Health for Life with Emily Gold Mears

george grombacher 0:00
Come on Bob Leffler. This is George G. And the time is right welcome today’s guest strong a powerful Emily gold nears. Emily, are you ready to do this? I am. All right, let’s go. Emily is the author of optimizing your health and approachable guide to reducing your risk of chronic disease. excited to have you on Emily, tell us a little about your personal life. It’s more about your work and why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:35
Well, thank you for having me on. In terms of my personal life, I used to be a lawyer, which I did not love. But I learned some great research tools. And I’ve always loved science, and been passionate about medicine and health and how it applies to the individual. So I decided to switch to become a research analyst in the area of science. And because of the lockdown, I decided to take all the notes that I had accumulated through taking online courses, attending conferences, reading books, listening to podcasts, and put them in a comprehensive form so that I could share the valuable information that I’ve learned along the way.

george grombacher 1:18
Nice. And so I always appreciate when we try and make things that are complicated, confusing, intimidating, all of these things, which helped certainly is make that approachable. So it’s one thing to amass all this information that you did, and then how do you actually crunch this down so I can consume it?

Unknown Speaker 1:42
Well, that was a goal of mine, that as well as a goal of transmitting actual science, evidence based science that supported by studies. And I have 200 footnotes in my book, because I did not want to be part of this ubiquitous, bad situation of pseudoscience. And I love to read the hard science of the clinical studies. And I felt that I had the ability to distill them down so that the everyday health consumer could access this information.

george grombacher 2:15
pseudoscience, there’s a lot of folks running around on social media who are holding themselves out as experts in the field.

Unknown Speaker 2:23
Yes, there are a lot. And one can do research and become an expert in the area. But as long as they have done their due diligence and research the area and can back it up with evidence, and a lot of them are not doing so.

george grombacher 2:42
Fair enough. So as you are putting the book together, how did you decide? Or what did you decide is to be included? Because it’s a lot?

Unknown Speaker 2:54
That’s a good question. And that was hard for me, because I literally could have written three books. And as it was, when I submitted my first manuscript, the editor became a little angry with me, she said, this is way too much information. To which I responded, Well, people can just skip over what they’re not interested in. But a lot of this is valuable, but I did have to capitulate, and cut it down by a third. So it was hard, because there were so many more chapters that I could have included. But instead, I focused on the chapters that I didn’t include. And what I tried to do was put only the salient information, because there are many books written on a lot of the topics sleep, nutrition, stress, but I thought perhaps they’re people who don’t have the time or the inclination to read all of those books. And so what I did is I did read all the books, and I tried to gather up what I felt was the most salient information and put it in a smaller amount of information.

george grombacher 4:00
Not the cliff notes, but a more digestible version of

Unknown Speaker 4:03
it. Well put, yes.

george grombacher 4:07
Because I’m one of those people that I’m not I don’t know that I don’t want to maybe I’m not able to consume all those books you were just describing. And so what you’re, what you are describing in your book is music to my ears, certainly. So let’s take a step back. When you say reduce your risk of chronic disease. What is a chronic disease, which, which ones are you focused on?

Unknown Speaker 4:34
So chronic disease is a big umbrella, and it includes cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, cancer, metabolic disease, autoimmune disease, and even others. And in my opinion, the conventional health care system has not handled these well. If you get into a car accident or break a bone or have an acute infection, you want to go Little conventionally trained doctor. But their approach to these diseases which are oftentimes multifactorial, is not that helpful, they tend to treat only the symptoms and not the root cause. And until you get to the root cause you’ll never get rid of the disease. So I felt that it was important to reduce one’s risk. I purposely didn’t say how to never get one. Because in all honesty, this is what most of us will die from. But the goal is usually to postpone the onset for as long as you possibly can.

george grombacher 5:36
Yeah, fair enough. It strikes me that well, how has the incidence or the amount of people who are getting chronic diseases, I imagine it’s skyrocketed over the past 20 or 30 years

Unknown Speaker 5:52
by a gigantic number. And a lot that’s due to many factors. As I previously mentioned, nutrition being one, our food supply is terribly tainted, the soil is devoid of minerals and vitamins, the amount of processed food. And another really big factor is our toxic exposure. There are so many chemicals that were exposed to on a regular basis. And for some reason, our country keeps on allowing more and more chemicals to be produced. And they are everywhere. And while we cannot eliminate them completely, there are things that we could do to reduce our exposure, and every little bit helps.

george grombacher 6:37
Yeah, I think that that’s I think that’s very true. I think sometimes when we start looking at Oh, my gosh, everything you just laid out there. poor soil, processed foods, chemicals, everywhere, toxins, there’s plastic. I mean, if you made a plastic in 10 years, for goodness sakes, it can be overwhelming, but little bits do make a big difference over time. Is that fair?

Unknown Speaker 6:59
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that one should start where they can start slowly build upon that, as they find that they’ll feel better when they make additional steps that I think will incentivize them to continue and adding to those initial steps.

george grombacher 7:16
Yeah, I think it’s a, and I’m certainly guilty of all the stuff that I hypothesize other people may may do, but it’s probably easy to see, you know, if it, you know, forget it, if I can’t get rid of all of it, then I’m just not going to do anything at all. But that’s really not an appropriate thing. Because little things do make a big difference over time. And as you do get introduced to this world of being more mindful and thoughtful of reducing chronic conditions, you’ll get better at it. And it’ll be easier for you.

Unknown Speaker 7:47
Apps to move, and you begin to feel better and have more energy and sleep better. That will make you want to continue on. I think that’s the best incentive of all.

george grombacher 7:59
Yeah, you do, we do become more confident as we get a little bit of success if we’re losing weights, or whatever the case may be. So So you, you, you mentioned, sleep, stress food. What are some of the other? Or do you have a favorite thing, maybe if you say, You know what, I really love talking about this. And I think that this is such an impactful thing that somebody can start doing?

Unknown Speaker 8:26
Well, I love all my chapters, my children. So it was hard for me to pick just one. I mean, I could talk about all of them endlessly. But I suppose if I were to talk about one, I’m fascinated by I have a whole chapter on testing and tracking. And I believe the adage that you cannot fix what you cannot track. And it applies to so many aspects of prevention, and self improvement, you have to know your baseline. And the way that you do that is you do all these different testing options that are available.

Unknown Speaker 9:04
And then there are so many fascinating devices. Two of my favorites that I highlight in the book

Unknown Speaker 9:12
are the continuous glucose monitor, which I’m convinced in the future. I don’t know when but I really believe at one point in the future, everyone will have a consumer a continuous glucose monitor. And what that does, it’s designed for people with diabetes, but it has great application for those who don’t have diabetes. And there are really fancy ones that are not necessarily spend your money on there are more basic ones that you do need a prescription for but most doctors will give you a script for it. And then you get it and you can go online to YouTube and figure out how to apply it. You wear it for two weeks. You download an app on your phone, and what you the data that you learn from that device is so bad valuable that I think everyone should have. Because one of the themes throughout my book is how different we all are genetically, biochemically, physiologically, we are all different. So what works for your friend, or even a relative, maybe it effective for you, or at worst, maybe downright harmful. And it’s important to know yourself, and this CGM, that continuous glucose monitor will help you do that. What it will show is it will show you your precise response to every food that you eat. And some people can eat a carrot, or a banana or popcorn, all seemingly benign foods, and have very different responses, you can spike glucose, or not spike glucose. And these continuous spikes in glucose have been found to be very harmful to our health, or brain health or metabolic health. It’s good to know how you react to the foods that you eat.

george grombacher 11:01
It’s fascinating that you and I could be having the same meal. And it literally have totally different responses. And the more that we know that, and that tells us Oh, wow, I thought that I thought that eating this for me was totally fine. But it turns out, it’s really spiking or whatever negative thing is happening with within like glucose. And and when our glucose is spiking, that it puts us at greater risk for diabetes and other conditions.

Unknown Speaker 11:36
Yes, all conditions. I mean, they’re even calling neurodegenerative diseases, dimension, Alzheimer’s, there are some people refer to it as diabetes three, because of the glucose component. And metabolic disorder is probably the biggest epidemic that we have in this country. And that all has to do with glucose and how it deals with it. So it would be very valuable to know how an individual responds to the food that they’re eating.

george grombacher 12:07
You talk about how important it is for for us to take ownership of our of our health. Why is that hard for people?

Unknown Speaker 12:19
I think that behavior is really a hard thing to change, we get in routines. And we’re all busy. And it takes an enormous amount of effort and energy and discipline to change well established habits. But I believe that it can be done, I really do. And what I’m hoping is for me, I mean, as I say in the book, I had very bad habits. But because I was an athlete, I didn’t show the signs of ill health. And I had no idea what I was doing internally, until I watched my father get sick. And it was that moment, which was only four or five years ago, that I thought I will do anything to avoid that anything at all. And I think that happens to a lot of people. Either they get very sick, or they watch a loved one get sick. And that’s the impetus that it takes for them to change well established habits. But hopefully, people won’t wait that long. They’ll do it because it’s really the right thing to do.

george grombacher 13:24
It’s, it’s so fascinating behavior change and what it takes. I can just speak for myself that I have two small kids. And now I’m 43 years old. And I thought well, what is the body that that I want to take with me into the next stage of life. And I wasn’t I wasn’t grossly overweight, but I was overweight. And so that’s what sort of motivated me to to make that shift. And I’m just I’m just constantly intrigued and fascinated by why people make the decisions that they make and more importantly, how, how we how others can help motivate people to make those same decisions without having to go through a traumatic experience personally or close to them.

Unknown Speaker 14:14
Absolutely. And weight isn’t the only thing because our internal health and our cellular health is really what makes all the difference in terms of aging and health. And one can be thin, but have no idea what’s going on internally.

george grombacher 14:30
Yeah, right. Yes. And that’s lots of changes that I I was certainly motivated by not just the vanity although I am I’m guilty of being vain but just wanting to be healthy and feel good and have energy and and not die before I’m supposed to and live longer than I’m supposed to even so how is how is really, how is how is the book structured when when somebody picks it up? What what can they expect?

Unknown Speaker 14:59
Well, it has A lot of information, I have 19 chapters, the 19th is a resource chapter. And each previous chapter covers one topic. And I tried to cover the important information, but not go on and on and on, which was hard. And then at the very end of each chapter, I have a minimum of five action steps, because information alone makes it hard to change your behavior. But I distilled it down to include action steps to help people get started, and to kind of guide them along their process.

george grombacher 15:34
I love it. I love I appreciate sort of a Workbook format where I can get the information and then I say, Okay, here’s sort of the big takeaways and things you can do immediately to actually put it into action. So I love it perfect. Didn’t look like a scary book when you picked it or when when you held it up, how many pages is that? Emily?

Unknown Speaker 15:55
Okay, it’s a good question I’m gonna have to look at including footnotes or not including, not including footnotes. Okay, so not including footnotes, it includes 341 pages. All right, that’s, that’s manageable. Yeah, and a lot of its resources, you know, resources, which are broken down chapter by chapter, and they just tell you what brands to buy that are non toxic, and then can help you along the way. So it’s 324 pages minus the resource chapter.

george grombacher 16:25
That’s awesome. That’s super helpful right there. Because you know, all things being equal, I would rather make a choice that’s not toxic, then make a choice that’s toxic. And you’ve saved me the time of having to go and do all that research. And that’s immensely valuable. So I appreciate that. Well, Emily, the people are ready for that difference making tip, even though you’ve given us a lot, what do you have for them?

Unknown Speaker 16:45
That’s hard, because there are so many tips that can make a difference. But along my health journey, which has been bumpy, what I’ve learned makes the most difference is to begin with focusing on your gut health, because you can have a lot of things that have gone awry, but until you fix your gut, you will optimize the other areas that have gone awry. And so focus on gut repair, get a healthcare healthcare practitioner, who’s very experienced in gut repair, because that turns out to be connected to everything.

george grombacher 17:26
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on. Emily, thank thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they get a copy of optimizing your health and approachable guide to reducing your risk of chronic disease?

Unknown Speaker 17:41
Well, the book is available wherever books are sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble target Walmart. And you can get a hold of me I have a website and legal mirrors, which is actually the same name as my Instagram and my Facebook.

george grombacher 17:57
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, show me your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, pick up a copy of optimizing your health, wherever you buy your books, and then find her at our website, which is Emily gold, Mears, Emi lygoldmears.com. And then on social media under Emily gold mirror says Well, thanks again, Emily.

Unknown Speaker 18:22
Thank you, George. Nice to talk to you,

george grombacher 18:24
likewise. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai