Brief summary of the show:
In this podcast episode, Dr. Austin Lake discusses the importance of getting to the root of health issues and taking control of one's health. He emphasizes the need to prioritize sleep, hydration, and stress management as pillars of health. Dr. Lake provides practical tips for improving sleep quality, including setting a consistent bedtime and creating a nighttime ritual. He also highlights the importance of proper hydration and suggests using a reverse osmosis system and adding minerals to water. Lastly, Dr. Lake emphasizes the impact of stress on overall health and encourages listeners to develop habits that promote rest and stress reduction. In this conversation, he also discusses the importance of setting goals and connecting the dots to achieve optimal health.
Listen in as we talk about:
00:00 - Introduction
00:07 - Getting to the Root of Health Issues
01:25 - Starting Point for Improving Health
03:30 - The Pillars of Health: Sleep, Hydration, and Stress
09:44 - Importance of Sleep
12:25 - Proper Hydration and Mineralization
27:15 - Taking Control and Developing Habits
28:37 - Connecting the Dots and Setting Goals
Notes from Natalie:
Seeking Health: www.natalietysdal.com/favorites
Cortisol cocktail: https://amare.com/en-us/g10/NATALIE10
Connect with Me
Connect with Dr. Austin
View Transcript of the show:
Natalie Tysdal
Dr. Lake, thanks for joining me today.
Dr Austin Lake
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm so really excited to be here.
Natalie Tysdal
This is an issue that I have, it's close to me because as a health reporter for so many years, I was always bothered by covering up issues just to feel better. And I'm a big believer in getting to the root of the problem, find out why you have the problem, whatever it is. And I know that that's a theme for you.
Dr Austin Lake
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's one of those things that having had gone through my own health journey, I think a lot you often kind of you don't know what it's like until you go through it, right? And you start to experience the masking and it starts to kind of compound to a certain extent for becomes a much bigger problem if you don't get out the route. And so yeah, it's definitely a big passion of mine.
Natalie Tysdal
I did an interview years ago with someone you might know, and she wrote a book called Drug Muggers. And it really, it's just that. It's I'm taking one thing and then you end up taking another thing. You take another thing all because of the symptoms you're getting from the first thing. So I know that's how you got into what you do, but give us an idea of where to start. I like to go there first for people. Where to start? Maybe people have...
Natalie Tysdal
some underlying issues and they just they don't know how to get started in fixing or feeling better.
Dr Austin Lake
Yeah, I think this is an interesting conversation because a lot of people, the first thing they assume they should do is go to their doctor and get a bunch of tests. And though that can be a really great tool and depending on your symptoms, it may be necessary. But I think for a lot of people who are just trying to improve their health, the first thing to start with is just like, okay, what are things that I can actually control? Am I being diligent with my sleep? Am I hydrating my cells? Am I actually eating good food?
Am I working on reducing my stress? Like if we're not doing those things upfront, you have to start asking the question, like, well, what are they gonna do if I go to my doctor and I get these tests done and they tell me that I have insulin resistance or they tell me that nothing's wrong, but I still feel this way. Well, either it's gonna be a procedural recommendation of this is a surgery or this is the pill to take.
Typically, most times you go to your doctor, they're going to tell you to eat healthy and to exercise. So you're like, okay, well, I already know that. So then it's like, you got to decide like, what is the next best step for you? And I think so many people make this mistake of prioritizing the procedural interventions that really are just kind of giving you a bit of a dopamine hit and making you kind of feel like you are doing something. But the reality is that more people, like most of us need to just start taking action and actually controlling.
Dr Austin Lake
what we know we need to start controlling, like the things that we actually have the ability to control, like that's where you start. And then I think depending on what your symptoms are and how it's manifesting, if it is something serious, obviously go to your doctor, rule out those severe things, but more times not, you're gonna be told you're fine, you're gonna be told here's a medication, or you're be told to diet and exercise, which you're then like, okay, well, what does that actually look like for me?
Natalie Tysdal
Yeah. Yeah. Let's hit those things you just mentioned then, because you're right. Like we all, in today's world, want a quick fix. You're like, I don't want to exercise, but I want to lose weight. Or I'm tired all the time, but I'm not really getting to bed on time. Let's talk about those pillars to begin with.
Dr Austin Lake
Yeah, you know the pillars for us and our program are really, you I always use this analogy of, you know, traffic flowing on a freeway. And I was out in California recently and, you know, I was traveling on the 101 and it was just crazy traffic all the time. One of things that I was thinking about actually when I was traveling on that road, I was just thinking about how, you know, one way you can kind of view toxins and people always talk about detoxifying and doing big cleanses and all that stuff. And I think if you imagine traffic flowing on a freeway and an accident occurs, there's going to be a pile up that's going to kind of cause a backup, right? There's a chain reaction. And the first thing you have to do is kind of stop the flow of traffic because if you don't stop that influx, you're going to then have more of a pile up. So that's kind of like what's happening with your health. It's like if you are feeling toxic and there's been an accident that's occurred in your body and at the source, you have to start, you have to stop bringing in a bunch of toxins, right? And so the easiest thing you can do is just stop eating the garbage food. And I think more people are, we're starting to become a little bit more aware. People are not dumb, they're not foolish. They know what healthy food mostly is and they know what unhealthy food mostly is. So you can start with those things, eating colorful foods, actually eating fruits and vegetables, eating things that are non -genetically modified, eating foods that are organic if you can afford it. If you're going to eat meat, which I'm a huge advocate for, making sure it's grass -fed, grass -finished. Those are the simplest ways from a dietary health perspective just to get your body to where it's no longer bringing in a bunch of garbage.
And then once you've done that, then you can start to allow your body to proactively deal with the accident site, right? Where there's a potential for damage that needs to be kind of cleared up. You can obviously use different supplements to do that. You can work with a practitioner like myself to do that. You can kind of be more proactive in the sense of how you're going to be handling that specific injury site. And then once you get that going, you can restore kind of flow. And this is where I say, you know, for a lot of us, we don't need to be perfect with health. Like it's impossible to live perfectly.
But building resiliency does take intentionality. And I think a lot of people are not being intentional enough with their decisions so that even if their body is capable of healing, which all of our bodies are, we're not giving it much of a chance to actually address the problem. And instead, we'd like to, like you were saying, kind of focus on this quick fix of doing a 20 day, 21 day cleanse or taking a supplement or taking a pill or whatever it is. Like we don't want to actually do the work of putting in these pillars. And so you ask the question, like, what are these pillars?
Dr Austin Lake
Sleep is obviously huge, a huge one. I know you've talked about this on your podcast and a lot of other great things, but you know, sleep is the biggest one that we can really emphasize. And I think so for a lot of women and people in particular, but women specifically, what I've noticed with my clients is that there, I think a lot of women try to reclaim their day at nighttime. And what I mean by that is that, you know, they have a lot going on, they're taking care of everybody else around them. And then nighttime comes around, it's like, well, I finally have some time to myself, I'm going to stay up a little bit later.
And I always use this analogy of, you know, missing the bus to sleepy town, which is kind of, you know, silly in a sense, but it kind of sticks with people. And what I mean by that is if you're, if you're, if you're feeling tired, and let's just say it's nine o 'clock and you're like, Hey, I could, I could shut it down and I could be asleep pretty quick. That's your body's cue, right? That it's time to fall asleep. But most people, what they do is they skip that first bus, you know, that first bus is going to take you straight to sleepy town. You're going to have a nice, nice journey. You're going to get to your destination feeling all rested.
But people miss that first bus and they catch the second bus thinking it'll be the same but the second bus is not the same It's stinky it has multiple stops you wake up multiple times throughout the night and you often will get to your destination Just feeling more tired and so I think for a lot of people that's what they do with their sleep is they miss that first window of opportunity to to engage in a deep sleep and they catch the next opportunity but that next opportunity is often going to be You're gonna be experiencing more levels of cortisol fluctuation your melatonin might be a little bit lower and so you're not gonna be getting into as deep restful sleep. And so the easiest thing to do is just kind of honor your cues from your body and just start to engage into a nighttime ritual of kind of, you know, no phones, which is a big problem for a lot of us. You know, we're watching shows on our laptops, we're on our phones before bed, or maybe eating food, you know, too soon before bedtime, we're having discussions with our spouse that maybe shouldn't be happening at that time of night, like they're all kind of engaging this part of our nervous system that is like excitatory and not calming. And so the easiest thing is just to you know, create this ritual where it's like, hey, we're not going to have these, these, these, these conversations after nine o 'clock. You know, we're not going to watch TV after nine o 'clock or be on our phone or whatever that is for you. And then start to, you know, read a book, like a real book and do, do so in a chair, not in your bed, because oftentimes people will, or their brains will start to associate when they're in a particular environment. Like if you're laying in bed, reading a book and your, your body's like, well, I'm in bed, I guess it's time to fall asleep. Well, I guess not. Cause I'm going to be reading my book now. It kind of starts creating this association with your brain to where you start to kind of associate like you don't have to fall asleep if you're in bed instead if you'd like reading a chair and kind of create this habit and a chair or a different room even while you're reading your book it can start to associate you know these different these different kind of brain patterns within these habits and so the easiest thing to do is kind of create this habit that works for you works on a consistent basis and that's where that sleep is such a huge pillar and I think for most women the priority needs to be if you can in an ideal world is to is to try to set an alarm for bedtime, like instead of setting an alarm to wake up. And I understand we have to wake up to go to our work and all that kind of stuff. We have responsibilities, but I think if we can allow our bodies to wake up naturally in the morning time and kind of set an alarm as like a last possible time that we can get up, if you go to bed a little bit earlier, which I've heard you talk about, obviously it gives you that time to built in in the morning time where you can then prioritize what matters most to you. Whether it's you're having a morning prayer time or Bible reading, whatever it is, like it just allows you or like maybe just even prepping breakfast and not eating convenience foods and just eating a real breakfast. And all these things are you're going to be hitting your circadian rhythm a little bit more efficiently if you allow your body to wake up naturally rather than using an alarm clock, which oftentimes will snooze, you know, we'll just hit the snooze button and it kind of causes that bit of a sudden shock to our system towards like uptime to get up again and it kind of jolts you a little bit, but it's not nearly as effective as waking up naturally with a high level of cortisol. So, That would definitely be the first pillar. Sorry, I just went on a bit of a tangent there. I apologize
Natalie Tysdal
Oh, that's so good though. All of this. Like, I'm sorry, I have a couple of questions. So first of all, the first thing you mentioned was putting good things into your body. And that's a habit. It's just a habit. It's making it priority. So we can say, yep, we need to do that. We know that. We all pretty much know what's good. So we can act like we don't or the drive through whatever is like easier, but to really make that a priority. Okay. So secondly, with sleep,
Natalie Tysdal
I find this really fascinating. I've never thought about setting an alarm to go to bed so that you're not just kind of winging it every night, but that's your priority. I have this app and I think you'll like this. Probably not good. You might not like this because it does sit in my room, the phone, but it wakes me up in the window of when I'm already starting to wake up
So if I tell it I want to get up at 6 a .m. from 5 .30 to 6 a .m., it knows there's movement in the room. And it's like, I sense movement in the room and it slowly gives me this music and it wakes me up. So then I'm following it. It is the sleep app, yeah.
Dr Austin Lake
Yeah. Yeah. Is it the sleep app? Is that what it's called? Yeah. Yeah. I actually recommend that one. That's a good one. A lot of people use. And I don't think that, you know, the electromagnetic frequencies is a whole different conversation, you know, of having it by your head and having it charged and what that can do for your brain activity and all that stuff is one factor. But I think having it, yeah, like, you know, in your room, you know, somewhat close by to where it can do its job. That's great. I think for a lot of people, you can start to condition that naturally, right? And I think, you know, it's harder in the it's harder in the wintertime when you know, it's so dark out in the mornings and you're not getting that natural daylight to kind of stimulate you. But there's ways to kind of, you know, you can use technology to help with that. But the best thing I found is just having that predictable pattern to where your body just knows what what you want, right. And I think oftentimes when we start to create circadian dysregulation is because we're we're dysregulated, like our environment is not consistent and we are not prioritizing these pillars.
Natalie Tysdal
Yeah, it is.
Natalie Tysdal
Yeah. Okay. So we talked about food, we talked about sleep. What would you say is next?
Dr Austin Lake
Well, I mean, obviously, I think, you know, hydration is the first thing that comes to my mind next after that. I mean, all these things are equally as important in a roundabout way. But a lot of people are hydrating improperly. And what I mean by that is they're they're usually drinking filtered water that has no minerals left in it. And they're they're either drinking mineral or filtered water that's been demineralized, or they're drinking tap water, which has chlorine and fluoride. And so there's kind of like a double edged sword that you have to be a little bit careful with.
And the priority here is you got to think about cellular hydration. Because with hydration, what it really needs is you need those electrolytes, you need sodium, potassium, excuse me, you need those electrolytes to help actually transport things into this like your cellular hydration, like you have to get that into the cell and you have to have this cellular detoxification process. And so a lot of us are experiencing this demineralization that happens. And there's there's an interesting conversation here we can kind of get into if you want, but It really has, in my opinion, it kind of gets back to like, well, what, you know, if God created this, the things that we eat and things that we drink to be nourishing for our body, and we've been doing it for thousands of years, why all of a sudden now are we experiencing more issues? And from my research and understanding, it's because of this, primarily what's happening with glyphosate and what's happening with these herbicides and pesticides, because they started to create these pesticides to keep their crops from getting attacked by pests, essentially.
What they had to do is they had to genetically modify the crop so that they can actually spray products so that the product will not die, but the weeds will die. And so what happened was this is where genetically modified comes into play. When you do that, number one, it obviously changes the structure of the organism, but it also typically de -mineralizes the crop because what those pesticides like are like round up what it does is it actually will strip minerals out of the weed and that's what kills the weed. And so I think there's a big issue with the crops that we're eating, the soil issues with erosion and monocrop farming. Like a lot of the ingredients or the nourishment that we're supposed to be getting from our food is no longer there nearly as much as it used to be. Even just in the last 60 years, it's gone down exponentially. So now also we're dealing with this issue where we're not getting what we need from the food. We're basically eating more cardboard -esque type of food that's not that's the void of nutrients. And then we're having to then hydrate ourselves with water that is full of, you know, chemicals and fluoride and chlorine. And so that that has a huge effect on neurotoxicity, but also on your thyroid, because the thyroid needs iodine to function properly to make T4. And oftentimes, chlorine and fluoride will compete for that absorption, and they'll deplete your iodine resources. And so same is true if you're in the shower, you know, for 10 minutes, it's it can it can often the
Fill you up with as much chlorine as drinking like eight glasses of water that has chlorine in it. And so just taking long showers is a problem for people if they don't have filtered water in their house. But then you deal with this issue of mineralization. So getting back to that, what I like to do for my clients is focus on how to hydrate their cells properly. And I think that's it's a little bit different for everybody. You have to kind of figure out what's the best course of action for you. If you have like stage four kidney disease, you got to be careful not to not to overdo it with this because you got to make sure you can filter these.
Dr Austin Lake
electrolytes out. But for most people, it's not an issue of too much. It's an issue of too little. And that's where you start seeing oftentimes more issues with blood pressure regulation, inability to manage stress, because when you are experiencing high levels of cortisol, which is that stress hormone, you actually deplete magnesium, and then magnesium depletion leads to a higher level of cortisol production. So it creates this very vicious cycle. And this is where you got to be very careful with, you know, consumption of coffee, because I can do the same thing.
Natalie Tysdal
Yes.
Dr Austin Lake
Obviously these different foods are really important as far as what we're eating. But I think for most people, if they could take magnesium, if they could take some minerals like an electrolyte tablet, folic and humic acid are great. They're really awesome at transporting things into the cell and getting things out of the cell. There's just a whole lot of talk behind that topic, but that would be the second thing or third thing would be hydrating your cells properly.
Natalie Tysdal
So I always feel overwhelmed with the water issue because it's like, for me, it's just getting water. Like, okay, remember to drink the water. But I'm always curious if you have filtered water, you have it brought in, which is what we do, and you're not drinking tap water or bottled water, but what is the right water to drink that's doing the most good for you? Or is it just regular water that you're putting electrolytes in minerals, trace minerals?
Dr Austin Lake
Yeah, I mean, yeah, so I think it can be a couple different things. So, you know, depending on what your resources are, and you know, how much you can kind of devote to this problem, I think the first thing that you could look at doing is like a reverse osmosis system under your sink. Like if you're doing drinking water, you can get a reverse osmosis system for a few hundred bucks, like and it is it is an investment, you still have to save up for it maybe. But it would be the first thing just to remove things like fluoride and chlorine and atrazine, like these other chemicals that are going to be very problematic. And then from there, like,
You know what you could do is you can add you can add a little bit of Celtic sea salt to your water. You can add a little bit of an electrolyte tablet. You know, I'm not I'm not a fan of these ones that have the artificial colors and flavors and sugars like I don't think that's a good idea. I think just getting some straight electrolytes is a great option. I really like the brand clean. They have a pretty good option. There's a lot of different companies out there that are good, but you can add those trace minerals back. You can use those ionic trace minerals like you can just drop them in their water.
There's a lot of things you could do just to get those minerals back into your water. But I think the first thing would just be to clean it, make sure it's not full of these other chemicals. And if you can't afford to bring in like spring water, which is also potentially a good option, which is sounds like which is what you're doing. That can be a good option as well, because it typically is more naturally mineralized and also should be clean, a clean water source.
Natalie Tysdal
Actually, I don't know that we're doing the right thing, but you see a lot of alkaline water. So if you're just bringing in alkaline water, does that have minerals in it?
Dr Austin Lake
It depends. I think sometimes it can be mineralized. There's a whole conversation about alkalinity and acidity. This is a conversation that I'm not even sure where I land on it because there's such mixed reviews. In the research, when you're talking about a blood pH level of having a base or have an alkaline or acidic blood, drinking alkaline water from the research isn't going to...
change, at least according to research isn't going to change that. It's like your body is really, really good at regulating your blood pH because if you don't regulate it well, you essentially die. Now, there is this talk of what's happening in like your gut health and your in terms of that, and also in terms of inflammation. There was a study done that looked at people who ingested a little bit of baking soda with their water, and it showed that they did reduce
think joint inflammation quite a bit and it helped with their joint health overall, it did help to kind of address that problem in particular, but you also have to be careful with messing up your stomach acidity because you want strong stomach acid, like you don't want to dilute your stomach acid because that makes it difficult for you to digest food. And so I think for a lot of people, it kind of becomes down to this like, okay, what's the what's the primary issue here? Like, what is your what is your primary driver of your problems? And I
This is where I kind of think the nuances matter quite a bit. The details matter quite a bit. And working with somebody that can kind of guide this process for you and identifying what your specific issues are is really helpful. But in general, I would say, you know, drinking, you know, filtered water that has adding minerals back to it is the easiest way to kind of ensure you're getting healthy. And then if you can look at getting a whole house water filter, that at least kind of cleans out the chlorine from your water, getting it to clear up fluoride, it's a different problem.
There's a lot of systems that will remineralize, they'll add salt back in. There's just a lot of different systems out there. I'm not an expert on these at all, but there are some different options out there.
Natalie Tysdal
But I like that the basic, just if you're going to do two things right now, it is add minerals back into your water, get an inexpensive, relatively system to put under your sink for the reverse osmosis system, right? Zoe said.
Yeah, yeah. And there's also like, you know, there's these people often ask like, what about? What is the brand? I can like see it right now. It's like the common water pitcher that people often use on their like a Brita water filter, like people. Well, they're actually in a class action lawsuit because they're they're not apparently filtering out what they say they're filtering out. And so there's just a lot of these issues that you're having with with these kind of convenient filters that you can just put water into like your fridge filter. Most of those are probably helping a little bit, but probably not enough. And that's where I think a reverse osmosis is is probably the most scientifically documented to to remove the things that it says it's supposed to remove. And it's nice because you can plug you can hook it up underneath your sink and you just have a continuous water, you know, filtration cycle, so you can just get water whenever you need it. And that's it just more convenient to me to kind of set it up and just get it in place for the long term commitment. Yeah.
Natalie Tysdal
I agree. Okay, so we've hit three pillars. What other advice, we're talking general, but just to feel better. I know you work with a lot of women to feel better overall and get to the root of your real issues. What other advice would you have?
Dr Austin Lake
Yeah, I think it's, in addition to the sleep and kind of, stress is obviously a huge one. That's a conversation we could spend a whole topic, our podcast topic on, but I think I'll touch on that briefly and then I'll transition into it a couple of different things. Women have a higher likelihood of perceived stress. And really what that means is that, you can have a standard environment that a male and a female is exposed to, but women are gonna often perceive things to be more stressful. And I think we have to kind of look at things culturally to kind of get a better comprehension of here what's going on. In my opinion, I think that a lot of women are taking on roles, multiple roles that they maybe didn't have in the past. And what I mean by that is like, 50 years ago is you manage the house, you manage the children, and you kind of make sure things are tidy, whatever it was. And that was kind of your role. Now it's all of a sudden women are still doing those things, they're nurturing their family, and they're maybe out working, and they're adding more to their plate. And so all of a sudden,
It's like it becomes more complex for you to function and feel good. And the body is the body is like very intelligent, like we kind of view it as like a dumb bucket, but it really is a very intelligent design that God created. And I think, you know, he talks about rest all the time throughout the Bible. Like he even rested on on seventh day in his work. And I think we often we don't prioritize rest enough. And when we our body starts malfunctioning, we're like, I don't know what's going on. I don't know why my hormones are messed up or why I'm feeling such imbalance. It's like, well, like your your stress, like your stress hormone cortisol.
Like there's a stress cortisol receptor on like every cell of your body. And so what that means is that cortisol affects everything. And so you can't get away from it. If you think that you can just kind of keep pushing through with more caffeine or more sugar and less sleep, there's a consequence to that. And I think we don't talk about that consequence enough because the consequences are, okay, just like there's insulin resistance where your body starts pushing back against the beneficial effects of insulin. There's also cortisol resistance to where your body can start pushing back against the benefits of cortisol. And so if you have this ongoing reliance on cortisol release to kind of get through your day and just survive, the consequences are, okay, well, there goes your libido, there goes your testosterone production, there goes your ability to make muscle, we're going to start taking this extra energy, we're instead of using it for muscle production, we're going to use it for storage, because we might be going into a period of starvation, because that's what our ancestors had to do.
And so now you start storing more fat, your hair follicles are no longer strong, you start having thinning of your hair, you start just experiencing the side effects of being in this chronic stressful state and stress is at the root of 90 % of all disease. And so you can think about how this one big chunk of a problem literally affects almost all things in our modern day and age. And so I think if we're not implementing stress reduction tactics and expecting to heal, it really is a futile you know, action. And I think so many women are like, we don't we can't, I can't emphasize that enough. Like if you are Christian, it's even more important to then rest into this, this idea of like, okay, what does it actually mean for me? And this is why I love, you know, listening to your podcast is I've listened, I was listening this morning, and it was just like, it was just really insightful, like the tips you're giving on setting smart goals and having this routine in the morning, like in gratitude journaling and all these things that are so so helpful, really can set the tone for your day and set the tone for your hormonal production throughout the rest of the day. So I think for women, it's especially important when you're looking at the differences between males and females, like you and I could be sitting in the same room, simply just breathing in and out and I would have a higher calorie loss than you would just because I have more testosterone. Like you have a lot of testosterone, but it's not nearly as much as me. And so when we start seeing these differences, how does stress affect that? Well, stress will take this testosterone, which is a good thing, and convert it into more male androgens, which is, you know, you start seeing like, you know, facial hair development, or you start seeing changes with your body that are not all that favorable. You start converting estrogens poorly, you start having a lack of progesterone production. And that's where you start getting this estrogen dominant issue. And then we start getting that you start having these estrogens that are there's excessive levels of estrogens, they can start storing in your fat cells that makes it more difficult for you to lose weight, you start getting this recirculation of toxins, and all of a you just feel like you're a mess.
And so that's kind of how it happens on a practical day -to -day basis. But the good news here is, if you go back to what we talked about before with the food, with the sleep, with your hydration, with getting in a couple of supplements here I'll mention in just a second, like your body can start to get what it needs and it can start to give you what you want. And I think that's the big takeaway for everyone listening is just that these things, we've helped so many women do this, it's very feasible and it happens pretty quick. Like once you start getting in this good rhythm, you start seeing that what you do matters, it makes a big difference.
Dr Austin Lake
your body will start to turn and it starts to kind of start producing what you need. And this is where again, if you have like a serious disease like Cushing syndrome or Addison's disease where you're literally having like an endocrine problem, maybe you have like Hashimoto's or something like that, like you do need to kind of go the next step in identifying what those things are. That's definitely warranted, but those are not as common as the more lifestyle related factors that people can start to change. And so that's really where we like to focus is those factors.
Natalie Tysdal
I just think it's so important. And I know for some women who might be listening, if men listening to you, some of this feels overwhelming. It's like, oh my gosh, you just told me 20 things. And by the way, I have show notes where I'll put a lot of this stuff, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Like I, someone told me years ago, like if you just focus and you do three things a day to help yourself, that adds up over time. But when you wait, like you said on the freeway,
Natalie Tysdal
and you wait and it all blocks up, then you're really overwhelmed. So even though all of these things like I have to think about my water, think about my vitamins, I think stop thinking that way, take a step back and say, if I just do a little bit every day and I set up systems and habits, it's all gonna add up to a happier, healthier life.
Dr Austin Lake
Absolutely. Yeah, I think I think I would say control you can control, you know, it doesn't need to be overly complicated. But if you're in a season that's crazy busy, and you find one thing that you're like, Hey, I know I can be better here. I want to be better here. And this is why it'll start to happen. And that habit that habitual pattern will start to be developed. And you know, I'm a big fan of the power of habit and the atomic habit, you know, principles and kind of reinforcing your why and understanding why it matters and recreating a belief pattern that really kind of reinforces what you're doing.
Dr Austin Lake
Because if we have to kind of convince ourselves every time we're faced with an obstacle or decision that this is good for us, initially it might be a little bit hard or a little bit difficult. But after you start to kind of recreate a new belief that this is why it matters and this is the benefit I will get, you don't have to ask the question anymore. You just do it. Just like how we all, like if you're living, breathing human on this planet, we all do essential things. We all don't just run out in traffic.
We don't like go and do things that we know are going to literally kill us. Like we avoid those things. Like we do a certain level of basics to kind of promote our own survival. And that's because we believe that if we don't do those things, like we will die. And so then we can start to associate, like, if I don't drink this clean water with minerals added back to it, like, I'm not going to feel as good as I could. Or like, if I don't go to bed at night and I can really get my circadian rhythm balanced, I'm not going to have good energy the next day and I'm going to start gaining weight and it's not going to be what I want for my family, for my future. And so...
Dr Austin Lake
We just have to start kind of connecting these dots and start thinking about what we want and why it matters to us. And then we start to see the path to get there. It becomes much more clear on how we're going to get there.
