Finding your thrive state with Dr. Kien Vuu

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:56.470] – Allan
Hey, Raz. How are you doing?

[00:01:58.510] – Rachel
Good, how are you today, Allan?

[00:02:01.390] – Allan
I'm doing good. My daughters flew down to Bocas to see us. They both decided they wanted to try to make the trip together. So they're both here now. They're about the same age or really quite literally less than a year apart. And so the two of them just really get along well. And like spending time together as much, if not more, than spending time with us. So they just saw it as an opportunity to come down here and have an adventure together.

[00:02:25.780] – Allan
And my wife being kind of a diligent, wonderful wife and mother, that she is reached out to them and said, what do you want to do when you're in Bocas? And because our son had seen a sloth when he was down here, that was one of their requests. And sloths are wild, which means, it's kind of hard to schedule

[00:02:48.580] – Rachel
Good points.

[00:02:50.350] – Allan
But that said, she reached out and this is such a wonderful community that everybody's here to kind of help each other out and help everything out. So it just happens that there's a guy here who has adopted basically two rescue sloths. One of them is two years old and the other one now is six months old. And so he's he's taking care of those. And we arranged to go visit him during the feeding time for the young one. And so the girls and Tammy we were able to feed them and hold the slok and sort of hold it. It's on this little teddy bear. So it's cuddled up to the teddy bear. So you're holding the teddy bear and then you go to feed the sloth and it reaches over its little paw and wraps it around your finger while it's while it's feeding. And so, yes, that was two-toed sloth, which was not very popular in on the islands that wer habitate here.

[00:03:49.090] – Allan
Then interesting, we went to dinner later at a place called The View at Oasis and they happened to have a three-toed sloth right there in on their property.So we're able to go get a picture with the three-toed slaw, which was not in as good a mood as the two-toed sloths were.

[00:04:08.200] – Rachel
Oh boy!

[00:04:09.340] – Allan
It was a day full of sloth, which is exactly what our daughters wanted. So, yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty special time.

[00:04:15.910] – Rachel
That sounds so fun. What a lucky opportunity that they got to see that then.

[00:04:20.470] – Allan
Yeah. I guess there's three species. There's the three-toed and the two-toed and then there's a pygmy sloth. Never seems a pygmy sloth, but I'm told it's just a smaller version. But you can actually now that have had a little bit of time to look at them. I know now I can actually visually tell you rather one's a two-toed or three-toed just by looking at its face.

[00:04:43.540] – Rachel
Oh neat.

[00:04:44.200] – Allan
Yeah. So yeah I learned a lot and got to hang out with some sloths.

[00:04:48.220] – Rachel
How awesome. What a fun time. That sounds really neat.

[00:04:52.270] – Allan
How about yourself?

[00:04:53.680] – Rachel
Good. It's spring for today anyway. Or recently in Michigan. Anything can happen. We actually are expecting maybe some snow later. But spring is sprung and up here the daffodils are blooming and my lilies are coming up and all of our frogs are returning to our pond. And I even saw some turtles out. I did a couple of long runs this weekend, so I saw the turtles out. So it was fun to see all the wildlife and all the flowers popping up. It's beautiful here.

[00:05:24.370] – Allan
Tis the season for outdoor long runs, right?

[00:05:27.470] – Rachel
It really is. The weather is so ideal. It's just perfect for 50s, even 60s. It's just perfect for many, many miles.

[00:05:37.270] – Allan
Awesome. All right. Are you ready to talk to Dr. V?

[00:05:41.140] – Rachel
Yes. Let's do this.

Interview

[00:06:39.100] – Allan
Dr. V, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:42.010] – Dr. Vuu
It is a pleasure to be on the show and thanks for having me.

[00:06:45.010] – Allan
Your book is called Thrive State: Your Blueprint for Optimal Health, Longevity and Peak Performance. And I think as you kind of look at this, you think about the word thrive I. I love that word, I mean, it's what you want. It's what you wake up in the morning and everything that you pretty much do in your whole life. Everything you've ever done in your life was really about thriving.

[00:07:08.680] – Dr. Vuu
Indeed, that's what we all desire. And I look at my nephew, I look at my nieces, I look at the children. And I'm a new dad. As kids, we have that innate feeling within us to just be the very, very best versions of ourselves. And I think throughout life we might pick up some habits. We forget who we really are. And in that forgetting, we probably build up some bad habits to lead to poor health. But for us to get back to thriving, it's really a process of remembering. And I'm sure we'll get more into that a little bit later.

[00:07:40.730] – Allan
Yeah, and one of the things you got into in the book that I think is really important is where we are in life is kind of like a continuum. The thrive state is on one side and then on the other side is this stressed state or the surviva state. And in my case before I got started in all this and it was a story not dissimilar from yours, I'm sitting on the beach saying, OK, I got this great career. I've done all these things that I'm supposed to do, and I'm supposed to be this person who's worked my way up. And I'm C suite and I'm doing the things I'm supposed to be doing. And I'm freaking miserable and I'm unhealthy and I'm unhappy and I'm in toxic relationships in my whole life sucks. I thought I'd be happy. I thought I made the C suite, I'm supposed to be excited being a vice president and sitting in board meetings and.

[00:08:34.800] – Dr. Vuu
Yes.

[00:08:36.060] – Allan
No.

[00:08:38.390] – Dr. Vuu
I hear ya. There is a quote that was attributed to the Dalai Lama. And he said basically what he found most interesting about humanity was man because he would sacrifice his health in order to make money and then sacrifice his money to recuperate his health. And I find so many of my clients, myself personally and many, many people out there in the world kind of almost suffer the same fate. It's when we start to listen to all the things that are supposed to make us happy, supposed to bring us success. We forget that as children just coming into the world, we are completely enough. And we have a state of joy and we learn things throughout life that says that you might not be enough being who you are. You need to attain this sort of job or or work in this type of area. Your bank account needs to look like this. Your house needs to look like this. And these are the things that are supposed to make you happy.

[00:09:43.530] – Dr. Vuu
Don't listen to your intuition because it's these things. And eventually, just like you and me, I've been in my story, I became this position that was really at the top of my game, doing a lot of minimally invasive surgeries, bought a fancy house, bought a fancy car, got all the things that I thought would make me happy. But at that point in my life, I was not only overweight, I was diabetic, I was hypertensive, I had prescription medications and I was really living the lifestyle that was not in thrive. Put me in what what I called the survive state.

[00:10:18.390] – Dr. Vuu
And that actually turns to biological processes in your body to make you have this chronic diseases. Now, fortunately, when you wake up from that and when you can start to build a life where you are realigned with who you're meant to be as a human being, all those things start to align and your physical health aligns. And I was able to actually reverse all those conditions in six months.

[00:10:40.320] – Allan
Yeah, I like that quote, but I also like the one I saw it was in a Cracker Barrel in Mississippi and it said, I want to be the person my dog thinks I am. All your dog and all your dog really wants you to be able to do is that is to walk down the beach and throw the ball, throw the stick. Or in my case, though, the coconut. Just kind of be that person that's out there willing to play and have a good time. But but you've you've got to have some juice in the tank. You've got to have something more than what you have, like in a boardroom or even in a medical profession.

[00:11:13.590] – Allan
There's got to be some joy in your life to do that. There's got to be some physicality in your life to be able to do that. And so as we kind of look at the stress state and we kind of look at the survival state and that continuum that we talked about, what are some signs that we might be in trouble. Because we're all somewhere on that continuum. But we need signs to tell us where we really stand.

[00:11:38.250] – Dr. Vuu
That's a great question. Before I answer that question, I just want to bring up the whole concept of this stress and survive state, right? Basically human beings are made up of the individual unit of cells. The cells make up tissues, make up organs. Those organs together work together in systems to create who we are as human beings. So it all comes down to the individual cells. Now, these individual cells, what directs their behavior? So when these cells are at their very best, we actually get healing. We get great immunity. We get peak mental, physical, emotional performance. We get along longevity because these cells will last a long time. So when we're talking about optimal health, longevity and performance, it's really the state of optimal cellular function.

[00:12:24.720] – Dr. Vuu
Now flip it back the other way when the cells are not optimally functioning. Imagine your lung cell is not able to extract oxygen. It only extracts, I don't know, 70 percent of the oxygen it normally does. Every other cell in the body is relying on that lung cell to be its very best. And if you're only extracting 70 percent, then the other cells only get 70 percent of the nutrient needs. And guess what? Those other cells perform a really good function that the rest of the body needs as well. So what happens if the cell is in a suboptimal state? Over time, you're going to start to break down systems. And when systems break down, that's when you get those signs and symptoms that you and I are talking about. That's when you get chronic disease and that's when people with covid-19 don't do so well because they are in distress.

[00:13:11.310] – Dr. Vuu
So what are some of those signs? Basically these signs are really the effect of our cells not optimally functioning. And they could be fatigue, they could be brain fog. They could be having patches and excema around your body. It could be joint pains or pain. It could be forgetful memory. It could be chest pains. It could be a loss of sexual function. So those are all typical signs. I call them signs of just feeling like crap. So you start to feel crap and you're not feeling like you've got the energy. You've got aches and pains. And you're not functioning very well. Those are signs.

[00:13:50.460] – Dr. Vuu
The good news is this going from a stress state to thrive state is actually what happens is, there's something I refer to in my book called The Bio-Energetic Model of Health. That just means our cells in our DNA are constantly listening to the energy that surrounding. It's energetic and epigenetic environment around the DNA that actually dictates how our cells behave. It is this energetic environment that dictates whether our cells go into a thrip state or goes into a stress state. And fortunately, what controls that bio-energetic state is largely controlled by our lifestyle, our choices and what we give ourselves on a moment to moment basis.

[00:14:32.820] – Allan
Yeah, I think that's one of the cool things that's really kind of coming out of the whole genetic/epigenetic conversation. Is that we're a system and basically what we do and how we live our lives and the things we even what we think are basically inputs to this system. They're basically information. So food is information, movement is information. And those are just two of the bio energetic elements. Could you talk through each seven, each of the seven?

[00:15:03.080] – Allan
Because there's five, what I would call internal kind of internally focused. And then there's two that you said were kind of externally focused and I think all seven of them are important. Obviously, we can't talk about all seven. But if you could just briefly go through the seven so we know what we're talking about here.

[00:15:19.790] – Dr. Vuu
Yes, great question, Allan. So the bio-energetic state is the following. We said that there are all these different inputs now. In fact, there are probably every single energetic input gets transmuted into some kind of energy right? We're all energetic beings. Energy is always interacting with each other. But to remember a million inputs will not make our lives any easier. So myself as well as epigenetitsis Steven Cole from UCLA. One of my colleagues have come up with seven of you.

[00:15:50.120] – Dr. Vuu
Focus on these seven and you focus on these things really well. Your risk of getting chronic disease is very, very low. And also your propensity to live in longevity and having the peak performance is super high. And the seven are this. They are sleep, nutrition, movement, stress and emotional mastery, thoughts and mindset, relationships, and finally purpose, all these are energies that actually have biochemical messengers that talk to our DNA that actually puts us in a state or a stress state.

[00:16:26.800] – Allan
I noticed you didn't say career success.

[00:16:30.580] – Dr. Vuu
Not in there.

[00:16:31.930] – Dr. Vuu
Not in there.

[00:16:33.790] – Allan
I thought it was really interesting what you are calling the BEEs. You use the term the BEEs.

[00:16:37.670] – Dr. Vuu
They're actually Bio-Energetic Elements.

[00:16:40.470] – Allan
I kind of like the BEEs. There's 7 BEEs.

[00:16:43.000] – Allan
It was interesting that the first one you put in there was sleep, because I think a lot of us think, well, no, well, maybe we want to talk about nutrition or no, I'm a I'm a personal trainer, so I should obviously talk about physical exercise. And then, we get into the whole concept with the the blue zones. And they didn't mention sleep. They mentioned that they walk a lot, that they move a lot, that they have great relationships and they eat certain foods. Very seldom does someone put sleep at the front of that list. But you did. Can you kind of explain why and why sleep is so important?

[00:17:18.820] – Dr. Vuu
Sleep is I put it there first, because when your sleep is off, your whole biochemistry in your body is off. So you could try to each way out of it or exercise your way out of it. But it just doesn't work because our bodies follow a rhythm. This thing called this circadian rhythm and our circadian rhythms dictate how our hormones flow throughout the day. And if you're not regular, particularly in your sleep, your circadian rhythms are off. So then your hormones are off. And when your hormones are off, it's going to throw all the good things that you're trying to do it, throw it out the window.

[00:17:56.590] – Dr. Vuu
I've had people who try to lose weight and done everything right, but just didn't sleep very well. Once they change the sleep, the weight came off. There's actually a lot of chronic diseases associated with people sleeping less than seven hours a day. There are cardiovascular disease, dementia, certain cancers. So sleep is really, really important only because it drives our circadian rhythm and our hormone levels. So we need to focus on that.

[00:18:25.150] – Dr. Vuu
So how then what's the best hack for that? A lot of people that ask me, well, we can go into a lot of different techniques and tools, but if you can go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, go to sleep when it's dark and wake up when there's light and do that the same time, every single day, you train your body into a regular circadian rhythm.

[00:18:45.970] – Dr. Vuu
I just find that with busy entrepreneurs, people living at home, a lot of crappy blue light and weekend warriors. You're working during the week and you're sleeping well during the week. But weekends are partying and your sleep is off. That's what throws people off when you can go back to a regular sleep cycle again, go to sleep and wake up the same time every day. That's going to do wonders for your health.

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[00:20:42.310] – Allan
One of the things I did, which for me was huge, and I maybe I don't talk about enough or maybe I didn't really think about it as much until I was reading your book, Thrive State. I realized that one of the things that I naturally went to with my sleep was trying to go to bed early enough that I could just naturally wake up early enough and not have to worry about it. And as a result, I got into the practice of not setting an alarm.

[00:21:11.170] – Allan
And so for the past five years, unless I absolutely have to be up for a flight. So, I've got a four o'clock in the morning flight. Then I'll go ahead and set an alarm to be up at four o'clock so I can make that flight, but otherwise go to bed. And everybody will think this is crazy. But at 8:30pm, go to bed at 8:30pm, get your stuff done, have your little relax time and then go to bed at 8:30pm and then go to sleep and I'll sleep four or five good sleep cycles and that's going to work out to somewhere around seven and a half to maybe eight hours, maybe eight and a half, depending on this and that.

[00:21:49.150] – Allan
But I wake up and yes, for me it tends to be about 4-4:30 in the morning with no alarm. I just wake up and I say, OK, have I had enough sleep cycles? And if I don't feel like I have, I go get another one. And so sometimes at six o'clock before I roll out of bed, a late morning and but I feel great. I feel like I'm rested. I feel like that night was a great investment of time.

[00:22:12.070] – Allan
So losing two hours of Netflix at that night before actually was an okay investment to make to actually feel great when I wake up in the morning, can you talk about some of the things that we should do to kind of improve our sleep and why? Because I think a lot of folks don't actually understand the full sleep cycle and why it's so important to make it through the whole sleep cycle. And then what are just a few little quick tips of things that people can do to make sure that they're getting that kind of quality sleep?

[00:22:43.600] – Dr. Vuu
Great question, Allan. I find right now, because of the advanced technology and people's schedule, they're not intuitively listening to your body, just like you've trained yourself to do to go through the sleep cycle. So a lot of times people have their alarm set. And when they're and if you happen to be in the middle of your sleep cycle, not fully awake, you're going to wake up feeling very groggy, very, very drowsy. So just to let your listeners know, a typical sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes or so.

[00:23:10.240] – Dr. Vuu
It's really important. Naps are great during the day if you need to get naps. But I wouldn't get a nap longer than 20 minutes because again, when you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle, you're going to feel very, very groggy. But what are some techniques? Well, people have some crazy schedules, but people are also on their phones. They're on the laptops and watching TV. And there's some really bad blue light that comes out which lowers your melatonin levels.

[00:23:33.100] – Dr. Vuu
And, you know, even if you're able to fall asleep at a regular time, you don't get really deep sleep because melatonin is necessary for that. So I give myself a technology curfew at 7:00 pm. I don't check my phones and turn off the TVs and whatnot. So that's something that's really great. Another thing is a lot of people kind of have junk light at home as well, and they've got their alarm clocks on. They've got a lot of electronics around the room and possibly light was coming in.

[00:24:01.900] – Dr. Vuu
That's going to affect your sleep as well. So if you are living in a city, one great thing is to have blackout curtains. Another great thing to have is maybe a device that has white noise that's going to cancel out a lot of the noise that that's out there. And then it's really good to have good sleep routine, right? So the hour before I go to bed, I'm making sure I'm not checking any email. I'm not doing anything to get my brain wired.

[00:24:32.230] – Dr. Vuu
I'm telling my body, OK, it's time to wind down now. It's time to be grateful for the day and to set myself up for the next day. And part of my sleep routine includes a little bit of journally, a little bit of stretching, a little meditation. And I'm good to go when I need to sleep. And then a good sleep routine at night also means you have a great routine in the morning. And I like to get early morning sunshine.

[00:24:57.430] – Dr. Vuu
When you first wake up, if you go get some sunshine right there, right when you do that in the morning, it's resets your circadian rhythm. So it's great for sleep, including a little bit of exercise every single day is going to allow you to sleep better at night as well. So those are some great tools. There's a lot of supplements that are out there. Be wary of some, but I find some really natural, very safe type of things that people would take as magnesium or glycine that will help you sleep as well.

[00:25:24.070] – Allan
Just be careful when you go into the magnesium, start slow. It does another thing besides help you sleep.

[00:25:31.960] – Dr. Vuu
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you take a little too much. You're going to be visiting the restroom.

[00:25:36.100] – Allan
Yeah. I think when you talk about naps, I love this. One of the reason I picked this topic, because sleep's actually one of my favorite things in the world, and I love it every once in an afternoon nap and when I take the nap, but I'm a little different there. And you even said in the book, if you want to go longer, get a full sleep cycle in. So it's kind of the whole deal. Just like I would go to bed, I try to get the room dark and cool. I get the white noise going. I have an app on my phone that plays this fan sound and it's like a signal to me that it's my brain clicks and hears that sound. And unfortunately, small boats here kind of make a similar sound. So if we go on a long boat ride, I get a little drowsy. But what I got to take my nap, it's like I lay down and I say, okay, I'm going to sleep a sleep cycle. And it's a full 90 minute nap, but I make sure that I've got the time available to do that.

[00:26:26.500] – Allan
And I agree, because I've had my, you know, something happen in the middle of the night. Everybody knows this, if something wakes you up in the middle of the night, you're disoriented and you don't feel good. And then, yeah, you're aggravated and maybe a little irritable and maybe a little grouchy. You might say something to your spouse you didn't intend to say, but you can get solved and you go back to sleep.

[00:26:47.260] – Allan
But yeah, going through a full sleep cycle, very important because it gives our body that opportunity to get all the the hormones going the direction they need to be going. That's when all the good stuff happens while we're asleep. Yeah. And not the good stuff that we want to miss. This is good stuff we need and for sleeping. Well, we're getting that good stuff.

[00:27:07.230] – Dr. Vuu
One hundred percent.

[00:27:08.860] – Allan
Now the other way we we communicate with our body is obviously through what we eat. Most of the conversations are going to be about making sure that we're we're eating the right way. And that kind of drives people to diets.

[00:27:23.110] – Dr. Vuu
Yes.

[00:27:23.830] – Allan
Eat this diet, eat that diet. And in the book, you talk about how it's it's not really about the diet, but more about finding an eating style that's appropriate and nourishing your body and putting the right information in so you can actually be in a thrive state.

[00:27:40.750] – Allan
Can you talk a little bit about eating styles? And then just generally, because you put in the book The Thrive State Food Blueprint, which I think is brilliant. By the way, if you put that out there, that's good stuff there.

[00:27:52.390] – Allan
But no, it really can you can you kind of talk a little bit about that that blueprint, because quite literally, you go through it. It's really easy. It's charts, it's images. It's like you go through it. And if someone put that on the refrigerator and the shopped to that and live to that, I mean, their nutrition would be spot on every single meal. And I think that's just great. Can you kind of talk a little bit about that?

[00:28:14.770] – Dr. Vuu
Yeah, sure. Well, when it comes to eating, I find that the topic could get very, very heated because you've got different type of diets, quote unquote, out there, keto, vegetarian, vegan, carnivore and I've been in the crossfire of people just getting very belligerent over defending their diets. And that's pretty amazing.

[00:28:41.680] – Dr. Vuu
I think you mentioned something that is really important, which is being very intuitive. I mean, we look back and we just see how humans have evolved and and what humans have been eating all along. And we know if we can stick as close to that as possible, we will thrive. But I have to say this. There is no one eating style that's going to be the same for everybody. Your nutrient requirements are going to be different depending on your age, depending on your genetics, depending on your lifestyle and how you're living. So you have to listen to your body. But I think a very intuitive and great way to start is in my book, where I talk about the Thrive State Blueprint.

[00:29:21.820] – Dr. Vuu
That just means being very, very smart. It's really a primarily plant-based. I say, you know, 50 to 75% of your plate should be clean vegetables. Try to go organic if you can, because there's a lot of pesticides, herbicides and things and GMOs that are out there. They're not good for your health. But try to eat as many vegetables as you can. Non-starchy because look, diabetes is a very, very prevalent and people eating a lot of starchy ones. What are the starchy ones? We're talking about rice. We're talking about potatoes and things like that. But eat some non-starchy vegetables.

[00:29:57.370] – Dr. Vuu
Eat the color of the rainbow because every color suggests that it has some vital nutrients, that it's going to be great for your health. So that's really the majority of the plate.

[00:30:09.070] – Dr. Vuu
Then have a good protein source. Now, again, the better fuel for your body is going to cost a little bit more. But the investment now is much, much better than the investment you're going to make with higher insurance premiums or medications and things like that down the road. So what a good protein sources. Well, grass-fed, grass finished meats, pasture raised meats, sustainably raised fish. I go with that and then make sure your diet also has a good amount of healthy fats. And where do they come from? They come from nuts. They come from avocados, coconut oil. Those are great, great sources of good healthy fats, olive oil is a great, healthy fat as well.

[00:30:47.470] – Dr. Vuu
So if you incorporate just the clean eating and you just listen to your body, that's great. Now, I don't mind if you choose one of these other eating styles that I discussed out there, but recognize that each of those eating styles has its limitations. You have to listen to your body. For example, if you're a vegan, you're going to be low in omega 3s, vitamin D and B12, and just make sure you're you're going to be working with somebody who understands that because you need those nutrients.

[00:31:14.380] – Dr. Vuu
I was vegan for about six months and initially I felt great because I went from the standard American diet of fast food as a doctor to eating not that junk, but my body started to feel a little bit of fatigue. I started to notice a little bit more hair loss, and I went back and started to include clean meats in my diet. And I feel so much better doing that.

[00:31:37.510] – Allan
I think one of the struggles that is out there and I've interviewed over three hundred people on all sides of the spectrum, even paleo carnivore vegan all the way across. And the one core thing that's in the middle of the reason their diet is the best is because it's clean, because it's whole food. And you're kind of like, well, they know they eat bacon. Okay, well, yeah, some of them actually do eat bacon, but so is the standard American diet. So it doesn't make it's good or bad. It just means they're not eating the quality of foods. Or the right quantities of the certain types of foods, but excluding an entire food group has its consequences and you just have to understand what that is.

[00:32:16.900] – Allan
So, when you're making that investment in the food that you put in, because, again, food is information just like all of the other BEEs, they're information coming into your body. And so the when you give your body high quality, nutrient dense food. That's a good communication that you want to thrive, that you want to be healthy.

[00:32:38.330] – Allan
And I like one of the things that we didn't get into with all the BEEs is that it's not just like these silos of how to be healthy. They all actually interact with each other. So if you're getting good sleep and you're eating well, then you want to move a little bit more and maybe you feel a little bit nicer. And you can actually, instead of yelling at your wife in the morning, you can kind of have a nice conversation with her and you have a better day. And then that improves other parts of your relationships in your life. And and so I just I really like the concepts that you have in the book there.

[00:33:12.560] – Allan
I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:33:21.340] – Dr. Vuu
Well, great question. I'll go off on a tangent and talk about some of the Bio-Energetic Elements that aren't just in every health coaches textbook. Everybody knows the physical stuff, right? Sleep, nutrition and movement. All right. That's covered. So if you do that, that was the initial three things that I did and I was able to reverse my disease. But if you really, really want to thrive, there are some things that are outside the physical realm, more the emotional, mindset and then also spiritual realm that actually puts us in the thrive state.

[00:33:54.680] – Dr. Vuu
So let's let's tackle some of those. What one? Our emotions are actually information, energetic information for ourselves, so one of the things I love to be able to tell people to do is just be very mindful of how you feel. And there's a great technique. If you're feeling negative or bad, I'll teach people a little technique here. But we've got emotions like anger, hate, resentment, fear. All those emotions are low vibrational, negative emotions that bring up stress and stress hormones in our body.

[00:34:26.770] – Dr. Vuu
So those emotions eventually lead us to increase inflammatory molecules like a IO One, IO Six, TNF Alpha. All that raises inflammation will lower our immune system, puts you at risk of getting chronic disease. And this is the exact same thing, people who end up getting covid who do very badly, they've got a low, Bio-Energetic State, very, very similarly. So those fearful emotions will drive those processes. On the other hand, emotions like love, like connection, like joy and and the strongest emotion out there, gratitude. Are actually antiaging medicines. All those things that I just discussed in terms of increase inflammation and decrease immunity, those positive emotions do the exact opposite. So if you could tap into those emotional states more often, you're telling your body we are safe, it is time to grow. It is time to heal. So it's important to be mindful of our emotions and have some techniques to to save us from stress. So we could talk about stress relief techniques in a second.

[00:35:34.910] – Dr. Vuu
But I'll teach people a short little half that I do. It's called Create Space and ACT, for Awareness, Choice, and Take action. So if you're feeling a negative emotional charge, come up in your body, you can just take 10 slow, deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth as if you're blowing through a straw. What that would do is you might be experiencing negative emotion, but as you take those 10 deep breaths, you're tapping into your parasympathetic state.

[00:36:04.760] – Dr. Vuu
You're going to calm down all your bodies. Those emotions are going to die down a little bit. And then you do the ACT: Awareness – Okay, I'm really angry at this person zooming in front of me on the freeway. That's a crazy thought. Why am I so angry today? Is this is there other things going on in my life because I can start to choose and focus my thoughts? Oh, yes. How then would I like to feel?

[00:36:32.060] – Dr. Vuu
So the next part, C – choice, having a new intention of how you want to feel and how you want to show the world. You can choose that in that space where you're in the parasympathetic mode. And finally, once you choose an intention saying, you know what, I want to not be angry now because I know those emotions are harmful to my health, I want to show it with joy. I want to show up with gratitude.

[00:36:56.630] – Dr. Vuu
So what's the next action I could take? And then when you come out of those 10 deep breaths and you choose your next action, you can be this new version of yourself. So that's a really cool technique, just to create some space, not react to that stimulus, but respond in a way that you choose with your new intentions. So that's a really cool way to do that.

[00:37:16.250] – Dr. Vuu
That was just one technique you ask me for three. I don't know how much time we have, but you can dive in.

[00:37:21.710] – Allan
Let's let's get it done. Yeah, man, these are great. This is great. Keep going.

[00:37:25.320] – Dr. Vuu
OK, perfect. Now, the next thing is having a sense of purpose is actually antiaging. So if you take a look at statistics, purpose is actually something that makes the average American live seven years longer. Having a deep sense of purpose also extends these things called telomeres. And for your audience, if they don't know what they are, they're kind of like these things that protect your DNA from from from getting degraded.

[00:37:52.550] – Dr. Vuu
And it actually keeps your cells from aging and dying early. So it's a great longevity tool. People with a deep sense of purpose preserve their telomeres. If you have a deep sense of purpose, you also lower your risk of the number one killer in America cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack and stroke, and if you happen to be hospitalized, a deep sense of purpose also makes you have fewer days in the hospital. So it's really important.

[00:38:16.540] – Dr. Vuu
Now, some people will say, well, I don't know what my purpose is. And they get little stressed out getting your purpose when your purpose is actually something that is not. So it's not something you need to find or discovered. It's something you really remember because your purpose is really just you. Your purpose is just you being you like a dog's purpose is for it to just be a dog and be happy.

[00:38:42.010] – Dr. Vuu
So if you could tap into the people, the things that bring you joy, that bring out those positive emotional states, that's who you are as an authentic person. And then you could share yourself with others in the world, then really that's your purpose. Pablo Picasso says the meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away. So really, share yourself with the world, share your joy with the world. That is another great tool for health and vitality.

[00:39:14.050] – Dr. Vuu
And I would probably conclude with the very last thing. And really my mantra is you are your best medicine. With my Bio-Energetic Model of health, your thoughts and your mind control the bio-energetic environment of your cells and your cells are constantly listening moment to moment to moment. So you can always choose what actions you're taking, the thoughts that you're focusing on. You can't always control the thoughts you're thinking, but you can control what you start to focus on.

[00:39:46.050] – Dr. Vuu
You can control what you make. The meaning of something is so make life be empowering to you and know that it is your choices, your actions, your habit. It is you that is your best medicine.

[00:39:59.830] – Allan
Awesome. Well, Dr. V, my purpose in life is to help hundreds of thousands of people get healthy and fit and live with joy in their lives. And you've helped me nail that today. So thank you for that. If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about the book, Thrive State, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:40:18.060] – Dr. Vuu
Well, Thrive State is going to be out April 6th, so it'll be out already. You could find that at thrivestatebook.com. If you want to find out a little bit more about me and the content I'm putting out there, I'm on Instagram. LinkedIn, take top at Kien Vuu M.D. And my website is keinvuumd.com.

[00:40:39.150] – Allan
OK, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/483 and I'll be sure to have links there. Dr. V, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:40:49.360] – Dr. Vuu
It's a pleasure being on the show. Thanks for having me, Allan.

Post Show/Recap

[00:40:56.230] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:40:57.640] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. Oh, what an interesting interview and personally, I love that word thrive. That's such a good word to get the most out of anything you're doing. Get the most out of life. I love it.

[00:41:11.080] – Allan
Yeah. When he when he did, the comparison of stress/survive state versus the thrive state. You know, it was kind of one of those things where you have to recognize it's a continuum and sometimes you're so in it, you don't recognize that you're not on the end of the continuum you want to be on. But we're having this conversation, so obviously anyone that might be listening to us at this point in time obviously cares about moving up that continuum to the thrive state.

[00:41:45.190] – Allan
In the book Thrive State, Dr. V gives us those seven Bio-Energetic Elements of this way you can do with some kind of a self audit, if you will, of where are the things where I'm really focused and doing well and where are the things where I can improve. And then, of course, he gives you some guidance on on how to do that.

[00:42:04.150] – Rachel
Yeah. Of those seven inputs, you know, you've talked a lot about sleep and nutrition and movement and your podcast over these many years, but the ones that hit me are stress mastery. I like how he put that term stress mastery because we all have stresses in our life. You know, things happen at the home. Things happen with family stress. We often have stress at our job. So it exists whether you like it or not. And so we need to figure out how to master that, how to respond instead of react. And I thought that was a good thing to think about.

[00:42:40.750] – Allan
Yeah. One, yes, dealing with stress. And obviously I decided that I wasn't going to work corporate anymore. That I was going to go ahead and say, okay, I'm going to jettison that and try to find a place with a little less stress. So I would say hanging out on a Sunday with sloths is probably about as stress free a day as you can have.

[00:43:07.690] – Allan
I encourage people to consider that self care and way. It's all of it. It's managing your attrition. It's managing your movement. It's trying to sleep better. It's having better relationships. It's all of it. And you can't have health without joy and you can't have joy without health.

[00:43:28.810] – Rachel
Right.

[00:43:29.050] – Allan
And so those those things are tied together in a way that we're beginning to understand. But it's it's so powerful. You read the blue zones. You know, we had Dr. Day on and he talked about some of this and we've had a lot of longevity people. And it's all about purpose. It's all about connection. It's all about those those intangibles in our lives that we often take for granted because we're too busy building our career or doing our long runs. And we realize that's that's part of it. We can become very one sided. So it's worth looking at all seven of them and kind of almost using that as a self audit to just say, OK, if I had to rate myself, how do I feel like I'm doing on this one element? And if there's some elements that are lagging, they need your attention.

[00:44:19.780] – Rachel
Absolutely.

[00:44:21.070] – Allan
It's probably not worth doubling down on the ones you're doing. I'm going to move more or I'm going to I'm going to eat better. It might be worth you actually spending your time to say I'm going to spend a Sunday hanging out with family rather than doing your movement and maybe not worrying so much about your nutrition on that day if it's hard, because that's just gonna put stress on you. So just kind of figuring out that balance of are my actions conducive to balance across all seven of those?

[00:44:52.000] – Rachel
For sure. And balance is another word I like a lot because we can be pulled out of balance. Work sometimes requires extra attention or a stage in our kids lives might require extra attention. And when these things come up, then we're kind of forced off kilter. We're forced out of balance. And it's it is often a struggle to maintain that balance. But if you do like I tell my friends and clients, you do the best you can with what you have and that moment and realize that it's these are just chapters in life. And you'll get back into that balance. You'll be able to trade one thing for another and get back to it. I like that word, too.

[00:45:38.680] – Allan
All right. Well, Rachel, how about we go ahead and call it a day?

[00:45:42.610] – Rachel
You bet. Enjoy time with your family.

[00:45:46.600] – Allan
I will. Thank you. And you have a great week. We'll talk next week, okay?

[00:45:50.830] – Rachel
Thank you. Bye bye.

Patreons

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