13 Lissa Rankin: How to Heal Yourself with the Power of Your Mind

Did you know you could heal yourself from the worst cases of illness and physical pain without medicine or the use of a doctor? Sounds crazy, right? I've experienced this first hand and seen how powerful your mind can be in healing yourself (even in some extreme cases of broken bones, and energy sucking sickness). […] Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 13 with Dr. Lissa Rankin.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. Each week, we bring you the most inspiring business minds, world-class athletes, and influential celebrities on the planet to find out what makes great people great. My name is Lewis Howes, and I'm an author, lifestyle entrepreneur, and former pro athlete. And I'm on a mission to find out how we can all achieve a higher performance in life. Please leave us your comments on iTunes and join us online at schoolofgreatness.com to be notified of each episode when it comes out. Now let's get after it.

• 0:52Lewis Howes?

  Hey, hey, hey, what is upgrades? I hope you are having a fantastic day. Things are good here on the School of Greatness podcast. And wherever you are, if you're at the gym, if you're on the treadmill, if you're at home washing your dishes, if you're on your drive to the office, whatever you're doing, I appreciate you so much for taking the time to join me in these episodes each and every week. And it's my goal to keep bringing you cool, interesting people who can help you achieve greatness. And today I've got an amazingly inspiring woman on her name is Lissa Rankin, Dr. Lissa Rankin, I should say. And she's got a new book out called Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself. Now, for those that don't know me,

• 1:36Lewis Howes?

  I was raised in a religion called Christian Science. And in this religion, now it's completely different from Scientology. So for those of you who have heard things about Scientology, it's completely different than that. However, the main things, I'm not going to get into the whole religion, but the main things that I learned as a child growing up in this religion, and my father taught me these beliefs as well, is that our mind is more powerful than our body.

• 2:04Lewis Howes?

  And that's really what I was able to take away from it. Now, it helped me a lot throughout my athletic career. Having this mindset that I could literally heal myself with my mind. And I know it sounds a little crazy and very skeptical as some of you may not believe in that. But I believe very deeply in this information you're about to hear right now. And whether or not you believe in it, that your mind has the ability to heal your body and to heal yourself is irrelevant. We all have different beliefs and that's completely fine. No one's judging anyone here. But I just wanted to let you guys know that this is some cool information that I think you guys should be aware of. And then you can take with it what you like.

• 2:49Lewis Howes?

  And you're going to learn some amazing things here today. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Alyssa in a second, but you're going to learn some very cool things in this episode. First, we're going to learn about how if you think sick, you will be sick. And Alyssa is going to talk a little bit about that. Thinking sick and actually becoming sick. She's going to talk about your subconscious mind and how that plays into your health. Very interesting. Talking about how to be mindful on how you program your children so that they can be healthy. She's going to cover the ritual of medicine. She's going to talk about how your lifestyle affects your body and a number of different things you can do in your lifestyle to help heal itself more naturally. She's going to talk about the placebo and nocebo effect.

• 3:33Lewis Howes?

  Many of you have probably heard of the placebo effect. She's also going to talk about the nocebo effect and how that plays into health. She's going to talk about how hope heals. She's also to go into six steps to healing yourself. So if you ever have sickness or illness or a disease or even cancers or something extremely painful, she's going to talk about the six steps to healing yourself. She's done some amazing research. Now, this is a woman who has gone through serious pain, serious illness and sickness herself, was on a ton of medication, was a doctor for a number of years, treating patients every day, overworking herself and

• 4:15Lewis Howes?

  going through extreme pain and sickness. She's going to talk about her story here in just a second, but her book, Mind Over Medicine, Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself, is extremely interesting. I went through it in a couple hours and it's very, very powerful. So you're going to learn all those things. So stay tuned to uncover all the answers to those things I just talked about. And before we get into the podcast, I want to give a quick shout out to a couple of our featured listeners of the week. And I'm taking these comments. I appreciate all the comments and reviews and ratings you're leaving over on iTunes. And this one is from Mia Vincent. And the title says, Solo Podcast, Power of Belief

• 4:59Lewis Howes?

  Equals Awesome. And she says, just listen to your podcast for the first time and wow, you have great content. I listen to a lot of podcasts and listen to a lot of audiobooks and your ideas are new, fresh and unique. I am a fan. Thanks Mia. I also saw another cool one from Geeks of Shred, who says, Stretch and Build the Life You Deserve. Thank you, Lewis, for fueling the fire within to succeed in my own terms. Inspiring work and great guests. I also feel you should do more solo rounds when you can. Amazing stuff. So thanks so much, guys. Greeks, Greeks of Shred and Mia Vincent. I will definitely do more solo rounds.

• 5:44Lewis Howes?

  But in the meantime, this interview is going to be extremely powerful. And one of the things we also talk about is making sure that you are eating the right types of foods, putting the right nutrients in your body, even though we're talking about mind over medicine. She still talks about the things you can do every single day, the common sense things to enhance your performance, to enhance your body and to give your body the nutrients it needs to heal itself. So with that, I am extremely excited to introduce you to Dr. Lissa Rankin.

• 6:23Lewis Howes?

  Hey everyone. Today I've got a friend of mine on which I'm very excited to be introducing you to and be discussing this topic of mind over medicine. And her new book is called Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself. It's by Lissa Rankin. So Alyssa, thanks for coming on.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks, Lewis. I'm so happy to be here.

• 6:47Lewis Howes?

  Now, we met, I think it was about a year ago, just over a year ago at South by Southwest through a mutual friend, Jonathan Fields. And he was mentioning to me about this medical doctor who had learned how to heal herself, or learned these different ways you can heal yourself without medicine. And right away, I was brought back to my childhood, which a lot of people don't know this about me, but I was raised in a religion called Christian Science. And it's completely different than Scientology. So all the actors listening, feel free to dismiss that. But it's a lot of the things that I was, that I would learn as a child growing up, and through my dad teaching me these things through Christian

• 7:28Lewis Howes?

  Science, you and I had this very similar conversation based on your findings and your understanding and your learnings through, after you've been, you were practicing for, I think, eight years, is that right? As a medical doctor? And then you started to have, a little backstory about you, you started to have serious illnesses and diseases. And I have like a list of them here somewhere in your book. But list some of the stuff that you were challenged with, I guess, with some of the sicknesses you were dealing with.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Well, in my twenties, I was diagnosed with really severe high blood pressure. And they put me on three medications that weren't controlling my blood pressure. I was having a lot of heart palpitations. I actually was in the ICU when I wound up in it with an episode of supraventricular tachycardia, where my, my heart was racing in the 200s, my pulse was in the 200s. Then I had a heart murmur, so I had all kinds of cardiac conditions going on. I had really severe allergies. I was taking three medications for severe allergies, getting allergy shots. I had a sexual condition called vulvar vasculitis, where I had really painful intercourse. Um, you know, by the time I was thirty-three, I was like saddled with a whole list of diagnoses. I had developed precancerous cells of my cervix and I had

• 8:43Speaker 01

  had surgery for that and then it came right back. And so it was just kind of one thing after another. Um, and, and really none of the medications were working. My doctors had basically told me, you know, these are going to be chronic conditions. You're going to be on these drugs for the rest of your life and you'll probably die early of heart disease. And so, you know, here I was like twenty-eight years old when they're telling me all of this. So I wasn't super happy about this. And I was otherwise pretty healthy. I mean, I was eating well. I was, you know, I was overworked in my job as a, as a doctor in training at the time, but, and in some unhappy relationships, but from all sort of outside perspectives, I was working out, I was eating well. Like, why does this young, thin, otherwise healthy person have all of these healthcare problems? And nobody once

• 9:28Speaker 01

  asked me what else was going on in my life. And the rest of my life was, I was a basket case. I was really just a hot mess, you know?

• 9:35Lewis Howes?

  Well, the thing, I think is when people get sick or have some type of illness, we go to get prescribed by, from a doctor to tell us what type of medicine that we can take to heal ourselves is basically what, um, what we're used to. And in the beginning of your book, I'm not going to read the whole first paragraph, but I'm just going to be promoting this book the entire time because it's amazing. But there's a, there's a, there's a sentence, and there's, for people that know me, I've read probably maybe five to ten books from cover to cover in my entire life, and this is one of them. So make it eleven books now, but it's, uh, it's, it's something I'm very passionate about. So, um, but in the beginning here, You have a great introductory paragraph, which I don't want to read the whole thing,

• 10:19Lewis Howes?

  but there's one sentence that stands out where you say, "What if you have the power to heal your body just by changing how your mind thinks and feels?" And that's something that a lot of people, I believe, cannot believe in. They just don't understand how to just think their way to healing themselves. And whenever I tell people that my experience, being raised as a Christian scientist and learning how to do this myself, healing myself through all the different injuries and challenges I've faced, that's how I've healed myself, always through my minds and my beliefs first. And I've only taken medicine a couple of

• 10:59Lewis Howes?

  times, and I've always healed myself, I guess, through the power of my belief. Now, what do you say to people who just have no idea, have no idea that they can change the way you feel by how you think?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Well, at first, I say, I was one of those people for a long, long time. I mean, I come at this from the place of the skeptic. I mean, I was, my dad was a physician, very Western-trained, you know, academic physician. I went to Duke University and Northwestern, kind of these ivory towers of Western medicine. And I was, you know, I never had that introduced to me in my medical training at all. I thought, you know, you, as the patient, you give your body away to me because I went to school for 12 years, and certainly I know your body better than you do. So the whole concept that you can heal yourself, I think, is really, for many physicians, sort of a narcissistic wound, you know?

• 11:54Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Like, why did I spend all that time and money learning about your body if you have the power to heal your body with your thoughts and beliefs and feelings? So I really was one of those skeptics. And it wasn't until I left my clinical practice in 2007, after becoming very discouraged and disillusioned with the healthcare system, that I started kind of questioning it. And I was getting interested in some alternative medical therapies, not because I really believed they worked, but because I was curious. And increasingly, patients were, you know, more interested in acupuncture and homeopathy and energy healing and these sorts of modalities. So I was interviewing some of these practitioners, and they were telling me these stories of these people that experienced spontaneous

• 12:39Speaker 01

  remissions under their care and... You know, I was really curious if there anything to that and I started reading some kind of new age books. I was introduced to Louise Hay's book, You Can Heal Your Life. It's all about how these affirmations can lead to transformation in the body. And I was thinking, you know, with all due respect to Louise Hay, who is now my publisher, you know, I was thinking, really, really, like, you can say affirmations and your healthcare problems are gonna go away, like, really? Right. So, you know, and I started reading, I was very skeptical. I was very skeptical. I started reading these books that are, you know, age old books from mind body medicine pioneers like Bernie Siegel, Larry Dossi, Rachel Naomi Remen, Christiane Northrup.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  These are all physicians that have been kind of, you know, pioneering, paving the way of mind body medicine since the seventies. Hmm. But none of that was introduced to me during my medical training. It was all brand new to me. And I remember reading Bernie Siegel's book, Love Medicine and Miracles. And he referenced all these really incredible scientific studies suggesting that there is all this scientific proof that you can heal yourself, but none of them were referenced. And I wound up becoming friends with Bernie. So I was emailing Bernie, like, okay, where's the data? I wanna see the data. And he's like, oh, it's there. It's out there. Um, but I, I couldn't find it. And so, you know, all of these really intriguing stories, they

• 14:07Speaker 01

  sounded like something I wanted to believe. I certainly, I certainly want to believe that we can heal our bodies with our minds, but it sounded a little fantastic, you know? It sounded a little like magical thinking, like, nice aspirations, right? Right. So, the skeptic in me got really curious. And I, at the time, was working, I had left my, my OB-GYN practice that was, you know, seeing forty patients a day in a managed care system. And I had started my own integrative medicine practice that really, I don't, I didn't realize it at the time, but it really was a mind body medicine practice because most of my patients were kind of the proverbial choir. I live in Marin County, and so my patients were, and they had their raw vegan diets, and they're, they've got personal trainers,

• 14:51Speaker 01

  and they were working, you know, really hard at their health, like, taking twenty supplements a day and getting eight hours of sleep, and really doing everything right. And they still had this laundry list of health conditions. And so by the time they came to me, they had seen ten different alternative healthcare practitioners. They'd gone to Stanford and UCSF, like really by all intents and purposes, they should be completely healthy. And so I started asking people, cause I was kinda like, well, what can I do to help these people? They've already done everything and they're still sick. And I started asking them, what does your body need in order to heal? And at first I thought they'd give me treatment intuitions, you know, like, oh, well, maybe I'll skip that surgery

• 15:31Speaker 01

  and let's try this alternative treatment instead, or, you know, I'll, I'll skip the Prozac and do the five HTP or, or, or whatever. And sometimes that's what they'd tell me. But more often than not, they were giving me answers like, I need to quit my job. Um, it's sucking the soul out of me. Or I need to leave my marriage. It's, you know, completely abusive and toxic. Or I need to finally go to art school. I've got this dream that I've been pushing down and I need to just finally pursue it. And what I found is that some of my patients that were really brave and actually decided to do what they had prescribed for themselves, started experiencing these spontaneous remissions that I couldn't explain. Like they'd had every drug and every treatment and they weren't getting better.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  And then all of a sudden, they're sort of following their dreams and listening to their intuition and their bodies were responding. So I started investigating spontaneous remissions, cause I was, you know, that, that spontaneous remissions are, are something that's sort of baffling to physicians. Like, how is it that somebody with stage four cancer declines treatment and then all of a sudden their cancer is gone? It doesn't, it doesn't fit into our Western paradigm.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  So I started researching and I, I came across this database that you can find online. I love this database. It's put out by the Institute of Neuetic Sciences and it's called the Spontaneous Remission Project. And it's over thirty-five hundred case studies online that are, um, reproductions of case studies from the medical literature. So you can read all of these case studies of people who should not have gotten better and did. Either they had no treatment or they had treatment theoretically inadequate to cure their quote unquote incurable disease. And I swear, you name it, it's in there. I mean, stage four cancers, HIV positive people who became HIV negative. Like, if you think you have an incurable illness, go look it up. And what I found is that all of my illnesses were in there.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  So it was, um, it, it really changed how I thought it was, I compared it in, in Mind Over Medicine. I compared it to the four minute mile as an athlete, Lewis.

• 17:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  I'm sure you know the story of Roger Bannister.

• 17:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  And how all the exercise physiologists thought that the, the human body was incapable of running a mile in less than a minute, in less than four minutes. And nobody did until all of a sudden, one day, one guy breaks that record. And all of a sudden, you know, everybody was breaking the record. It was almost like by shifting the belief and, and suddenly having proof that wow, the body can actually run a mile in less than four minutes.

• 18:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Then many of the, the runners were able to run a mile in less than four minutes. And for me, it was like that. It was like reading that spontaneous remission project just shifted my belief system. So it's just that all of a sudden I was like, wow, if there's even one person who was able to be cured from an incurable illness, then who, who's, you know, who says that every illness isn't potentially curable?

• 18:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  So, you know, but, but none of those case studies had any data on how they did it. How did it happen? Was it just a fluke? You know, was it a miracle? You know, was it an act of God? Or was there something that these people that were experiencing these spontaneous remissions were doing that we could harness? And if so, was there any scientific proof that, um, that, that there are proactive things that we can do to try to, um, you know, increase the likelihood of spontaneous remission? And the book is basically all the copious data that I found in the mainstream medical literature, proving that it's not a fluke, that spontaneous remissions can happen and that there's things that we can do to activate the body's innate self-healing mechanisms.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  And there's things we can do to shut off those mechanisms. And, and that's what really blew my mind.

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  I want to get into some of those things, because I know you talk a lot about them in your book. Um, but before we get into what those things are that you can start applying to heal yourself, I want to learn about the power of the placebo and what you learned with Dr. Mosley's, is it Dr. Mosley? Is that how you say his name?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:41Lewis Howes?

  So now there's one specific, uh, story that I read in here that you shared about some type of double placebo, um...

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  Trial, clinical trial where he did knee surgeries, or some type of surgery, I think it was knee surgeries, and will you tell me the story about this, because I'm gonna mess it up?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the placebo, the data on the placebo effect is sort of where I started, because, you know, the question I was asking is, is it possible for the mind to heal the body? And if so, is there any scientific proof? And what I found, when I started looking for, for data on that, is that the, the medical establishment has been proving that the mind can heal the body for over fifty years.

• 20:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  And we call it the placebo effect, and, you know, all over the scientific literature is evidence that if you put people in clinical trials, and you tell them that they're either gonna be treated with, you know, the new wonder drug, or a sugar pill, a sham, surgery, um, you know, a saline injection, basically inert treatment, um, eighteen to eighty percent of those people actually get better by being treated with these inert treatments. And, you know, basically, what I found from that is that it's, it's a combination, you know, the, the placebo effect is a combination of positive belief, you know, the patient thinks they're getting the wonder drug, and that nurturing care of a healer, somebody

• 21:15Speaker 01

  in a white coat, who were conditioned, at least, you know, in, in our western paradigm, were conditioned to believe that if somebody in a white coat gives you a pill, or a shot, or a surgery, that you're gonna get better.

• 21:26Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  So, that, that combination of sort of that nurturing care and the conditioning, along with that positive belief that you're gonna get well, is incredibly powerful. So, I, I started looking into that, the, the Bruce Mosley data was really fascinating. So, this guy was an orthopedic surgeon, who was renowned for these knee surgeries, that he was performing on people that had debilitating knee pain. And he wanted to prove that his knee surgery was more effective than everybody else's knee surgery, so he designed this really elaborate brilliantly controlled study. And um he divided people into groups and some of the people got his wonder surgery. And a- another arm of the study got a placebo surgery. So he went to great lengths to do this placebo surgery.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Where basically people were awake in surgery, cause thi- this was an arthroscopic knee surgery. So they could watch the surgery on the video camera. And you know, there's water going around down by their knee and they've got the screen up so they can't see what's going on. So the people getting the real surgery actually got the incisions and they went in and they did stuff to their knee. And the people getting the placebo surgery were watching a video of somebody else's surgery.

• 22:34Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  And then Dr. Mosley was down below behind the screen, kind of squirting water and suction and, you know, making it sound like surgery, but all they did was cut the skin and then sew the skin back up.

• 22:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  And what they found was that the, you know, one third of the patients getting the real surgery experienced resolution of their knee pain. And those getting the placebo surgery actually at one point had even better results than the people that got the real surgery. So basically it was a third in both arms. And in the early phases, post-operatively, the people who didn't get surgery, who just got their skin cut, uh actually had better outcomes, probably because they didn't have the trauma of the surgery.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  So, you know, when I read this study, it really hit me in the gut, like, and i- and it wasn't, um, they actually followed some of these people afterwards to see how were they doing two years later. And they interviewed this one World War II veteran who had benefited from the placebo knee surgery. And, you know, it had been two years since he'd gotten the knee surgery and his knee had never bothered him since, you know?

• 23:37Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  I was like, wow, that's crazy, right? It's crazy. You know, and there's, there was another sham surgery study for years, uh, standard treatment for angina, chest pain, you know, from coronary heart disease, was a surgery called mammary artery ligation, where they'd open up the chest and they'd go in and they'd ligate the mammary artery, which is this artery that goes up the front of the chest wall. And the theory was if you ligate that artery, then it would shunt blood into the coronary arteries and you'd, you know, improve the angina. And seventy plus percent of the people who got this surgery would get better, their angina would get better. So, I mean, that's pretty good odds, right?

• 24:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  So, this was standard surgery until years after doing this, somebody decided to do a sham version of that. What happens if we open people's chests, but we don't actually ligate the artery?

• 24:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  And what they found is that they still got seventy plus percent.

• 24:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Improvement.

• 24:36Lewis Howes?

  So, what I'm hearing.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  So, that's, that, that surgery is now like a medical history. We don't do it anymore, you know? The, the medical establishment basically says if it's not better than placebo, it doesn't work, which I question because geez, seventy percent's pretty good odds, you know?

• 24:50Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. So, what I'm hearing is a couple of things right now, that you can basically, with the placebo to work, if it's, uh, through a medical treatment, you need to, one, have the physician or, uh, the practitioner be someone who's kind of loving and warm when they're delivering the message of how it's going to affect them when they get the treatment. And also that, so that the patient has to believe in the practitioner and feel good about the practitioner's message, and also believe that the treatment itself is going to be the cure. And when you have that, and if they don't actually give you the treatment, but they act like they're going to, you can still heal yourself because you have the belief of

• 25:35Lewis Howes?

  those couple of things, is that right?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, and the data, actually, there's a whole chapter in Mind Over Medicine about the fact that it's not just the patient that needs to believe that it's gonna work, it's the practitioner.

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  So, you know, it's, that, that, whether or not your doctor or your other healthcare provider believes that what they're doing is going to help you, whether or not they believe that actually affects outcomes as well.

• 25:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  So it's sort of like their belief is contagious.

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  We, we amplify each other. If the patient really believes and the practitioner really believes, then it affects outcomes. And that's why randomized controlled trials are usually double blinded, meaning the patient doesn't know whether or not they're getting the real treatment and the practitioner doesn't either.

• 26:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Because we know that if the practitioner has biases, then it affects outcomes. It's fascinating.

• 26:23Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And now you talk about, the placebo's effect is something that's powerful, but also, you also talk about the nocebo effect, which is, and you say in here, placebo effect demonstrates the power of positive thinking, expectation, hope, and nurturing care, while the nocebo effect demonstrates the power of negative belief. And I am a, I mean, I'm a big believer in, in both of these because it's funny, my, uh, my siblings and I would always have a running joke, growing up, because my dad was a firm believer in the power of positive thinking, hope, nurturing care, all these things. And when, when any of us would be sick, you know, we'd be like, have a cough, or we had like chicken pox and all

• 27:06Lewis Howes?

  these different things growing up that kids get or whatever. My dad would always be so firm in his belief that we are actually already healed and nothing was wrong with us. So he'd say over and over, you're fine, like, you're perfect, nothing is wrong, like, you're okay. And he would just instill this belief that we were okay. And our, you know, my siblings and I would kind of joke about it sometimes, like, You know, Dad's just saying we're fine all the time. And he would never accept the fact that something was like that bad, that he would have a negative belief about it. And sure enough, we'd be healed way faster than, you know, our friends would be healed. And of course, some things would take longer than others, and I'm sure it's because of whatever reason.

• 27:50Lewis Howes?

  Maybe we didn't believe in it ourselves, or who knows what. But um, it's, for me, I really believe in this. And one of the, one of the things, a personal story that I have with a friend of mine. A friend of mine had got psoriasis when she was about, I think, like eight or nine. She had a very small, like, couple of dots of like skin psoriasis, somewhere like on her stomach or something. Pretty much nothing, but just a little bit that she went into the hospital to get it checked out because her mom is a nurse. And she said, when she went into the hospital, the doctor analyzed her and came back with a big like booklet or video or something of images of psoriasis.

• 28:33Lewis Howes?

  Not just any images, but the worst case images of people who had horrible skin psoriasis. And the doctor came back and said, this is what you have, and this is what you're gonna look like and experience.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Oh my god, that's awful.

• 28:46Lewis Howes?

  Basically said it like that, was not like nurturing or caring or loving or sharing hope. And for someone that young, you know, to receive that type of information and say, this is what you have. This is who you are. This is what it's gonna be like for this your life. I can only imagine that that's the experience. It's gonna be very hard for it to overcome that. And it's been that way since I've known her, and she's been experiencing this kind of negative belief about herself that she's conditioned to have it, and it's very hard for her to break that belief. Now, can you talk a little bit more about the nocebo effect? Sorry, I just kind of ran it for a second, but.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  You know, it's, I mean, that's such a tragic story, and it happens all the time. And doctors are often the initiators of the nocebo effect without meaning to. I mean, we have the best intentions, right? But every time a doctor says, oh, you have this cancer and you have a 5% five-year survival rate. Right? Like, there's a 95% chance that you're gonna be dead in five years.

• 29:45Lewis Howes?

  So messed up.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Well, they, yeah, I mean, there've been studies that have actually shown that people who were misdiagnosed were given odds like that, and they in fact died. And then when they went to do their autopsies, there was no cancer.

• 29:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  So, the nocebo effect is incredibly powerful and there's a lot of data showing that. Some of it, you know, most of the nocebo effect data actually comes as, it comes from the same clinical trials that the placebo effect data comes from. So, for example, when you put somebody in a clinical trial and you tell them you're either gonna get the real drug or the placebo, and if you get the real drug, here's the side effects that you might experience. And what they find in every clinical trial is that those getting placebos have the very side effects that they're warned about. Jeez, that's crazy. So, that's where, yeah, that's where a lot of the data comes from, but then they've also gone out of their way in some other studies to examine specifically the nocebo effect.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  It's a little hard to study ethically because it's sort of hard to like, okay, we're gonna do something intended to make you sick. But, for example, one study examined asthmatics who were given a saline solution, but they were told that the solution contained allergens that were gonna trigger their bronchospasm. Hmm. And, you know, not only did they wheeze and feel short of breath, but their bronchi constricted, so it wasn't just the feeling of being short of breath, it was, you know, they had a physiologic response. Right. And that's what, that's what kept really fascinating me, both with the placebo and the nocebo data, was is it just in your mind? Are you just feeling better? Or is it really in your physiology? And if so, what's the mechanism for that? Hmm.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  And what I found around that was really what blew me, what really blew me away was the mechanism of how does the placebo effect work? How does the nocebo effect work? Right. And it's, you know, it's, it's very physiologic. It's not just in the mind, it really is in the physiology. And those beliefs that we have that originate in the mind get translated into hormonal responses Sure. that trigger stress responses or trigger relaxation responses. And those stress responses come when you're having, you know, pessimistic thoughts, negative beliefs, fear thoughts, anxious thoughts.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  All of those sorts of thoughts, you know, trigger the hypothalamic pituitary access that winds up turning on the adrenal gland that releases stress hormones like cortisol, epinephrine, noradrenaline, and that stress response that we think of as the like fight or flight response. Uh huh. That stress response, which we're supposed to only have when we're literally physically in danger of kind of getting eaten by a cave bear. That stress response, when it gets turned on, inactivates the body's natural self-repair mechanisms. Hmm. So, I mean, it makes sense, right? Cause if you're running away from a cave bear, your body doesn't need to, you know, do self-maintenance. It doesn't need to do preventive work. Right.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  It doesn't need to fight the stray cancer cell or get rid of the bacteria because your life is urgently in danger right now of, you know, you gotta expend all the body's resources, you know, outrunning the cave bear. Right. So, so the body, we know this and we, and you know, again, this is something that's taught in medical school. We know the body has innate self-repair mechanisms, that, that broken proteins can get fixed, that cancer cells can get eaten up by the immune system, that bacteria and foreign bodies can get handled. But what I hadn't realized until I started studying the data on this, is that it's only when you're in the relaxation response, which is when the parasympathetic nervous system is activated. The, the fight or flight is the sympathetic nervous system.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  But only when the parasympathetic nervous system is activated and the relaxation response is in effect, can those innate self-repair mechanisms actually go about their business. Hmm. So the researchers theorize that the reason the placebo effect works is because it shuts off the stress response and it turns on the relaxation response. So the minute somebody, um, you, you know, becomes a participant in a clinical trial, they feel like they can take a sigh of relief. Here I am, I'm struggling with this health condition, but now there's this person in a white coat who's gonna take care of me and they're gonna give me this wonder drug and phew, I'm gonna get better. Hmm. And just that belief, you know? Right. Just that nurturing care and that positive belief starts turning on those innate self-repair mechanisms.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  And the nocebo effect is the opposite. So the minute your friend was told you're gonna have psoriasis for the rest of your life, like boom, stress response, right? Right, right. And it's every time you have that thought, I have psoriasis, it's gonna plague me for the rest of my life, I'm gonna look like that, that person in the picture. Or I have a 5% five-year survival rate. Or, you know, this researcher is giving me allergens to make my asthma worse. All of those thoughts are turning on stress responses that are, you know, that over time, the stress response is there to protect us in the short run. Like, it's helpful if you have to lift up a car to save your kid or run away from the cave bear. You know, but it, over time, those very stress hormones that can save our life in the short run become poison.

• 34:56Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. This is amazing stuff. Now, one of the things that you talked about is on page 73, I'm looking at, I'm not sure if this is actually the, uh, I've got the advanced copy, so maybe a different page for people that get it now, but you talk about, uh, you said on the mission to prove each facet of how to live your life, uh, or how you, how you live your life, um, that affects your mind and your health, and with it, the health of your body. And you predicted that in order to live a vital life, prevent disease, or optimize the chance of, for disease remission, you would need a number of different things. A few of them being healthy relationships, uh, spiritual life, healthy spiritual life, and a healthy sex life.

• 35:38Lewis Howes?

  Uh, there's a lot of other things you talk about with finances, physical environment, mental, emotional, things like that. Um, but I want to talk about, uh, what do you think are the core things here? I guess they're all core, but I think you have eight of them here, eight or nine of them. But, uh, the ones that I know that affect me the most, and maybe there's just different things that affect each people, but I know the one that affected me the most originally was financial. Because when I was, you know, broke five years ago, trying to figure out what I was gonna do with my life, I was very stressed out for just having the need to have my own place and having enough money to like, get food for the next month and not be stressed about that. I know that's a big one for me, is, was the financial, and also healthy relationships.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  And I think a lot of people that you probably, um, worked with, some of your previous patients, you mentioned a lot of them were, they didn't feel like their marriage was, or their marriage was abusive, or their relationships were out of whack, or they didn't have quality community or family relationships. And is that a common theme you see with a lot of people?

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely. In fact, I would argue that relationships is probably of all of those factors that I talk about in the wellness model that I teach in the book, which I call the whole health Karen. And it's based on, you know, those stacks of balance stones that you see kind of on beaches and marking sacred landmarks. I use that Karen as a model for the wellness model that I teach. And it's discussing all of those various facets of what makes us healthy. And, you know, part of it, a small part, I would argue, and it's a part that gets really overblown, it's certainly critical, but only a small part, is what do we eat? How much exercise are we getting? How much sleep are we getting?

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Those things are obviously really important, but I think we often neglect in the kind of Western medical paradigm, we neglect all the other things that really affect the body. And one of the stories that I love the most, I tell this story in Mind Over Medicine, is the story of the people of Rosetta, Pennsylvania. And I think it's such a great model, because it demonstrates that, you know, what you eat is much less important than what kind of community you have and whether or not you're lonely. So there's a whole chapter in Mind Over Medicine about the effect of loneliness and health.

• 37:56Lewis Howes?

  You say the chapter title is actually Loneliness Poisons the Body.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Right, right. So the people of Rosetta, Pennsylvania were an immigrant community that came over from Italy and they established themselves in this little hillside town. And they kind of were recreating the old world in the new world. And, you know, their neighbors were sort of discriminating of them. So they kind of kept to themselves and they created this very nurturing community where everybody kind of took care of each other. And they all lived in these multi-generational homes. And, you know, if somebody got sick, the whole community took care of the sick person. If somebody was financially downtrodden, then the others would help out. And they all, you know, they had hard jobs. The men worked in the rock quarry, the women worked in the blouse factory. But they all went

• 38:43Speaker 01

  to church together, they had a shared spiritual life. You know, they'd come home from work at the end of the day and they'd all kind of go to each other's houses and, you know, have a glass of wine here and a glass of wine there. And they'd put the tables out into the streets and they'd all eat dinners together and they'd all celebrate holidays together. Well, this community captured the attention of the medical establishment. There was this cardiologist who had a vacation home nearby, and he was hanging out at the bar one day with the local doctor. And the local doctor was saying, you know, it's so bizarre, these people from Rosetta, they, they never get heart disease. And they seem to be dying of old age and compared to their neighbors, I don't know what they're doing. And the cardiologist got really curious. He's thinking, must be something in their DNA,

• 39:25Speaker 01

  it must be something in their diet. And this was at a time in the nineteen sixties, where in late fifties, early sixties, where, um, you know, heart disease was really an epidemic and we, we hadn't, we didn't have as much awareness about it as we do now. And so it was really an epidemic proportions. So this cardiologist sent a whole team to study this small community. And they interviewed almost everybody in the community to try to figure out what is it that's making these people have such low rates of heart disease? Because when he had looked at the death records at the local hospital, he found that indeed they had half the rate of heart disease of the neighboring communities that shared the same water and shared the same healthcare facilities, same doctors. So they thought at first it must be genetic, but they found all these other people that originated from the same little town in Italy

• 40:10Speaker 01

  and they were living elsewhere in the US and they had the same rate of heart disease as everybody else. And they looked at their diet and they found that these people were eating meatballs fried in lard, you know, they're eating pasta and pizza, they're going through a bottle of wine every night. Most of them were smokers. So it didn't make much sense. And ultimately, after interviewing everybody and, you know, examining all the psychological and sociological data, they concluded that these people were never lonely. And that loneliness affects the body more profoundly than exercise or quitting smoking or what you eat. And I found that really compelling because that was not what I, you know, that was, it made a lot of sense with all of these really, um, you know,

• 40:54Speaker 01

  these health nuts that I was taking care of in Marin County who were still experiencing a lot of health problems. So yes, I think relationships are incredibly important when it comes to our health. And when was the last time your doctor pulled out, you know, her prescription pad and, and wrote alleviate loneliness or get rid of that toxic relationship?

• 41:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  As, as preventive health or treatment for an existing health condition?

• 41:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, never.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Right?

• 41:21Lewis Howes?

  Now, you say loneliness poisons the body, but then you also say, uh, where does it go? You also say clearly, physical, physical abusive marriages can injure or kill you. So what happens if you're not lonely, but you're in an abusive relationship? How, because either way, if you're lonely, you're gonna die. If you're in an abusive relationship, you're gonna die.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Well, basically, what you're looking at, when I, when I teach people about the whole healthcare, and it's basically looking at the health of all of these facets of your life. And the facets that I talk about in this wellness model are relationships, your professional life, your creative life, your spiritual life, your sex life, your environment, your mental health, your financial life, um, your physical health. So all of these different aspects of your life can trigger either stress responses or relaxation responses. So for example, if you're in a toxic relationship, then you're gonna be triggering stress responses all day. And the average person has about 50 stress responses per day. That's a lot. But if you're in a toxic relationship, or if you're in a soul sucking job, you're probably

• 42:33Speaker 01

  getting more like a hundred stress responses in a day. So now relationships can also...

• 42:39Lewis Howes?

  That's not good for your heart, is it?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  No, not at all, of course, because these, you know, epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol, these, all of these stress hormones are stressors for the heart over time. So, you know, relationships can also be an incredible factor for healing, right? I mean, I've had patients that fall in love and boom, all of a sudden, all their health conditions are gone. You know, because they're, you know, love is, is filling the body with all of these healing hormones. So now, instead of getting these stress hormones, you're getting oxytocin, and dopamine, and nitric oxide, and endorphins. And those are countering the stress responses. They're opening up your blood vessels. I mean, it's the opposite of the stress response.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  So positive nurturing emotions that, that are generated in relationships are, um, you know, are medicine for the body. So, and I think that's the case for all of those things in the whole healthcare. And so, your job, for example, can totally be a trigger of stress responses.

• 43:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  But if you have jobs like we do, Louis, you and I are so lucky, because we love our work so much.

• 43:44Lewis Howes?

  We live the dream.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Right, so... Totally, we're living the dream and so, you know, my job isn't triggering stress responses in me, it's triggering relaxation responses because I love what I do. I love being able to sit down and write. I'm an artist, I get to paint, you know, I'm, I'm doing this with you and talking on the telephone and feeling connected and knowing that we're helping people as we do it. These are not stressful things for me, it's like really exciting and fun and, you know, I've got, I've got good, healthy hormones going through my body right now just doing this. There you go. And probably so do you. Don't get too turned on, don't get too turned on. Right, I mean, I mean, speaking of turned on, like your sex life can certainly be, um, it can be a force for healing, right?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Because again, great, healthy hormones when it's healthy, but if your sex life is toxic, then it can be, you know, certainly triggering stress responses. Sure. So all of those things can trigger one or the other and I think, you know, the goal, if you want optimal health, the way I know we all do, is to really assess all of those various facets of our lives and diagnose for ourselves, where are my stress responses coming from and how can I have more relaxation responses in my life? And what I've found is that people are, um, you know, when you actually start working with people one-on-one around this, they're more resistant to minimizing stress responses than they are to adding relaxation responses. Hmm. Right, so the, the minute I tell you, you know, like, oh, that toxic relationship,

• 45:13Speaker 01

  like, you gotta get out of that. People are like, oh, I can't do that, like, my partner pays the bills, or, like, we have kids, or whatever, there's all this resistance, right? Right. But a lot of people are, um, are pretty open to adding things that, that activate relaxation responses. So these things are kind of an easier sell, you know? Sure. And there's things like meditation, expressing yourself creatively, um, attending religious services. Going out, having fun with your friends, engaging in work that you love, sex, massage, many alternative medicine treatments, yoga, tai chi, laughter is a great one, playing

• 45:53Speaker 01

  with animals, exercise, all of these are things that will trigger the relaxation response. So, in a perfect world, you know, what people are doing is they're examining their lives for where, you know, where they're triggering stress responses and they're making life changes that will decrease those life, those stress responses. But then they're also adding in, huh, how can I have more relaxation responses in my body so that I can put my body in that state in which the body's innate self-repair mechanisms can do their business?

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  Sure, yeah, I mean, in the chapter on happiness, where you say happiness is preventative medicine, you talked about these lifestyle modifications that you just shared, and practices that are scientifically proven to increase your happiness as a way of extending your life by seven and a half to 10 years. Now, is that true?

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely, seven to 10 years. Happy people live seven to 10 years longer than unhappy people. And another statistic that I loved is that optimists are 77% less likely to die from heart disease than pessimists.

• 46:58Lewis Howes?

  Jeez.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  And there's data, there's data in Mind Over Medicine about, you know, how to change from being unhappy to being more happy. I love, for those who are really interested in that, I love Sonia Lyad Mersky's book, The How of Happiness.

• 47:12Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  It's a wonderful book, and I quote some of the data from it in Mind Over Medicine. You know, it's really talking about all the science behind how to become more happy because essentially about 40% of our happiness is really within our power, just in our minds.

• 47:32Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  So, about 50% of our happiness is sort of a genetic set point. We're kind of, we're kind of, you know, some of us are just sort of genetically set to be happier than others. And about 10% of our happiness is based on life circumstances, which is a smaller percentage than most of us think. Most of us think, oh, well, if I found that perfect relationship, or if I had the perfect job, or if I made a million bucks, you know, then I'd be happy. But that actually only accounts for about 10% of your happiness. But there's this 40% of your happiness that is completely within your power from doing really easy things like starting a gratitude practice.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  And all that, so it's a great book about all the scientific data and I share some of those in Mind Over Medicine. And I also share some of the techniques that you can use to convert from pessimism to optimism. There's, there's another great book by Martin Seligman called Learned Optimism. And it's all about the data that shows that, you know, once a pessimist doesn't mean you have to always be a pessimist. And there's a ton of data in Mind Over Medicine about how pessimism can make you thick.

• 48:35Lewis Howes?

  I'm reading about, I'm looking at the part on gratitude right now, as this is a major focus I want to talk about. And you say, when you focus on gratitude, positive things flow in more readily, making you even more grateful. Gratitude keeps you optimistic. Evidence shows that optimism improves your health. And for me, I've always been an extremely grateful person and I feel like that's part of the reason I've been pretty, I feel like I'm pretty healthy. I think, I believe that's one of the reasons why I stay healthy as too, is because I'm so grateful for all the things I do have as opposed to ungrateful for things I lack. And I try to remind myself and remind others every day by being gratitude.

• 49:17Lewis Howes?

  On my voicemail, if anyone ever calls me and I don't pick up, my voice message always asks people, at the end of the message, I say, what are you most grateful for today? And I love getting responses from people. It's the first thing they say is what they're most grateful for, then they leave the message. And for me, hearing other people express their gratitude makes me more grateful and express my gratitude. And I think that all just kind of helps the, the system of staying positive and happy and all those things. So, I definitely agree with, what did you say, a gratitude journal or gratitude list? Is that what you're talking about?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Well, any gratitude practice. So certainly, you know, writing down three things you're grateful for every night, or waking up in the morning and just, you know, having that, allowing that to be the first thing you think in the morning and the last thing you think before you go to sleep. You know, everybody has their own way of doing that, but I think getting into some sort of practice can be extremely helpful, especially when you're doing some of the work that I talk about in Mind Over Medicine. The whole third section of the book is really about diagnosing the root cause of, you know, what might lie at the root of... Um, less than optimal health. Whether, whether you're looking at a chronic illness and you're trying to shift that, or whether you're, you know, well, but kind of trying to look at preventive health.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Um, I think it's, it's, it's hard to do that work if you're not also focusing on what's really working.

• 50:38Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Because, you know, you know, it's, it's a fine balance. You want to look at what's not really working in your life, you know?

• 50:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Are you really happy in your relationship? Are you really happy in your job? But at the same time, being simultaneously grateful for what you have in your relationship and grateful for what you have in your job. And it, it creates a sense of balance so that you can have a more objective perspective and really make good decisions for yourself.

• 51:01Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Now, you have-

• 51:03Speaker 01

  You know, you, I think you can go too far in both directions. Like, you can, you can get so caught up in the gratitude practice that you get stuck in situations that really aren't making you happy. I know that was sort of, that was a pattern that I got stuck in when I was really unhappy in my old job. I, every day I would be like, "Well, the money's really good. Well, I really liked my patients today. Well, the, the people that I'm working with are nice. Well, my office is beautiful." And, you know, you do that every day and then it's like, "Okay, well tomorrow I can go to my soul-sucking job again," you know?

• 51:35Lewis Howes?

  Right. So you're saying you have to remove the things that are still, like, stressing you out? You can't just be grateful for the things you have, but just be like, you know, if something's deliberately stressing you out every day, you still have to remove those things?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:49Lewis Howes?

  And, you know?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  It takes a lot of courage.

• 51:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  I mean, healing yourself is not for the faint of heart.

• 51:54Lewis Howes?

  It's not easy, that's for sure. Now, you have a six, I believe it's a six-step process to healing yourself, right?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  I do, yeah. The whole, the whole last section of the book is basically walking people through the six steps based on the data. So the first section of the book kind of talks all about the placebo and nocebo effect and the role of the healer in, in, you know, in the fact that, you know, when I say healing yourself, it's sort of a misnomer because you really need a facilitated practice. And I know you know, Lewis, from, from, um, from your childhood, that when you were taught in your religion that your body could heal itself, you still were doing it with a practitioner, right?

• 52:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes. We had, we had healing practitioners who were-

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 52:39Lewis Howes?

  -giving us spiritual treatments as opposed to, you know-

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 52:42Lewis Howes?

  -prescriptions, yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Well, and really, I think that's, that's a lot of the role of any healer is spiritual treatment, whether you're talking about a doctor, or an acupuncturist, or a faith healer. It's, you know, that, that nurturing care is, is part of the spiritual treatment. It's really, kind of, um, inviting the patient to tap into that essence of their spirit that, that knows what's true for them, and sort of aligning with that truth, aligning with that, that belief and that faith that the body knows how to heal itself.

• 53:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  So it's, um, you know, there's multiple levels of that kind of spiritual treatment. Um, but, but basically, what I'm, what I am doing in that section is walking people through, um, you know, how to tap into that positive belief, how to find that nurturing care, um, how to really tap into your own intuition and be your, your inner doctor. I know my, my literary agent was the first person to read my book all the way through, and she called me afterwards, and she said, "Oh my God, Lissa, before I read this book, I honestly thought my body was none of my business."

• 53:42Lewis Howes?

  Oh, oh.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Like, if it, if it broke down, I needed to go to the doctor and hand it over my power and like, fix my body and then give it back to me."

• 53:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  And after she read this, she said it was just completely eye-opening for her, because she came away from it feeling like, "Wow, my body is my business, and there are things that I can do that, you know, really are gonna make a difference."

• 54:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, the body's an amazing thing, but I think the mind is an even more amazing and powerful thing, and it's, for me, after reading this book, and after hearing everything you said here, it sounds like everything starts with the mind, and whatever we believe is actually what happens with our body. Now, is that pretty close to what you're saying?

• 54:25Speaker 01

  I, I, I'm gonna say a cautious yes. The reason, the reason I'm gonna say a cautious yes, is because I know there's always people listening to conversations like this.

• 54:38Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Saying, "What, I have stage four cancer, and you're telling me that it's all my fault because I could've healed it with my mind, and I, and I, are you saying I caused it with negative thoughts?" And, so, so the cautious yes is, it, you know, I, I love the way, Christiane Northrup, uh, and I were talking about this at one point, and I love what she said, and she said, "I think we are responsible to our illness, not for our illness."

• 55:07Lewis Howes?

  Wait a minute, say that again. I think we're responsible to our illness.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  We're responsible to our illness, not for our illness.

• 55:14Lewis Howes?

  What's that mean exactly?

• 55:15Speaker 01

  So, in other words, there's no place for blame, shame, guilt-tripping, anybody who's on a healing journey. I mean, all it does is trigger stress responses, right? So even if you have been smoking three packs a day and you get lung cancer, like, there's still no place for shaming, blaming guilt. So I'm always really sensitive when I'm making blanket statements like, you know, it's all in the mind and you're making it all up and it's happening in the body. Well, I also, I do think that there are some things that are really just bad luck, really just accidents. I mean, like, my husband cut two fingers off his left hand with a table saw.

• 55:56Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  And no amount of mind healing was gonna put those fingers back on, you know?

• 56:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Like, the only reason he has two fingers again is because Doctor Jones came in on a Sunday night and spent eight hours in the operating room reattaching those fingers, you know?

• 56:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that sounds painful.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  So, and I know, I know, Lewis, you had an injury, was it a leg injury?

• 56:19Lewis Howes?

  I broke my wrist and I broke six ribs.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Your wrist?

• 56:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, so I mean...

• 56:25Lewis Howes?

  I had a bone graft in my wrist, yeah.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Right, right. So, you know, like, sometimes there's just bad luck. So mostly when I'm talking about these things, I'm talking about chronic illnesses where people have optimized what Western medicine has to offer and it hasn't worked, you know, and they're saddled with this quote-unquote "chronic illness" like psoriasis, for example, or chronic fatigue syndrome, or fibromyalgia, or an autoimmune disease that's constantly getting triggered. Or, in my case, you know, things like allergies or high blood pressure, those sorts of conditions that I was dealing with, which now I'm down to half of the dose of one of my seven medications from all of the work that I've done, you know, diagnosing myself and writing my own prescription in the way that I teach people to do in the book.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  So I do think the mind is incredibly powerful when it comes to all of this, but I also just kind of want to put out that little, that sensitive note of compassion to those that are really doing everything they can. And they're, they feel like they are optimizing how they're living their life and they're doing everything they can to have positive belief and they're, they're trying to heal their relationships and their professional life and their financial life and whatever, and they're still fighting an illness and they're feeling frustrated. I, I, I'm always really sensitive to those people as well.

• 57:37Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, of course. You know, and growing up, just, you know, with my beliefs with my dad and my grandfather kind of teaching us these, these practices and these ideals, I always remember, um, because there's extremists to this, you know, it's like there's people that just say, I'm never going to use medicine, I'm never going to the doctor, I'm never doing this, if I break my arm, I'm just going to let it heal itself and then you're screwed, you know? That's what people die because they're, they don't have a strong enough belief system and they're not really doing things the right way and something happens and, and something bad happens. And-

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Well, and I'm still a belie-, I'm, I'm a, I'm still a believer in, in western medicine in that, you know, if you break a bone, for example, it's still the bone that has to heal itself.

• 58:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you gotta set it.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  But it's helpful if somebody sets it so the pieces of bone that need to heal themselves are in the right place, you know?

• 58:24Lewis Howes?

  You gotta, you gotta set this stuff, yeah. And, and you know, my-

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:27Lewis Howes?

  My, my dad and my grandfather would always say, you know, uh, even though we practice, uh, focusing on the mind over the body, you want to use common sense in all times. You don't want to just say, I'm going to heal myself right now and this is just, I'm going to wheel it to heal. You want to make sure you're, you're doing the necessary steps and have some common sense. If it looks like your arm's broken, go get it set and, you know, do the things you need to do.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Well, absolutely. And I, I think especially with trauma and emergency medicine, I mean, if I'm in a car accident, like get me to a hospital.

• 58:57Lewis Howes?

  You have to.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Like absolutely, put me through the CT scanner, open up my belly and repair what's broken. Like no amount, again, I, I, certainly there are cases in the spontaneous remission project of, for example, a guy who had a gunshot wound to the head and refused treatment and got better. So I'm not saying the body can't regenerate itself, but absolutely, you can die from- refusing treatment in those situations. If you're having a heart attack, if you're having a stroke, if you've got appendicitis, you know,

• 59:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you want to be smart about it.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  right?

• 59:27Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. You want to be smart.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Like I said, mostly more of what I'm talking about here are those chronic illnesses.

• 59:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Where, you know, western medicine has failed you.

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Um, I'm, that's kind of my, th- those are the people that I'm really talking to in this book.

• 59:44Lewis Howes?

  And, and when it comes down to it, you know, basically what I got out of the entire thing is a lot of it's lifestyle, a lot of it's, uh, relationships, and then also positive thinking and just gratitude and relieving the stress triggers that you talked about. Was, was there anything else that I'm missing in those kind of core principles?

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Like I said, I think the, I think the core of it is anything that you can do to relieve stress responses in your body, and anything that you can do to add relaxation responses in your body. It's all about examining that ratio. So we can be really proactive about that. So, you know, now it makes sense when I look back to the question that I was asking my patients, what does your body need in order to heal? That's what I was really asking. I was asking, how can you reduce stress responses? How can you increase relaxation responses? And now I understand the physiology, which is that, you know, stress hormones are decreasing, healing hormones are increasing, and the body's natural self-repair mechanisms are clicking on.

• 1:00:45Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  So we can be proactive about that.

• 1:00:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  And, and so the, the, the book really walks people through a step-by-step process of helping them examine their own lives to try to figure that out. Like, how can we, you know, how can we optimize our lives in that way? And it really does require, you know, a, a practice and courage, because some of the things that, that if we're honest with ourselves, some of the things that come up are, are things that are a little tough to look at.

• 1:01:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  And I think that's, tha- that, that tapping into that part of you, I call it your inner pilot light. It's that essence of your truth. And so I think really, So much of optimizing the health of the body is being willing to be really brutally honest with ourselves about what's true for us.

• 1:01:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  What's true for me about my work? What's true for me about my relationship with my family of origin? What's true for me about my marriage? You know, what's true for me about my sex life or my spiritual life or my financial life or, you know, what diet I'm gonna follow? Just really being brutally honest with ourselves. We don't even need to tell anybody else.

• 1:01:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  So, you know, for example, one of the people that I took care of in my old practice was, um, in the closet with her sexuality.

• 1:02:00Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  And suffering from all these chronic health conditions. And when I said, "What does your body need in order to heal?" She said, "You know what? I'm gonna tell you this. I've never told anybody, but I'm gay."

• 1:02:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  And she said, "I think that what my body is telling me is that I can't live a lie anymore." And I think our bodies do that all the time. Our bodies are telling us often, "Stop living a lie." Like, "Stop being dishonest with yourself." And so, when we're able to be brave enough to actually tell ourselves the truth and then start to bring our lives into alignment with that truth, the body has the capacity to undergo incredible transformation.

• 1:02:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  And that's when I, that's when I see things that people would otherwise call medical miracles. I mean, I could tell you stories that make absolutely no sense to me, other than, you know, hallelujah for the relaxation response, you know?

• 1:02:51Lewis Howes?

  Right. Well, I'm a huge, uh, I'm a huge believer in this. I'm a huge fan of you and your story, and I recommend everyone picking up Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself by Lissa Rankin. And now, where can people find this online, if they wanna buy it online?

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Well, you can, you can find it from any bookseller. You can preorder it now. It comes out May 7th. But, um, for anybody who's interested, if you go to MindOverMedicineBook.com, we're offering a preorder special for people that order the book. Um, if you get one, if you buy one copy of the book, then you get free access to a two-hour online event that I'm doing through Hay House with Martha Beck, who I've been teaching doctors with Martha Beck, and we've been running some online programs together. I love her work. I'm a huge fan of hers.

• 1:03:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  And Martha has an incredible story of all of her health problems and how she healed herself by bringing her life into alignment with her truth in some ridiculously brave ways. She's honestly the bravest person I've ever met. So anybody who buys one book gets access to that two-hour event. And then anybody who buys three books gets access to that online event, as well as a four-week teleclass series that I'm going to be teaching all about the six steps to healing yourself. So you get those free if you buy either one book or three books.

• 1:04:07Lewis Howes?

  Nice. Well, I recommend it, for sure. I mean, this is powerful. Again, it's a quick read. I read this in a couple hours. And it's definitely inspiring to see that we can heal ourself through everything that Lissa is referencing to in the book. So make sure to go pick up one or a few copies and give it to some of your friends who may have a couple of, you know, sicknesses or illnesses that you feel like they're struggling to overcome. Share this book with them. It's definitely a positive message that I think everyone should check out. So with that, Lissa, where can people find you personally, online, just your website?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  So my blog is lissarankin.com, L-I-S-S-A-R-A-N-K-I-N dot com. And ever since, you know, I finished this book over a year ago, and I continue to find more and more data. So if anybody's curious about it, you can get on my newsletter list there. And I'm continuing to share the data as I come across it in my blog. So I'd love to see people there.

• 1:05:02Lewis Howes?

  Awesome. Well, Lissa, I appreciate you sharing your message with us today. And thanks so much for coming on.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Oh, Lewis, thank you so much. It's fun catching up with you. And I love hearing your stories, too. You're such a, you're such a great example of somebody who's really doing all of these things well, who's sort of balancing your whole health care and really being honest with yourself and bringing your life into alignment with your truth. And I know I follow your blog and I follow you on, on social media. And I just love, I just love watching you go for it, you know, with all of your adventures.

• 1:05:33Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it. We're gonna, we're gonna go forward together. We're gonna keep moving forward together.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Amen. Yeah, I'm on board.

• 1:05:41Lewis Howes?

  Awesome. Thanks so much, Lissa. I appreciate it.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Thank you, Lewis.

• 1:05:52Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, greats. I hope you enjoyed this information by Dr. Lisa Rankin. Again, Mind Over Medicine, extremely powerful. I urge you to go check out that book because there's just some great information and insights in there. Either way, whether you believe in it or not, I think you should be aware of it. So, go ahead and check it out. Again, if you would like this podcast, if you don't like this podcast, if you have any thoughts or feelings, I want to hear about them. I would love to get your feedback. So, please, head over to schoolofgreatness.com. Leave me a message over there, a comment on this episode specifically. We've got all the show notes from here. We're going to have links to her book, videos, and all the other stuff we talked about in this episode

• 1:06:36Lewis Howes?

  over at schoolofgreatness.com. So, go ahead and check that out and leave us a review on iTunes as well. So, let me know. And we're going to pick someone each week who is the person of the week who's leaving a rating or a review or some type of feedback or comment over on iTunes. With that, guys, stay tuned for the next episode. It's going to blow you away. And make sure to do something great.