Improving your mindset to improve your health

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[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

so i’m seven

and my sister’s three and we’re

splashing water around one of those

garden hose filled plastic kiddie pools

our mother gets up from the lawn chair

and knights me with a declaration of

authority

every oldest kid in the family waits to

hear stephen

you’re in charge go watch over your

sister

this seven-year-old is now in charge

as i peer over the vast eighth acre

kingdom i just inherited

part of my brain notices my sister in

the pool

she’s trying to get out in slow motion

chariots of fire playing in the

background

her foot catches the edge and she falls

to the ground her poor little innocent

knee scrapes the pavement

she lets out a cry henceforth known as

the shriek herd around the neighborhood

letting the world know that i and my

first assigned mission as big brother

failed my mother runs out to console my

crying sister

but all her attempts to calm her to no

avail for 15 minutes my mother stares at

intensify but then a profound idea pops

into my brain and i deal with the

potential to redeem this tragic tale

i run into the house ravaged the

medicine cabinet and returned in a flash

presenting my hysterical sister and

fear-monded mother my proposed solution

a band-aid a pastel pink and royal blue

band-aid

clinically proven in randomized

double-blinded placebo-controlled trials

100 effective igniting my kid’s sister

into giggles of pride and joy

as i present this band-aid the mere

sight of this band-aid

instantly the downpouring of tears stops

see i wish all my patients were that

easy to heal

see i’m an emergency medicine physician

and all too often we’ve made the mistake

of thinking

the more complex something is the more

valuable it is

see with all the science and technology

in modern medicine

most of us have this sense something’s

not quite right

a 90 year old asked me about it the

other day she said why do people seem to

be getting sick

so much more than they used to well

besides we’re living longer two reasons

food and fear

perhaps you’ve heard the famous words of

hippocrates the father of medicine

he said let food be thy medicine

he wasn’t talking about diet coke but

seriously

do you know what he said just before

that he said

everyone has a doctor within we just

need to help in its work

the natural healing force within each

one of us is the greatest force in

getting well

now fear and some of you achievers i

know you’re out there prefer to call it

stress both fear and stress devastate

the body’s natural healing systems

but how well first let’s fact check my

90 year olds question

are people really getting sicker well

when it comes to

dying infections over the last century

despite what it may seem we’re actually

doing exponentially better

today it’s debilitating heart disease

cancer

stroke lung disease

and we’re seeing increasing numbers in

the er of what i’ll call inflammation

syndromes

and we’re all familiar with them the

headaches the belly aches the breathing

and joint

itis’s things people go to the doctor in

hospital for

but don’t usually end up in the hospital

for

things like headache up 240 percent the

last six decades

arthritis exploding the last five

decades

and childhood asthma still hasn’t fully

recovered

and you know the number one reason

people come to the er it’s abdominal

pain

up to 45 million americans suffer from

something called

irritable bowel syndrome so what’s going

on here

is this a critical shortage of inhalers

or pills

see it’s easy to wade in the swamp of

complex analysis

but a simpler insight slapped me awake

when i met this gentleman

so you meet jerry a grandpa like 86 year

old

came to the er because he just wasn’t

feeling right

when he checked in his blood pressure

was 220 over 110 like crazy high

so we did a battery test we made sure he

was gonna have a heart attack or a

stroke or anything else dangerous

all the labs heart monitoring even a

head scan everything came back

normal so i sat down with jerry to

reassure him and eventually i asked him

this

key question after we connected i said

sir how much news have you been watching

lately

oh i’m real good about that see i’m not

sleeping doc so my grandson he he set up

the you view on my phone and

well i stay up getting the updates there

and eventually

i get up and get the morning news with

my coffee and

lunchtime news and i never miss a press

conference from the governor

and the evening news and

well it’s just so horrible doc

everything happening in the world these

days

my heart sank this man told me he’d been

watching 10 to 12 hours

of news every day so i gave him the

prescription he needed

no more than one hour of news

per day

see why is this so important immediate

can be like a

seductive con artist stealing our

brain’s attention

and you think positive or negative

headlines are more effective yeah

negative by three times

it’s called negativity bias and our

brains come pre-programmed for it

this instinctive fixation with what’s

wrong

was designed to keep us safe from

saber-toothed tigers or

poisonous berries around the corner of

the cave problem is these are not real

threats anymore

information even perceptions are growing

threats to our health

but how see our thoughts

can make us sick especially those

unconscious thoughts the ones we don’t

even realize we’re running

so as jerry’s hypnotizing himself with

12 hours of danger will robinson

the murder hornets are coming see those

thoughts activate a specific pattern of

chemistry hormones and nerves in the

physical body

for jerry part of that pattern the tip

of the iceberg that we could measure

was his high blood pressure

and ten years ago all jerry would have

gotten from me was a prescription for a

pill

and people like jerry people like you

and me

friends and family would have stayed in

the cycle of

diagnose treat and then repeat

i got so frustrated with not knowing how

help people get off that merry-go-round

i get real curious and

start searching for better solutions so

that led me to

business school where i was introduced

to the power of coaching

eventually diving into topics like

behavioral economics and public health

at hopkins i

start seeing the many other forces

creating health and

healing so i became a coach myself

to help other doctors and professionals

soon i started cross-pollinating these

skills of coaching

into conversations with patients and the

results are profound

the qualities of a caring connected

effective coach

also help patients create lasting health

and vitality and here’s the real beauty

anyone can

learn and start benefiting from these

simple tools

see it’s called mindset training and it

has profound implications for our health

especially those chronic inflammation

syndromes

so in positive psychology we know that

training the brain to be genuinely

happier results in improved

performance energy creativity

business outcomes and now we know that

it’s contagious

so many of these proven practices that

we use in coaching

because they reprogram that default

negativity bias in the brain

things like daily gratitude journaling

random acts of kindness box breathing

light exercise we’ve always heard about

the transformational effects of

meditation

see for the last two decades at least

we’ve known how

relationships and positive mindset are

associated with living longer

and now we know how mindset measurably

interacts with the physical body

affecting our immune system blood

pressure

sleep both quality and duration our

metabolism

which is indirectly related to weight

and something called hrv which is like a

gauge of our nervous system’s

repair and balance and now we have

evidence that a mindful mindset

lengthens these things called telomeres

these are like little hourglasses at the

ends of our dna

now all these result in a reinforcing

feedback loop

as a positive and healthier physical

body

affects our mindset remember jerry

well for two weeks after we connected

his blood pressure was under 130 over

everyone see the wise healer within us

helps us learn how to redirect this

brain from working against us

welcome to the wise doctor within each

one of us

i even witnessed it in a five-year-old

girl when her parents brought her to the

she’d been having doubled over bouts of

abdominal pain and well

these have been going on for three years

every few nights

they’d already seen top doctors they had

every test

but here they were in the er still

frustrated still scared

know anyone like this in a similar

pattern

so they already had everything done like

what could we do

you know when i need to look in a

child’s ear instead of asking

can i look in your ear which almost

always results in no

instead i kind of ease in and instead i

hey which ear do you want me to tickle

first it works a little better right

so we did the same thing here he

connected first

and used questions just like in coaching

to help this girl get her mind off her

body

physically and towards pretty much

anything else so we talked about her

sister and

school and her new friend and i taught

her the simple skill of box breathing

and

this isn’t some jedi mind trick within

minutes

all of us can see it feel it her

breathing getting

deeper her speech picking up her eyes

gazing higher

experiencing for herself how we get to