws at, you know, community events and things. So I would go to different events and get to meet people there.

• 17:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So interesting. And so you did that for a while, you got your PhD.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then, then you went back to acting.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And what was that transition?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  I had, um, You know, when I, when I took my doctoral hood, as I mentioned, I was very, very pregnant. And I chose not to do a postdoc. I planned to be home with my kids, which is, you know, it's the decision that was right for me. It's not a decision that many women make, or that many men make, I guess. But, you know, for women, it's a decision of, am I gonna be home with my kids? And what's that gonna look like? So for me, I did, did choose to be home with my kids. I, I did teach, and I, I taught, um, I designed a neuroscience curriculum.

• 18:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, you did?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  So for the first, first, um, couple of years after I got my degree, um, I mean, I tutored piano, I tutored Hebrew, I tutored like a lot of different things. But I did, I designed a neuroscience curriculum and I taught junior high and high school homeschoolers in the Los Angeles area. So I taught bio, taught neuroscience, I did a little bit of chemistry, not my favorite thing to teach, um, but I did it. And I was running out of health insurance, because you only get certain health insurance as a grad student, and it extends, you know, for a year. And my husband at the time, he had done a masters, so, um, yeah, I figured if I can just get like a little acting work, like the Screen Actors Guild insurance is so great, like just to cover, you know, I had a baby and, and a toddler. So by the time, you know, I was asked to audition for Big Bang Theory, I had never seen the show.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I didn't know what it was. I wasn't really watching TV. In those days, I had two little kids and I was, you know, like breastfeeding around the clock. Like I wasn't, you know, dialed into sitcoms.

• 19:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  So, um, yeah, by the time I was made a regular, you know, my, my kids were, yeah, a toddler and older toddler.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  But yeah, it was really just like, I never expected to be on a TV show full-time again. I never expected that. It was very surprising and, um, yeah, it kind of happened several times in my career. Like things I didn't expect at all and couldn't have even planned for.

• 19:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Looking for health insurance.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, but still, you know, was able to be with my kids. Um, you know, a sitcom schedule's very friendly.

• 19:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  As it goes. So that was really nice. But it was a, you know, I was a, I was a working, pumping, you know, breastfeeding mom for some time there, so, yeah.

• 19:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that was the next 12 years of your life.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, yeah, I was made a regular in season four. And yeah, for the next nine years, that's where, you know, that was my place of work.

• 19:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, so awesome. And so did they ever come to you and say, hey, we're gonna be talking about, you know, this neurobiological condition, like, is this real?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was a thing that, you know, I think Bill Prady was quoted as saying, they made my character a neurobiologist so that like I could fix things, you know, if they needed fixing. And obviously, we had a very smart writers' room. The internet existed, so they could look things up. But a lot of times, I would get, you know, fun questions, like, we want to mention a tumor that might affect, you know, this, what part of the brain would it be in? Or, you know, a lot of the scenes in my lab, I would work with our prop master, Scott, who, you know, would say to me, like, how thick do I have to slice this to make it look like, you know, like you're actually scanning something? And this, you could never actually see the level of, you know, slice. But we would make it as thin as possible for, you know, at least for visibility's sake.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  But yeah, if there was stuff I had to be doing in, you know, my office or my lab, I would like be like, okay, I'm gonna prepare to run a PCR. What are the things I would do? And I'll go to the fridge, and I'll go to the freezer, and I'll have this pipetter. So, like, that was fun to have that kind of knowledge. You know, we had an episode where Sheldon had to come work in Amy's lab.

• 21:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  And so they asked me, like, well, what kind of things would happen in your lab that he could mess up? And I was like, well, I wouldn't give him a responsibility, like, running a PCR. I wouldn't give him that kind of responsibility. But that's how we came up with that he wouldn't, if you don't rinse, you know, the glassware correctly, it will throw off every experiment you're doing and possibly explode things. So, that's where we, um, you know, kind of focused, like, that Sheldon would not know, that you would have to do an extra rinse and under the, you know, autoclave and things like that.

• 21:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So you would give, like, advice that actually worked out into the script?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  It was usually practical stuff, right?

• 21:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's so cool. I love it.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I bet, like, you know, coming from these two worlds of, like, acting and also science, like, deep knowledge of science, like, the ability to communicate the science probably becomes really natural to you?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's more kind of like when I started my podcast and decided like, you know, I'm gonna be a science communicator kind of as a living. And, you know, I had done really interesting tie-ins with companies, especially, you know, in those days during Big Bang Theory, like, the notion of getting girls involved in STEM was a very big, it was a very big deal that we didn't have women. It's not so much that, in my opinion, that it needs to be like 50/50, but the fact that a lot of girls were not even knowing this is something you can do. Your brain was made to learn the things same as boys were, you know, there are many, you know, also, there are many dynamic, exciting and creative aspects to being a scientist. You know, a lot of that notion of like a scientist alone in a lab, it doesn't appeal to a lot of girls who tend to be social creatures or wanna be more engaged,

• 22:33Speaker 01

  you know, and those are things that like, it's become unpopular to talk about those things, but it does exist that even educating girls was a large part of what I did, you know? And I worked with Texas Instruments for a time and I did a lot of that kind of advocacy.

• 22:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  But in terms of actually being a science communicator, you know, that's a skill that I have from teaching and from having parents who were teachers and from teaching for many years. And so, you know, when my partner Jonathan and I started our podcast, that was kind of the idea was like to democratize mental health in particular.

• 23:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  And now, you know, to talk about the intersection of science and spirituality and to be able to communicate, you know, things that also many of us, which I know you know a lot about, a lot of things that people have dismissed, like, there is science behind it.

• 23:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And there's a way to talk about it in ways that can democratize many aspects of health that for most of medical history has been reserved for elite populations or, you know, just the people who could afford it. I mean, the fact that like, mental health is more accessible than it was even 10 years ago, it's largely due to the fact that we're talking about these things more, people are realizing these are real concerns. And, as I'm sure we'll get into, mental health is intimately linked to gut health, you know, to whole body health, like, you can't really separate these things.

• 23:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No, they're so intimately linked. And, you know, just, just to say real quick, like, I'm sure Big Bang Theory inspired so many women to go into science. Because it just looked fun and interesting.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  And men as well, you know, we have a, we have a scholarship fund that the Chuck Lorre Foundation started through UCLA, where we have literally raised, you know, young students who come from communities where they weren't supported in being able to do that. So it's, you know, financial support so they can focus their, their life on, on these fields. It's very important and it was a really, you know, kind of incredible cultural touch point. You know, this kind of geek chic thing, you know, to have it go more mainstream and have it impact the way people view scientists as well.

• 24:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's so true. I have a daughter who's nine years old and she's so into, we get these little kits at home where she makes some little like engineering type of devices and stuff. And like to her, it's like, it's just normal to do this. And it's like, she doesn't feel like she has to go play with dolls if she doesn't want to. She can do the science stuff.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  You don't have to choose also.

• 24:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. There's no, like in her mind, it's perfectly okay if she wants to be an engineer or scientist or whatever.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  That's great. I'm sure it's to your credit, but also our cultural movement has shifted so that that's not so like, oh my gosh, you want to be a scientist, you know?

• 25:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. And then like even in our kids' school, the robotics class is half girls and half boys, which is fantastic. It's the way it should be, right?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 25:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's the way it should have, but it wasn't like that in the seventies and eighties at all. Like I grew up and like, you know, we grew up around the same time.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And it was not like that in school.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  No, I was told that science was for boys and the boys were right there to confirm that. You know, that girls, we weren't made for it and we're not cut out for it. And yeah.

• 25:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So such a great, great movement.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  It's been a change, yeah.

• 25:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And now medical schools are like mostly women now, you know, are becoming physicians in most medical schools.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  I mean, we need men also to be physicians.

• 25:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. We need a lot more physicians in general, but thank God women are doing it too.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, that's amazing. So I do want to kind of dive into now some of the things that you talk a lot about in your podcast and, you know, maybe a little bit of talk about around stress and neuropsychological implications of how that all works, but also just emotional health. And then our kids, I have so many things. I want to ask you about.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, where should we start?

• 26:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let's start with this concept of, you know, stress. I think, I think that's a really good place to start, just because you mentioned a few things, how the gut and the brain are intimately connected. And I would love to hear kind of how you think about, you know, we all live stressful lives. There's no way we're going to get rid of stress in our lives, right? And so when someone comes to you and says, I'm really stressed out, like it's affecting my health, where should people start and how they think about that?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think, I mean, I guess I can speak to stress, you know, in particular, but I think what, what Jonathan and I have kind of noticed is, you know, exactly the kind of divide I think that you have noticed and, you know, built probably your business around is that Western medicine is really good for some things.

• 26:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  But it's not good for all things. And in some cases, it can be harmful for certain aspects of what you're trying to achieve. Many lifestyle decisions impact stress in ways that I think many of us have wanted to ignore. Meaning it's kind of like, doctor, it hurts when I do this. And if we think about the way many of us were encouraged to sort of live, to study, to spend our free time, you know, with the rise of phones, the way that we are spending our free time, no one should be surprised that their system feels tapped out, that we feel overwhelmed, that we can't manage things that we thought we should be able to manage, that we feel pulled in a million different directions, that we can't sleep, right?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Our stomachs are funky, right? Like, all of these things, this is what happens when the body is stressed.

• 27:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And in many cases, it's like we're prisoners that have the key on the inside of the prison, right? There are so many things that are in our control that, that we can pull levers on, right? And where do you pull those levers? And what support do you need to do that? That's a much larger conversation and it's particular for every person. But, you know, I'm not the kind of celebrity and I'm not the kind of podcaster that says like, here are the things you need to do and your life's going to be amazing. It is hard to be a human.

• 28:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  It's really hard to be a human.

• 28:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's so true.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  And it's hard to be a human if you do want to be dialed into what's happening in the world.

• 28:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Or what's happening in your community, or what's actually going on in your children's internal world.

• 28:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Or what's on their phone. It's hard. And for people who like to, you know, kind of like live in a la la land. Yeah, I'm sure life can seem very easy, but for most of us, it's hard. It's hard to be a caring human.

• 28:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  It's hard to be a feeling human.

• 28:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  It's hard to be a political human on any side of any political issue, right? So our world is stressful in ways that it never has been before.

• 28:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  And this is where people say like, oh, everyone said that. Every generation said that, and our grandparents said that, blah. Absolutely, every generation has its challenges.

• 28:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  When I think about the technological changes that our children have experienced in their lifetime.

• 29:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  They're easily adaptable to things that in many cases are not good for them to be adapting to. Like, the human brain does not evolve so much in 10 years. When you look at the scope of evolution, our nervous system, the primate nervous system, even the mammalian nervous system, is designed for human interaction.

• 29:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  It's designed for meaningful connection.

• 29:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  It's designed to optimize authenticity of the human experience, right? That's what it's made for.

• 29:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, so true.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Talking to each other will never be replaced by talking to a computer. It won't. It can do a lot of amazing things. I was talking to a friend of mine who recently became a therapist, a psychotherapist, and she said, you know, I really hope that AI, you know, doesn't determine the next phase of my career. It is always, right, advantageous to speak human to human. And when we think about raising kids, the stress that they are under to compete, to get perfect grades, like, all of that stuff gets ratcheted up because technology is ratcheting everything up.

• 30:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  That's real and that's true. But, and, the place where Jonathan and I have kind of found this sweet spot in our podcast, especially over the last two years or so, is being in touch with something greater than you.

• 30:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Whether it's religion, whether it's other, you know, meditation, spiritual practices.

• 30:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Acknowledging that this is not all there is.

• 30:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Your work is not all that you are. Even how well your kids do in school is not all of how you are.

• 30:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hmm.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  There's something Larger than us that operates and every physician we speak to, every philosopher we speak to, every theoretical physicist we speak to acknowledges the same thing. So we get to come at it in all these different ways. Having a connection to something greater than yourself and however you find it. Some people find it through art, some people find it through meditation, some people find it through religious practice. That is one of the main things that also supports an immune system that can respond to stress. And no one has connected those things in our lifetime.

• 31:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  No one said that.

• 31:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Now we're seeing it.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  And now we're seeing it.

• 31:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, yeah.

• 31:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hi, Dr. Shaw here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30-year-old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60-year-olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells you see are like phones and they have limited cellphone battery. Poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IM8. IM8 powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92-ingredient formula designed specifically for cellular health and longevity.

• 32:07Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm talking 900 milligrams of vitamin C. That's like 20 oranges worth of DNA protection. The clinical dose of CoQ10 that you need to power your cellular engine. You also get zinc, selenium, vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid. All of these work synergistically for cellular repair and protecting your telomeres. So instead of taking a handful of pills every day and all these supplements, IM8 actually gives you everything that you need in one scientifically formulated system. And this isn't just a theory anymore. IM8 had partnered with Oxford University, the International Space Station, San Francisco Research Institute, and they've done studies and they've gotten this NSF certified to truly power your health.

• 32:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Most people are aging twice as fast as they should, unfortunately. You don't have to be one of them. Try IM8. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshah.com/ima or go to im8health.com/discount/drsah and you can get 20% off with my discount code, DrShah. You can also find the link below.

• 33:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So first of all, on the human connection piece, when I started this podcast a year ago and I sat here talking to people, I just realized like, this is the best thing I do. And then I thought about like, why do I feel that way about this podcast? And then I, then I, you know, thought about it. It's like, I miss having conversations with people.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right? Like when we grew up and we were kids, there were no cell phones at all.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 33:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The only way you communicated was to sit in front of somebody.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And talk. I remember having hours long conversations with people.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, we would talk on the phone, which I remember my parents were like, the phone is rotting your brain. Like the TV is rotting, everything was rotting my brain. But I remember also, you know, remember when we wanted call waiting?

• 33:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  And my parents were like, why?

• 33:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  They'll get a busy signal, right? That was astonishing. But yeah, that kind of human connection, it's, it's a lost art. And you see it in young people. It's a lost art. It's very hard to teach kids to look people in the eye, to have these conversations, to call customer service if you need something, you know?

• 34:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Do you remember when texting first started and it was a big thing in China? And it didn't really like take a hold of the United States until later.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Trying to think.

• 34:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it was probably.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I remember also when texting started, it was much more procedural.

• 34:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  It was much more like, what time are we meeting? It almost served like a beeper that you could type in.

• 34:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  But then it became conversations on text. And I'm like, I think this is where the breakdown in our society happened.

• 34:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I 100% think that.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Because you have so many also connections with people that you feel are your friends. And you feel you're close with them and you're sharing all these things, but you're actually not really knowing what's going on. You're just reporting things into a phone, right? It's so strange.

• 34:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. So I, I always think back upon that, like, when did we lose the art of communication?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I feel like texting was, was number one and then social media became like texting on.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Well, and it's just like, it's such a time suck. Like if we're talking about also stress, like the amount of time that we have given over. No one's, no one is forcing us.

• 35:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  No one's holding a gun to our head, except the companies that devise these algorithms.

• 35:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  We now know. Literally were built out of a desire to hijack attention.

• 35:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, right.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Sneak into that dopamine loop.

• 35:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  I mean, that's it. You're getting, it's all like you are getting the dopamine system activated.

• 35:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Like a drug. It is. It's like a drug, which is why it is so hard. I mean, put a teenager through withdrawal is what it looks like when you take away their phone.

• 35:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  It's like withdrawal. They don't feel good. They can't focus. They don't want to think. They don't want to do anything. They're depressed. Like, it's their win withdrawal. Like, that's what it is. If you've ever lost Wi-Fi and don't have data, you will see what withdrawal looks like in a teenager. You know, from this dopamine hit.

• 36:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and, and you know, it's, um, it's so important to emphasize that these dopamine hits are drugs. Because it's like, it is, um, it is so true. Like, my son, he's very susceptible to this. Like, if, if we take away his iPad, he will literally, like, spend all day trying to, like, find it and steal it and try to trick us and play mental games and...

• 36:25Speaker 01

  It's literally, it, it is, I mean, it is. It's a drug system.

• 36:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It is.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Meaning that we're, that we're tapping into. And I think that with kids especially, we're seeing what kind of dopamine burnout looks like. And what it means is there's always the more exciting, the weirder, the stranger, the more inane. You know, you keep looking for it. You see it in porn addiction.

• 36:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Where you keep looking for, like, a bigger hit. You need a bigger hit, a bigger hit.

• 36:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  It happens with, with dopamine like that. I mean, I should also say, like, there's a nod, you know, in certain aspects of, of your field for also understanding what good stress looks like.

• 37:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Right? And it's important, and there's certain, you know, kind of stress with a lowercase s, right? Versus stress with a big S. And we want our cells and our systems to be challenged, right? There's a certain stress, and this is what cold plunge does for a lot of systems, right? And things like that. We want to kind of challenge our bodies. A lot of people do this with, like, the ketone glucose fasting, you know, challenge, which I have a lot of opinions about that, and it can be problematic. But the notion that we are resilient is also something that I think is important to talk about when we talk about stress.

• 37:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Because the system can seem very fragile when everything can throw us off. Everything can make us reactive. We're yelling at our kids, right? We're blowing up relationships. That's often because you've already passed the level where your body was saying, "Stop, stop, stop." Like, how many ways do you want us to tell you? And then you're like screaming at a person on the freeway and you don't know why, right? Like, the body has many ways that it's told you, "We need stress that's this kind. We don't need so much that's that kind." So I also wanted to give a shout out to positive stress.

• 38:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes. Yeah, and you know, I always talk about a lot of this podcast too. Like, those positive stresses are an opportunity for you to relearn how to balance your nervous system, right?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So if you're, like, for example, we have a cryotherapy chamber here, right? And there's one way to walk into a cryotherapy chamber all stressed out. And just like, "I can't believe I'm doing this." You're clenched, and you go in there, you can't wait to get out. And it's like, and it's like, it's a very-

• 38:24Speaker 01

  That's not optimal.

• 38:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That is not optimal. Instead, you go in, do some breath work, you realize-

• 38:30Speaker 01

  You have an intention.

• 38:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  With intention, right, exactly. And that moment of parasympathetic regulation and sympathetic regulation, you carry that through the three-minute experience.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 38:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You come out, and it's a game changer for people.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  And also, the fact that, like, the notion of intention-

• 38:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Has scientific basis. And this is where we used to have this divide, right? There's the woo-woo people out there who are like talking about past lives and energy centers and all these things and manifesting, blah, blah. But then we have the true science of like, what does it mean to manifest, right? So there's actually an environment that you can create in your nervous system that is more likely to be able to receive positivity. That's actually a thing. When you talk about breath work, when you stimulate the vagus nerve, when you say to your nervous system, "The only way I can be breathing like this is if I'm not running from a predator," right?

• 39:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  When we learn to breathe into our belly and not just into our shoulders and our chest.

• 39:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Right? Like that kind of breathing tells your nervous system, something's wrong. So when we're setting that intention and we're breathing and we are regulating our HRV, when we're lowering our heart rate, when we're getting into that like, how do we get to theta? Right? How do we get there? What does meditation teach us? For thousands of years, people have known this. This is not like, oh, guess what? We've got this new thing.

• 39:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Figured this thing out, right?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Correct. Like for thousands of years yogis and mystics have been saying this. That creates what's kind of like a cellular environment, right? For an advantageous experience. So when people are like, I tried it, it didn't work for me. What was the environment that you were presenting when you stepped into that chamber?

• 40:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  You know, it's kind of like you can grit your way through a transcendental meditation 20 minutes. It's not going to have that kind of impact.

• 40:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  You know, and it's, it's really sad because people want all of medicine to work like it's Western.

• 40:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. And it doesn't work that way?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  It doesn't work that way. And like, everybody wants Advil, right? They want the Ibuprofen. It's like, it hurt, now it doesn't. Guess what? That's not how your nervous system actually works.

• 40:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  You know, and if you take too much, you're going to get an ulcer, right?

• 40:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly. Right. Or worse.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Some people, exactly.

• 40:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Or worse, right? Yeah, and so, you know, I think about this, the other side of this that you mentioned was attention and how, you know, I think about the neurology of attention, right? Like, there's different types of attention that we have. And I think we've also become very disconnected from the ability to maintain attention, right? And so people talk a lot about attention deficit disorder, and that's one thing. But I think we all have a level of not knowing anymore how to control our attention.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, look, there's, you know, there's attention, there's perception, right? These are sort of related kind of concepts, at least from like a neuropsychological perspective and a like neuroanatomical perspective. But you know, people like Johann Hari, you know, who, he's a journalist and an author, you know, but his, you know, his book on attention brought to the forefront a very complicated and painful notion, which is, as a culture, we can effectively give ourselves varying levels of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

• 41:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  And one of the ways is by burning out our dopamine sources, right? One of the ways is by constantly toggling. One of the ways is by promoting and, you know, highlighting and rewarding multitasking, when what it actually is, is dividing your attention to a level that your nervous system will then get used to and expect. And having constant stimulation from your phone, even knowing your phone is in the room, even if it's on the other side of the room, changes your ability to toggle, right? And to pay attention. So like, and I'm not saying that ADHD is not a real diagnosis, like, of course it is. Like, it's not for me to say I'm not a physician, it's not my specialty, but what are the components that we can modify? And guess what?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  No one wants to think about diet. It impacts every component of our attention.

• 42:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  It impacts every component of autism spectrum. Meaning when people were like, "You can cure autism with diet." Of course you can't. That's ridiculous. But are there components of the body's system that react differently to ultra-processed foods? There are. Don't believe the FDA when they're like, "Everything's fine. Eat your, like, processed meats." Don't listen to the FDA. Like, listen to them with other things if you'd like to. But when we think about the features of autism spectrum diagnosis, when we talk about the features of ADHD, when we talk about anxiety and you have this beautiful overlap, right? How many Venn diagrams do you need between autism, between anxiety, and between ADHD?

• 43:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  There's a fascinating overlap. And at the heart of it is a lot of lifestyle decisions that people like RFK Jr. do no favors to people because, in my opinion, like, he's, it's so out there and the messenger is so not able to be interpreted, like, I don't even know. But when we talk about things like food dyes, that- The rest of the world for decades have said, no one should be eating this.

• 43:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  And the US is holding firm like, no, we should be eating all these diets. They're delicious. Those are the kind of things that do have an impact. When you eat sugar, it makes a difference.

• 43:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Children drinking caffeine, guess what? For those of them that are susceptible to attention problems, it may be the drug that you use instead of Adderall, but we have to like have larger conversations about how we treat attention. And TV, we knew wasn't fantastic for us when we watched it this close. And our parents were like, it's gonna hurt your eyes. Think of all the media that our children are now seeing and getting at all times. My 20 year old says, I don't even want to be on this thing.

• 44:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  And he said, it's like, you're in a cycle.

• 44:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  And it's because companies are stealing your attention.

• 44:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's so true. And even, even TV shows, like now, they engineer these TV shows with like the movement of the characters to like, give you those dopamine hits. Cause they know that's what's gonna keep your, your kid glued to the TV.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Try and watch an 80s movie.

• 44:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  With your teenager or your kid.

• 44:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They can't do it.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  They're so bored. It's like, why does everything take so long? And even me, I like rewatched, you know, some old movies from when I was a teenager and I was like, we're taking a lot of time in character development here.

• 45:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  It was so different, you know? And that, that is the change that we can see. But like I said, it doesn't take a neuroscientist to tell you, the human brain does not evolve like that.

• 45:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Well, not in 20 years.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Correct. It doesn't evolve like that. That in the time since phones started, oh, my brain is programmed for this. No, it's not.

• 45:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  No.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  It's programmed to look me in the eye, tell me how you're feeling, cry when you're sad, laugh when you're happy, hug each other, hold hands, you know, like have time before bed to process everything that just happened. Like falling asleep with your phone, grownups, it's like the same thing that it does to kids. It's terrible.

• 45:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's terrible.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  It's terrible.

• 45:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the things that we do as grownups, they magnify in, in our kids.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Oh, totally.

• 45:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Because a kid's brains aren't developed enough to be resilient to it.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  But I'm just saying, heads up, grownups.

• 45:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Even though we tell our Kids not to do it, you also should not be doing it.

• 45:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  And we all do it. Like, that's the thing. It's, you know, um, it's a painful realization.

• 46:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The damage is invisible until it actually, you know, becomes too late, sadly.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Autoimmune diagnoses, you know, even, you know, the diseases that plague us in so many cases, you know.

• 46:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  All the chronic diseases.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  All the chronic diseases are, in many cases, preventable because of diet and lifestyle. They, they just are. And we get, it's too late, you know, by the time most of us are diagnosed. But for women in particular, when you get to menopause, you know, you're then having a totally different hormonal situation. And autoimmune diagnoses are on the rise. Everyone should be wondering what's going on. In many cases, it's how we're living. But it's also environmental toxin, all those things that the hippies were like, maybe we shouldn't be using this. Guess what? It, it matters.

• 46:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  They were right.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  It matters, yeah.

• 46:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely matters. So, you know, I, going back to like attention deficit and autism. And, you know, all, all these diagnoses out of this Venn diagram, which is absolutely true. Like, you can't separate all these things and give them names.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  I mean, you can try, and thank God there are specialists that do, but yeah.

• 47:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, but I had Christopher Palmer on this podcast. You know who he is? He, he wrote this incredible book called Brain Energy. And he basically said that all these, you know, thousands of named psychological conditions, you can, you can go down to a few root causes, right? And metabolic health is one of them for sure. To your point, the food that we're eating, right?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  And the way that we're eating it.

• 47:26Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And the way, yeah, absolutely. And then the health of our gut, right? I mean, our microbiome has a lot to do with this.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  If your gut's inflamed, your brain's inflamed. And if your brain's inflamed, your gut's inflamed.

• 47:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's so true. And those are things that are happening like below your brain, like in this part of the body, right? And above here, we're also causing damage equal to, to that, or maybe even more, with the pass switching, with the dopamine hits, right?

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Oh, and also like with alcohol, with weed being so ubiquitous. It's like, I feel fine. What are you actually doing to feel fine? And with the over-prescription of pharmaceuticals in place of mental health support, psychotherapy, time, you know? Yes, that's all the above the neck.

• 48:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, so the above the neck and the below the neck damage is adding up to this kind of massive Venn diagram of of mental health issues that we have, right? And so, you know, I think that the conversation around mental health for so long has just been, if you have a mental health issue, see a psychiatrist, get prescribed a Prozac.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  If you can afford it, and if not, good luck.

• 48:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, exactly. So one of the platforms that you've been, you know, I think empowering a lot of people is to not put mental health into that bucket of, you know. So I'd love to, you know, kind of talk about that. Like, how do you, when you talk about mental health on your podcast, like, what are some of the advice you can give people that are struggling?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, as I said, the the goal for us was to try and democratize mental health. We started during COVID when, you know, me with basically an entire life of therapy under my belt, you know, I've tried every different medication there is in every combination over the course of my life, you know, to deal with mental health issues, including hormones, you know, because as a teenager, that's what they do, they put you on the pill, right? So there there's all this like regulation of mood, but, you know, during COVID, I was freaking out, right? I had all this anticipatory anxiety.

• 49:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Sleep got disrupted, food got disrupted, I was overeating, you know, all these things. And Jonathan and I said to ourselves, if me, with all of my years of training, therapy, you know, 12 step groups for eating and all that, if this is happening, what about people who haven't had any support? So we wanted to create a place to even define for people, do you know the difference between anxiety and depression?

• 49:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Do you know the difference between an anxiety attack and a panic attack? They're actually different things, right? We started with just sort of educating people and we had guests on who would speak from personal experience. That's how we started. And guess what kept coming up? Addiction.

• 49:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Filling the God-shaped hole.

• 49:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  And spirituality as a solution for grounding yourself. So that's where our podcast kind of shifted and maybe the mental health conversation needs to be bigger, right? And in many cases, it's bigger and sometimes it's actually smaller. The answer is right in here, right? If we tap into a notion of self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-love, right? What the yogis and mystics have been talking about for thousands of years, our body has a better capacity to deal with whatever comes at it. That was sort of like the plainest way that we sort of evolved.

• 50:25Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. So the podcast was kind of born from the magnified struggles during COVID.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 50:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  In people's lives and that you were noticing, even in yourself.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so in terms of what we tell people, we are big proponents of talk therapy. I, I believe in it very strongly. I believe in it really for everyone. And I'm not saying you have to be in therapy forever. I'm not saying you have to love psychotherapy. But talking about your feelings is a skill that helps you process and metabolize emotionally. Right? That was sort of one thing. For many people, they really think they can figure it out on their own.

• 51:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. I did that for years.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  We do until we don't. And that's really the thing. So in many cases, we're trying to empower people to advocate for themselves. And that can be really hard because our medical system is really compromised, especially in this department. And I grew up, you know, my, my dad was a public school teacher. So I grew up, you know, at Kaiser and I love Kaiser and I love the doctors that work there. But they're overwhelmed.

• 51:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  They're, they're underserved. And yeah, how much do you expect a doctor to do when they can have 10 minutes with you?

• 51:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  A lot of people need to know how to advocate for themselves, to be able to say, I need a referral. To be able to say, I need more help, or to be able to say, I think this might be connected. So that's a lot of what we encourage people to do also, is to believe that you don't have to do it on your own. And we do make very practical suggestions of things like getting off your phone.

• 51:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Learning to breathe. Before you even learn to meditate, learn to breathe.

• 51:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Breathe into your belly. If you've ever been to a yoga class, they will teach you how to do it. Learn to breathe into your belly. It does wonders for your nervous system. The next level up would be to learn meditation.

• 52:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  And there are all different kinds of meditation. If you can't sit still, there's walking meditations you can do. Learning to focus your energy, it is good for your nervous system. Any vagus nerve support that people can do.

• 52:21Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  People don't understand what it means when we say that humming is actually good. Breathing deeply and low and like that kind of vibration. Exactly, that's what OM was made for. It stimulates your nervous system to know also how to regulate. A huge thing that we see, you know, when, when we talk to humans is an imbalance in the sympathetic and parasympathetic system. So anything that sort of brings those back into balance. Exercise, enormous. Move your body every day. Move your body every day. In many cases, you know, SSRIs are actually not what's going to be the most helpful. For some people, they are, and that's fantastic. But for the people who take SSRIs and say, I'm still depressed, what's wrong? Many psychiatrists will give you a second pill. And I see the commercials on TV. Oh, your SSRI is not working?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  It's because you need this other pill to make it work.

• 53:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  That, that may be the solution. I am not a psychiatrist. I don't give medical advice. However, there are incredible studies about cognitive behavioral therapy. So if talk therapy is not for you, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, these are things that go toe to toe with SSRIs in some really, really beautiful, large studies. We know that CBT can help in many cases where SSRIs don't. But moving your body is one of those things. Those are the big ones. And also, you know, drinking, pot use, edibles, everybody loves an edible. Everybody's microdosing this, that and the other. If you want to figure out why you're doing something, stop doing it. If when you stop doing those things, you find yourself plagued by thoughts, feelings, fears, anxiety, you then find yourself overfeeding yourself, right?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Chances are you need to speak to someone about what's going on, you know? Cause those are things that everybody's using, but I often dig deeper when people are like, I'm fine, everything's great. It's like, oh, but you are needing to smoke weed all day. It's like, is that the only solution, you know?

• 54:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's kind of like, it's just another pharmaceutical covering up the symptoms of something deeper and it's, it's going to end up just exploding after a while anyway. And I just want to add to that list, which is an amazing list. Like if you are struggling with any mental health issues, there's so many pieces to this puzzle.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 54:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Including getting exercise, avoiding ultra-processed food, learning breath work, learning how to regulate your parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system. I'll add going outside.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, nature.

• 54:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Going out into nature.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  That's something greater than yourself, as I would, you know, kind of categorize it, right? Absolutely. Get get off your phone and get outside.

• 54:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, exactly. All of these can contribute to healing from these emotional, psychological disturbances. And you have to do all of them together. It's not just one pill.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  And that's what really sucks.

• 54:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  That's what really sucks. It's like, everybody wants the one thing. And again, it's because we're raised in a Western capitalist culture, right? Like, what gets us there the quickest, the fastest? Can I throw money at the problem? With this kind of thing, yes, it helps to throw money at the problem sometimes. But ultimately, like I said, I do feel like we're all prisoners inside a prison that we have the key to. You know, there's so many levers that we that we can pull, also in ways that don't cost money. You know, sometimes we do have to invest in our health that way. And that's also really hard to navigate. But that's another thing, like this, this is a human right, you know, to to have access to this information.

• 55:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, so true. You know, there's one piece of this that's hard for me to kind of reconcile is that I grew up in a family and a culture and a time where there's a huge stigma around talking about your mental health. Right? Like, if you talked about it, you were weak. And you just have to get over it, right? And people even now on social media, like, you know, yelling at the camera, saying like, if you're if you're depressed, stop being depressed. What's wrong with you?

• 55:59Speaker 01

  I mean, and a lot of this has become very politicized.

• 56:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Um, where it's seen that like, oh, certain people are just like delicate snowflakes and they can't handle anything and they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I think a lot of this has become, unfortunately, politicized. You know, there's always going to be people who want to shove this aside. And I think it's also important, you know, I don't know that I can fix everyone. I don't know that you can fix everyone, but to keep trying to give support, you know, to people who are noticing that they are a human being and not a human doing.

• 56:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  You know, and when we see, especially in, you know, communities that historically don't talk about these things.

• 56:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  It's important, you know, to have. Role models and advocates. And I think that's another thing that we try and do on our podcast. We try and show all different kinds of people from all different backgrounds. Some of them are poor, some of them are rich. You know, we have people of all religious faiths, of none, um, you know, who come on to talk about the importance of being in touch with something greater than yourself, the importance of nature and that relationship. It really, these things touch everyone. And, you know, it's very kind of trite to say it's a sign of strength to ask for help, not weakness. But the fact is like, the stigma is real because, um, it's kind of like, people do wonder, well, what can you take? What can you tolerate?

• 57:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Sure.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Am I going to be able to employ you? Right? These are some of the real fears.

• 57:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's so true. You know, it is, it is a sign of strength to seek help and, um, not a sign of weakness. And that thing is so important. Even though it might sound trite, it's so true for the people looking for help.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  For men in particular. And that's something that Jonathan talks about on our podcast. And, you know, a lot of women are like, men have had all of medical history to talk about things. But this is an arena where we really do need to remind, um, men that, you know, especially if you want to be a partner, your partner is going to want someone who is in touch with themselves, who can communicate, who can feel deeply and who can process that. And, you know, I'm raising two boys. And it's been really fascinating and I'm grateful that they're growing up in this time. Because there's still some of that, you can't avoid it. You know, boys don't cry, like that's still, that happens no matter what you say. Um, but just the notion that your feelings matter. And if you keep them inside, they will start wearing away at your immune system,

• 58:17Speaker 01

  at your ability to process food, all these things. You know, once I explained that to my, to my boys, like if you have inflammation that is causing you depression, anxiety, it's going to hit your gut next, you know? And then it's going to kind of start ricocheting, you know?

• 58:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think just about a year ago, there was a study published, I think in Cell Magazine, where they showed that your emotional centers of your brain have a direct connection to the immune cells.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  That's right. It's a beautiful study, yeah.

• 58:44Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I mean, right there, like it gives me chills just even thinking about it.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 58:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  There is a connection between your immune system and your emotions.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Well, and the, the best explanation I've heard of this is that if you think about your immune system as protecting what comes in and what comes out, your emotional system is doing the same thing.

• 59:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, that's so true.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  What can come in, what can come out? How do I regulate it? What, what barriers can I put up? That is where it literally is, it's, it's one in the same.

• 59:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's so true. Well, the other thing I want to talk to you about is something that I've talked about a few times on this podcast. And I'm sure you have too, is this notion of your childhood traumas. And, you know, so many of us have some level, and you can even do like a test, like what is your childhood trauma?

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a real hoot to do that test.

• 59:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  That's a good time. It's first date, first date material.

• 59:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I think, I think there's certain levels of this for many people. And I don't think, I grew up in a time, once again, that you're not supposed to even talk about. It's not even worth talking about.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 59:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Let's just like suppress it.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then now there's more and more research coming out that a lot of what we deal with and a lot of our reactions, a lot of our emotions have a lot to do with our suppressed childhood traumas. Will you talk about that a little bit?

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, this is obviously a topic for, you know, an entire podcast. You know, I would refer people to Gabor Maté, to The Myth of Normal, which is also like, if you want to read one book about what is ailing us, the things that we've been told, oh, it's just normal, it's normal, it's normal. Guess what? It's not, you know? So The Myth of Normal is a great place.

• 1:00:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Incredible book.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  The Body Keeps the Score is sort of, I would say, the more extreme end of this spectrum.

• 1:00:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Because we have lowercase t trauma and we have uppercase T trauma. And if everyone's traumatized, no one's traumatized. So there also needs to be ways for us to understand. Meaning you could say, for all of human history, there's been trauma.

• 1:00:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  And there has been. I mean, think of war, slavery, the way women have been treated and continue to be treated historically in certain parts of the world as well. Trauma runs through our existence.

• 1:00:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Exactly.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  So in that case, you can't be like, we're all traumatized and that's all affecting everything. We know the things that our systems are dealing with. But when we talk about these specific traumas, if you grow up in an abusive home.

• 1:00:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  If you grow up in a home where there is alcoholism, if you grow up in a home where even someone has chronic disease that you're dealing with. If you grew up in a home where there's poverty or strife, if you grow up in a home where you are hit, where you see your parent hit. These are the things that do stay in, in certain bodies in different ways. And this is the hard thing. Every body is different. Yes. And there's only so many twin studies we can do. And there are only so many ethical studies that we can do to try and figure this out. But the way that I think about it, you know, you don't know what template you're getting when you have a child. Or when you are a child. Some children will see things and it will stay with them forever.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Other children will see those things and it won't stay with them forever. So there's not a hard and fast here. But we do have really good longitudinal studies about, for example, hitting children. Yeah. You know, I like to know, you can't hit a dog, right? You can't hit your wife. And here we are still trying to promote like, oh, sometimes you have to hit a kid, right? So like, those things we know, you know, have impact. And then we have the vast catalog of trauma that falls under sexual abuse. And that falls under these kinds of abuse also that happens as adults. And I'm not saying that those are different more or less. But when we think about what sexual assault, what rape does, you know, what trafficking and growing up in strife,

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  growing up in war, I mean, we can look all over the world now and our hearts break for what's happening all over the world to children being raised like this. The body will react to that and the body does keep the score. So what are the things that we can do? Obviously, working on all these issues and protests and all these things we have to do to try and stop this kind of trauma from existing. Right. But, you know, there are also people who believe like, intergenerational trauma is not a thing. It's a thing and there's really fascinating scientific research and a lot of it, a lot of really phenomenal research came out of Israel, kind of post Holocaust to show the, kind of the origins of what we now know is the way that your grandparents experienced things do impact you.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  So the way I describe it, you know, the egg that I was, was in my grandmother when she was fleeing pogroms. When she was being separated from her siblings who were being sent to concentration camps. The egg that is now me was in her body. What does that mean? How does that work? What is epigenetics? But these things matter. And I will say that historically, women have borne the brunt of a lot of trauma that we have been instructed to, to push down. And, and part of that is not like, I'm not trying to say that men are horrible and the patriarchy, this, that. But when I think about how my grandmother was raised, she was raised to be someone's wife. Yeah.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  And love marriages is a very recent thing in human history.

• 1:03:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It's so true.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  And in many cases, you know, people would fall in love and build lives together. But the harsh reality is that for most of human history, women were really supporting a lot of emotional labor that is passed on in particular. So, trauma is real. I do believe intergenerational trauma is real. And a bad date does not constitute trauma, meaning if you don't like the restaurant that he picked, you know? And I don't mean to say that that can't be upsetting and it triggers, but when we think about kind of social media and the pathologizing that we do of behavior, this is a place where I think trauma is getting kind of misunderstood and misinterpreted.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Because if everything is a trigger and everything is a trauma, it doesn't allow us to actually understand the nomenclature necessary to get people the support that they need. And so, there's a lot of comedians who do a lot of funny things about this generation, like, "I was traumatized when my coffee was wrong," you know, things like that. But I think we also do need to right-size it.

• 1:04:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  And be aware that social media gives the opportunity. You can diagnose yourself autistic in a heartbeat. You can, you know, find out all sorts of diagnoses. And he's narcissistic and she's the... I mean, I took a quiz that told me I might have Tourette's. And I was like, "I'm certain I don't." And what it was, was the questions about, "Do you sometimes feel a compulsive need to correct people?" And I said, "Yes, I do." I'm pretty certain that it's not on the Tourette's level. But we need to be careful with trauma also.

• 1:05:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, for sure.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Because there's so much information out there that is not necessarily scientifically grounded or clinically grounded. And in many ways, can kind of erode what we do need support for in the trauma arena.

• 1:05:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think too, like, to your point, it's really important that people get clear on, like, what is truly a trauma?

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:05:38Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And then explore, like, what was traumatic in your life? Like, all the things that you said, like, you know, you could add to that, like bullying, or maybe you got really sick when you were a kid. Those things can be... Or you saw a family member get sick.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  But we're also very resilient. We're also very resilient. And I think that's a piece, especially for young people, that we need to remind them.

• 1:05:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  We are very, very resilient. And we- Women in particular, like we are giving birth to humans that we've grown in our body. And then we keep them alive. Women are very, very resilient.

• 1:06:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  So I think that's important, too, that we reemphasize that as we sort of diagnose these things.

• 1:06:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, and I think too, like, I mean, there's two sides to this. There's traumas that's kind of causing you to act in a specific way and to understand like, how do your traumas

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  inform your current decision-making processes, inform the way that you're reacting to things.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I think that's the reason that you really try to dive into some of these traumas.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right?

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Well, and I think also the danger is, you know, I read a really great article by Freya India about this. I think it was on the Free Press, and it was saying, and she is this generation, she said, this generation has turned everything into a clinical diagnosis.

• 1:06:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's true.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  So if you're kind, am I a people pleaser? You know, if you do something for your boyfriend, am I codependent? He puts, you know, his need to visit his mother over, you know, your dinner date and, you know, he's a narcissistic.

• 1:07:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  He's a narcissist.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I think that's also part of it, is that we have all of this nomenclature that needs to be, you know, modified. Depending on the situation.

• 1:07:10Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. You know, a big thing now, too, is the use of psychedelics and traumas and attention deficit, all these things. And do you think that there's a role, do you think we're overstating the role right now? How do you think this is all gonna land eventually?

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  I, so I fall on the side of, and we had Rick Doblin on, you know, very early.

• 1:07:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, yeah, I love Rick.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  I fall on the side of the, the notion of, you know, psychedelics as a criminal narcotic enterprise that the government, you know, essentially kind of thrust upon us.

• 1:07:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  It has hurt a lot of people.

• 1:07:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  And I do think that psilocybin-assisted therapy, if done in a clinically appropriate licensed manner, I think it's incredibly transformative, especially for people who have complex PTSD, for people who have trauma that is outside of the realms of what a lot of other avenues are exploring. Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, we have a little less information about, however, very, very

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Powerful and fascinating research again about this, not as a party drug, not as even something you're doing recreationally. And I think that's the thing. If people want to have mushroom journeys, like have a great time. That's not what I'm talking about and that's not what we're talking about when we speak about this, especially for things like PTSD. There's amazing, amazing work that is done when you are able to access something greater than yourself. Especially for, you know, for, for terminal patients, death fear, you know, and, and all of these studies.

• 1:08:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  DMT and.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  The DMT, I mean, that's like very, again, like less research than psilocybin. But I think that this notion that again, that the government decides to, you know, say that like expansion of consciousness when used in a therapeutic, you know, modality is criminal or there's no, I think, you know, like there's no medical, that's not even true. There's plenty of legitimate medical support for it. And I think it's, I think it's an incredibly important field.

• 1:09:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I totally, and I, I talked to Rick Goblin quite a bit a couple of weeks ago actually. And he's doing such pioneering work in trying to get this back to, you know, clinical medical use.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:09:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, sadly, there are people still using it very recreationally and.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's, yeah, it's not for me to say, I mean, yes, people are, and, and also, you know, the, the notion of microdosing and kind of, you know, there was a lot of articles about like the moms who are microdosing and things like that. I mean, I think it's speaking to kind of everything that we've spoken about. It's speaking to people being burnt out, tapped out, women in particular, not having support or resources, and us thinking that we need to live up to some, you know, goal of being like perfect and, you know, having every hour of our children's lives scheduled, that that's going to lead to happiness, you know? Yeah.

• 1:09:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a role also in just giving you yourself some grace too, especially if you're a woman.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:09:57Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And giving yourself.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  But yeah, but I think we should listen, you know, when, when people, especially women who have a tremendous amount of financial resources and access to help, when those women are, you know, saying there's an unhappiness and an emptiness and I just can't get through the day. To me, that points to a larger societal problem. What is going on that people feel the need essentially to? Disconnect, you know, I mean, that's and in many cases, you know, psilocybin microdosing can be used therapeutically, but when it's just like, I feel shitty and I'd rather be stoned all the time, we all have to wonder what's going on here.

• 1:10:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I know this is a numbing of the mind as people are trying to get there.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  It's the God shaped hole. Yeah.

• 1:10:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, the God shaped hole. On the topic of God, and you've said a few times, it's God shaped holes in people's, in people's lives. You know, there's so many definitions of God and how, and how to bring, how to fill this hole, right? And so, you know, obviously, you can have a religious practice, you can, you can have spiritual practices not religious, but I think a lot of people just even shy away from spirituality completely nowadays, because it's just not something that we've completely disconnected in society.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  And it's been associated with a lot of woo woo things, which I get it.

• 1:11:05Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, so how do you, how do you help those people fill this hole?

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  I mean, look, the, the fact is, you're welcome to run from this, you know, for as long as you'd like to, right? You can try and avoid tapping into something for as long as you'd like to. You know, organized religion's definitely not for everybody. There's a lot of, you know, patriarchy to it. There's a lot of historical horrible, you know, problematic aspects to it. You know, there's not, there's not a religious practice that hasn't had some crisis of, you know, controversy, in addition to the things we all know about religion, which is that people kill in the name of God and all these things. However, the truth is that, you know, just like gravity exists, and I don't have to wish it away, and I don't have

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  to pray for it every day. I'm a human being with consciousness, and I'm observing all the wavelengths that are not absorbed, right, of every particle that exists. And the same thing that created. The universe that we live in, the big bang, however you wanna, however far back you wanna go, however many tens of billions of years you wanna go back.

• 1:12:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  That's the experience that we're having now on a planet that is hurtling through space, held by some elliptical force, right? So whatever level of like wow you'd like to have, that's divine.

• 1:12:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  And that wow moment, that like, oh my goodness. It's the same thing as when you see your lover across the room.

• 1:12:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  That feeling, I call it like that elevator drop feeling when your gut goes like, oh my gosh, right? Like that feeling is what every energy worker will tell you to tap into.

• 1:12:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Got it.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  And generate. That's divine.

• 1:12:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  So religious people will call that God.

• 1:13:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  They'll have lots of rituals and fascinating things that their culture devised, you know, hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago. There's lots of ways to pray to it, to try and focus it, to harness it, to put it in your body. Those are all the things that humans do.

• 1:13:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  But for me, there's only one source. There's gravity. There's all the forces of physics, the things that math tries to explain, like we're all, that to me, that's oneness. Like that's unity. And some religions have hundreds of gods, thousands of gods, and others have one. They all have the same force of gravity. It's my favorite example. Things will always fall at negative 9.8 feet per second squared. Like that's just what's gonna happen.

• 1:13:42Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  That's gonna happen no matter where. That's what we are asking non-religious, non-spiritual people to tap into.

• 1:13:50Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Whatever makes you feel wow, if it's the stars in the sky, amazing. If it's a tree, if it's a hike, if it's remembering what it feels like to give birth, if it's watching someone transition to the next world, whatever it is, that's the source of healing.

• 1:14:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  You know, and so when you see all these religions, like God is love, like it's not just because they wanna sell you something, it's because for thousands of years, people have been tapping into like, there's something special about the fact that we're having this conversation.

• 1:14:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  There's something special about our existence. That's divine.

• 1:14:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  And yeah, there's different ways to pray to it and to this that you don't, it's like, it, I don't wanna say it doesn't matter, but like, it kind of doesn't matter.

• 1:14:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  You know, if you could have an experience of wow, of Of gratitude, of thankfulness, of maybe it doesn't matter the number on the scale. Maybe it doesn't matter the wrinkles, you know? Can you find someone who loves all the imperfect parts of you? That's divine, you know?

• 1:14:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, so true. And that does fill that hole.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And that can help solve a lot of, a lot of things.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:14:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, this was incredible conversation.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Such a fun conversation.

• 1:15:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much. I could talk to you for hours.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Thank you. And I appreciate all that you do. I know that also in your field, you've seen so many changes.

• 1:15:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  And so I know how hard you and your team, you know, work to try and help people do better.

• 1:15:16Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  For themselves, so.

• 1:15:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And, you know, even though we talk a lot about nutrition and medicine and hormones and all these things, like all, all the things that we just talked about today is such an important, big piece of the equation. And I'm so thankful to you to bring that here to our podcast.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:15:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And I know this is a major topic of your podcast.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  If you could, if you could tell the audience the name of your podcast, how to find it and all that stuff, I'd love for them to get more of this content.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, our podcast is at my YouTube channel, but it's called Mayim Bialik's Breakdown. But you can go to my YouTube channel and that's where it is. And then we're at Bialik Breakdown is our Instagram. We're on Substack, Mayim Bialik's Breakdown. And then I'm Miss Mayim everywhere else. So, yeah, that's us.

• 1:15:59Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Awesome, great. Well, thank you for coming.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:16:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  And look forward to talking again soon.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:16:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you.

• 1:16:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Before I wrap up, here are five key takeaways that I had from today's conversation with Dr. Mayim Bialik. Number one, science is for everyone and curiosity can start anywhere. A tutor on set first sparked Mayim's love for science. That early interest led her to a PhD program, lab work in functional neuroimaging, and research on Prader-Willi syndrome through a hypothalamic lens. Number two, our modern world is overwhelming our biology. Technology, ultra-processed foods, chronic distraction, and constant dopamine hits push the brain into imbalance. The nervous system Can't evolve as fast as our environment, which is why stress, anxiety and burnout are skyrocketing.

• 1:16:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Number three, lifestyle is medicine and most chronic disease is preventable. Gut health, inflammation, diet, movement and breath work all influence brain function and emotional regulation. Regulating the vagus nerve, moving daily, eating real food and spending time in nature are foundational, not optional. Number four, connection is not optional for human health. From mental health struggles during the pandemic to launching her podcast, Mayim emphasizes that humans are wired for community. Therapy, vulnerability and asking for help are not weaknesses. They're biological necessities. Number five, trauma is real, but so is resilience.

• 1:17:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Intergenerational trauma, childhood experiences and stress can leave biological imprints. But the narrative that everything is trauma dilutes this science. Understanding what trauma truly is helps us grow, heal and reconnect with a sense of meaning, gratitude and something bigger than ourselves that supports the immune system and reduces stress.

• 1:18:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps us support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.