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GUEST EXPERTS
Functional Approach to Boosting
Your Mental Health
John Dempster, ND, FAARFM,
ABAAHP with Mark Hyman, MD
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Discovering Bliss in “Unfocus”

Jonas Koffler with Srini Pillay
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Anti-Inflammatory Diet for Reduc-

ing Depression and ADHD
John Dempster, ND, FAARFM,
ABAAHP with Julie Daniluk
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 1
Functional Approach to
Boosting Your Mental Health
Mark Hyman, MD
Dr. John Dempster: Hello, everyone, and
welcome to the Mental Wellness Summit, 2.0. I am
your cohost, Dr. John Dempster, and today I am
very excited to be introducing to you a legend in
the field of functional medicine, Dr. Hyman.
Now, before we get into it, I would like to
give a little bit of background on Dr. Hyman’s
accomplishments and accolades to date. Because
there are many. But I will begin by saying that Dr.
Hyman says we all deserve a life of vitality. And
we have the potential to create it for ourselves.
And that is why he is dedicated to tackling the
root causes of chronic disease by harnessing the
power of functional medicine to transform health
care. He’s a practicing family physician, and 9-time
number one New York Times’ bestselling author,
and an internationally recognized leader, speaker,
educator, and advocate in his field.
He is the director of the Cleveland Clinic, Center
for Functional Medicine. He is also the founder
and medical director of the Ultra Wellness
Center, chairman of the board of the Institute of
Functional Medicine, and medical director at the
Huffington Post, and has been a regularly medical
contributor on many television shows, including
CBS This Morning, The Today Show, CNN, The View,
The Katie Couric Show, and of course, The Dr. Oz
Show.
With that, I’d like to formally welcome you, Dr.
Hyman. One of my favorite doctors, and truly an
The Mental Wellness Connection
inspiration as to why I got in the field of functional
medicine. Welcome to our summit.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Thanks for having me.
Dr. John Dempster: You’re very welcome. I know
today we’re going to talk a lot about depression
and how we can come at this from a functional
medicine angle.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
Dr. John Dempster: But what I find incredibly
inspiring and fascinating is that not only are
you a functional medicine doctor, you’re a
conventionally trained medical doctor. So I would
love to hear from your perspective; how does
the functional medicine approach differ from the
conventional classic medical approach for treating
depression?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well you know, I so often joke
that depression is not a Prozac deficiency, right?
Conventional approach is we diagnosis according
to the symptoms. So if you’re sad, and hopeless,
and helpless, and you’re not interested in any
activities. If you’re not eating well, you’re not
interested in sex anymore. You feel sometimes
suicidal and negative thoughts, then you have
depression. That’s what causing those symptoms.
But that’s not the cause of the symptoms; it’s
the name of the symptoms. And we confuse the
 2
name with the cause. And we go, “Well you have
depression. I know what you need; you need an
anti-depressant.” And we call that the name it,
blame it, tame it game. We name the disease, we
blame the name for the problem, and then we
tame it with a drug.
Functional medicine is really focused on getting to
root causes in a personalized way and recognizing
that just because people share a collection of
symptoms, it actually doesn’t tell you anything
about their particular disease. Because you could
have 10 people with depression with all the same
symptoms, and they could have 10 different
causes.
For example, one person might have an
autoimmune disease related to eating gluten
that’s causing Hashimoto’s that lead to thyroid
function problems. And low thyroid can cause
depression. It could be because you have been
having reflux, because you have some food
sensitivities or an overgrowth of bacteria. That
could be causing the problem. And then you take
an acid blocker for many years, and you block B12
absorption. You get B12 deficiency, or magnesium
deficiency. It could be because you live up in
Canada and you have vitamin D deficiency.
It could be because you have taken antibiotics
that change your gut flora, that changes your
brain chemistry, and leads to depression. Or it
could be because you eat a lot of sushi and have
mercury toxicity. Or maybe you hate fish, and you
have omega-3 deficiency. Or maybe you have pre-
diabetes and insulin resistance, and that causes
depression.
Every single one of those drivers causes those
symptoms, but the treatments are quite different
for each one of those depending on the cause.
So functional medicine is medicine by cause,
not symptoms. Medicine by treating the whole
system, not just the symptoms or the parts.
The Mental Wellness Connection
Dr. John Dempster: Fantastic. This is, I think
functional medicine. And you obviously would
agree. Is the way of the future, in my opinion.
When you have someone that walks into your
clinic, how would you begin? There are so many
areas you could go down right away. What
determines your initial cause of a workup?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well the goal here is to
learn a process of thinking. I think if there are
practitioners watching this, they should be aware
of what’s wrong is our thinking. We need to be
able to actually sort through and filter all the
medical information when given a history, and
physical, and laboratory exam. And sort through a
new sort of lenses that allows us to sort what the
meaning of it is. And to tell you what the cause is.
So when someone comes in, I do a very broad
review. I have a 30-plus page questionnaire where
I want to know about all their symptoms. I want to
know about all their past medical history. All the
typical things we’d look at. But I also want to go
deeper. I want to look at their nutrition; the three-
day diet record. I want to know about their stress
responses. I want to look at strange symptoms
they may not be aware of. I want to know if they
were born by C-section, or were breastfed. I want
to know if they had a lot of antibiotics when they
were younger. I want to know if they eat a lot of
fish. I want to look in their mouth and see how
many fillings they have, and do an environmental
history. If they’ve been exposed to mold, or Lyme.
So I go much deeper. And then we sort through
based on what we find from their story. We find
out where to go. And then based on the story,
you can kind of start to drill down. So someone
says; “I eat sushi three times a week and I have
a mouthful of fillings.” I’m like, well maybe it’s
mercury. Or they go, “My hair is dry and falling
out. My skin is dry. I’m constipated. I have fluid
retention. I’m tired and depressed. My periods
are weird.” Well, you have a thyroid problem, you
 3
should check that. Or maybe they say, “I’ve been
taking an acid blocker for 10 years.” And I go,
maybe you have B12 deficiency.
So I look at various factors, and then based on
that I’ll kind of go down that road, and narrow in
where the issues are. Like today, I saw someone
who came in who is very depressed. And she had
a history of mental illness in her family, but she’s
not great. And when I took the story it’s like; she
gets a couple of weeks are great every month, and
then she ovulates and start to go into PMS, and
has PMS from hell. There’s a medical term; PMDD,
or pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder. Which is
kind of a fancy name for really bad PMS.
But essentially, she had a hormonal imbalance
of estrogen and progesterone that was driving
a lot of these things. She also had a little thyroid
dysfunction. And so my goal is to get her
hormones in balance. That’s how I was going to
treat her depression.
Dr. John Dempster: Mm-hmm. Mark, I read a
really interesting book called The Second Brain.
And it was all about gut health. Can you expand
on the importance of how important gut health is
to mental health?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, when I wrote my book,
UltraMind Solution, almost 10 years ago about the
biology.
Dr. John Dempster: I see that on my bookshelf
from here, by the way. It’s in there somewhere.
Dr. Mark Hyman: It really is about the biology
of how the body affects the brain. And one of
the chapters there was on the gut. And this
was before everybody was talking about the
microbiome and everything. And I had observed
from my patients that when I treated their gut,
their mood got better. Their anxiety got better.
Their depression went away. Their OCD went
The Mental Wellness Connection
away. Their ADD went away. Autism got better. I
was like, what’s going on here?
So clearly, there is a whole lot happening they
were just learning about. Clearly, you’ve got a
second brain. Which is a second nervous system,
which has so many neurotransmitters and nerve
endings. But there’s also the immune system,
and the whole microbiome. Which is a hundred
trillion bacteria in there, that have over 2 million
genes that are producing all sorts of proteins and
molecules that do affect us. They can absorb, they
affect our brain chemistry.
So if you have bacterial overgrowth, or yeast
overgrowth. If you have leaky gut, inflammation;
all those things will affect your brain chemistry
and can cause potential depression. So I often fix
people’s mood and anxiety by really doing away
with leaky gut, and inflammation, bacterial issues.
Dr. John Dempster: I heard recent research
is showing that we’re actually 10 times more
bacteria than we actually are human, because of
this amount of DNA that’s microbial.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, we have 10 times more
of the bacterial cells as human cells. But we
have 100 times more bacterial DNA. So we’re
essentially only 10% human. We have about
20,000 genes. There are 2 million bacterial genes
living in you.
Dr. John Dempster: Wow. That makes us look at
things a little differently, doesn’t it?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Mm-hmm.
Dr. John Dempster: Now, if we could get personal
for a moment. I know you have a background and
a personal story to share with depression. Do you
mind sharing with us a little bit about that?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, you know, I always was
 4
pretty happy. And then I got, as life would have
it, I went to China working on a medical program
there. And I got mercury poisoning, but I didn’t
know it. And we know one of the symptoms of
mercury toxicity is depression, anxiety, insomnia.
And I went through a real difficult period where I
got chronic fatigue, and pretty much everything
else.
And it was through getting mercury out of my
system that I was able to relieve a lot of these
symptoms. Everything from my gut and immune
symptoms to muscle aching and brain fog. Sleep
issues, and also depression. The list was quite
long.
Dr. John Dempster: Wow. So how long did it take
you to bounce back and start to feel great?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well I really didn’t have a lot
of help, so I kind of had to figure this out on my
own. So it took me many, many years. It took me
about 6, 7, 8 years to kind of unwind all the issues
that had happened to me that made my system
collapse.
Dr. John Dempster: And look at where you are
today, right?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Having a good time.
Dr. John Dempster: That’s awesome. One of
the things that we do a lot with our patients that
come to see us is we run a number of the tests
that you discussed. But we spend a lot of time
focusing on food, and food sensitivities especially.
How can this impact mood and behavior from
what you’ve seen?
Dr. Mark Hyman: It’s a huge factor. I think
most of the time, I see this when I put people on
elimination diets. Like a 10-day detox diet or other
things I’ve created. People have said to me; “I
thought I was depressed. I thought I was anxious.
The Mental Wellness Connection
I thought I had all these mental illnesses. And as
soon as I changed my diet they all went away!”
I had a guy come in and say, “Every day I have
a panic attack.” He goes, “Every day around 3
o’clock, I just feel like I’m having a heart attack. I
can’t breathe, I’m anxious, I feel like I’m going to
die. I’m having palpitations, I feel terrible.” I’m like,
“Well tell me about your life. What do you do?”
He says, “Well I work on Wall street, and I’m up
every night late partying and going out, and I don’t
eat breakfast and I work all day. And around 3
o’clock in the afternoon I just have these horrible
experiences where I think I’m dying.” And I say,
“Maybe your hypoglycemic?” You know. And
maybe you’re insulin resistant. And maybe you
need to eat breakfast, and not so much late at
night. A few simple suggestions, and his whole
psychiatric problem went away.
Dr. John Dempster: Wow. That’s amazing. Just
the power of food, right? We sometimes take that
for granted. Speaking of which; there are two
buzzwords that are very common right now. We
hear a lot about gluten and we hear a lot about
dairy intolerance. Can you shed a little bit of light
as to how that can be a factor for some people
when they’re dealing with mood issues?
Dr. Mark Hyman: So if we look at the literature
on celiac disease, one of the symptoms, really, is
depression. So gluten is quite inflammatory, and
it can inflame the brain. And now we know that
depression is potentially inflammatory. This is a
crazy idea. But how would depression be like an
arthritis of your brain? Right? And now we know
this is actually true. They’re finding that using
powerful anti-inflammatory drugs, like the TNF
alpha blockers help actually to reduce depression.
And so they’re going, “What do we do? What’s
causing depression?”
Often it’s the foods we’re eating. We’re creating
 5
inflammation. And gluten is probably the single
biggest culprit. We know now it leads to white
matter changes in the brain, like is seen with MS.
It makes us susceptible to leaky gut. It can create
addiction, with morphine-like peptides that are
produced. It can drive addiction and addictive
behaviors. It can also be from sugar, which is
mostly how we eat gluten is in bread or flour, that
drives more insulin resistance. So there are a lot
of reasons that gluten can be a problem.
I think it’s a very simple thing to do, to do a trial.
I’m not saying never eat bread ever, ever again.
I’m saying try it. I know, for me for example. I can’t
eat dairy without having symptoms. But I can eat
gluten, and I’ve checked my blood and I have no
antibodies, I don’t have leaky gut. I don’t eat a lot
of it because it’s sugar and starch. But if I want
to, it’s not going to affect me that way. It doesn’t
affect me.
So the most people have some reaction. A lot of
people don’t. But if you’re having symptoms of
something, it’s good to think about gluten. And
dairy also is very difficult for a lot of people to
digest. It’s very inflammatory. It can contribute to
some of these issues, as well.
Dr. John Dempster: Mm-hmm. Do you do any
lab work at all, or do you primarily remove it from
their diet and then reintroduce it?
Dr. Mark Hyman: No I definitely do lab work.
I look at gluten issues. I look at a whole series
of different tests that help me figure out what’s
really going on. Like celiac testing, antibodies. I do
a lot of different things.
[No audio]
Dr. John Dempster: Recently with the Wall Street,
party, busy, lots of sugar. Sugar is such a problem.
Let’s go on that for a bit.
The Mental Wellness Connection
Dr. Mark Hyman: Sugar is really bad for your
brain. I think you really need to think about
sugar as a drug. It’s highly addictive. It’s very
inflammatory. It can cause significant damage
in the sense of your overall biology. I encourage
people to do a holiday. Think of it as a recreational
drug, and use it occasional. But not all the time.
And I think that’s really important for people to
actually understand that it’s very potent. Just
really focus on the powerful effects of sugar on
the brain. It can shrink the hippocampus. It can
cause memory issues. It can cause fatigue. It can
cause swings in your blood sugar that affect you,
causing anxiety. So I really encourage people to
really go very, very seriously on a trial of a low-
sugar diet.
Dr. John Dempster: And I know this is a big topic
in your new book. Eat Fat, Get Thin. Maybe we
can use that as a bit of a segue to talk about the
importance of fat. Which we all thought was the
devil for a long time. That it was making us fat.
And probably is more of a link to sugar in that
than there is fat.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yes. It’s so bad when you look
at the way fat is more important than sugar.
People have always been avoiding fat and eating
more starch and carbs and bread and pasta. And
I think if you look at the single biggest driver of
our chronic disease epidemic, it’s been a low-fat,
high-carb/sugar diet. And now we know that fat
is critical for the brain. We need the right fats. We
need omega-3 fats. We need olive oil. We need
nuts and seeds. We need avocados. Coconut oil.
Even some saturated fats are fine.
The dangerous fats for the brain are trans
fats. And even too much inflammatory oils like
soybean oil, and processed foods. I think that’s
quite, quite concerning.
Dr. John Dempster: Are you seeing a shift in the
food industry? Are you feeling optimistic that
 6
things are going to get better on that front or do
we still have to be buyer beware?
Dr. Mark Hyman: I’m a little nervous about what’s
out there. I think a lot of crap and junk out there.
And people need to really be smart about what
they’re eating. I basically say; it’s a really simple
thing. Think about who made this. Did man make
this, or did god make this? If man made this, I
wouldn’t eat it. If god made it, you probably can
eat it.
Dr. John Dempster: Right. Which brings me
to a topic I want to delve in with you. The topic
of heavy metals. And obviously we’re having
problems with our seafood and our fish these
days. If we eat too much, we’re told that’s going
to elevate our levels. Especially of mercury. We’ve
done a lot of work with mercury here, and I’d love
to hear a bit more about what you’re doing in the
field of toxic metals and mental health. Especially
depression. What connections are you seeing
right now?
Dr. Mark Hyman: I think that really we have a
very powerful problem in our world. Which is high
levels of environmental toxins and heavy metals.
I was particularly unfortunately affected by it.
So I basically think that we need to get our body
limited in terms of our exposures as well as help
our bodies detoxify.
So I’m on the board of the Environmental Working
Group, and we actually use a lot of strategies
to help reduce our overall toxic burden. To
producing skincare products that have toxins in
them. Household cleaning products. Producing
vegetables and fruits that are high in pesticides.
Producing fish that are high in metals. All that
information is in EWG.org. and people can refer to
that. To reduce your toxic burden.
And then help you upregulate your detox
pathways through eating cruciferous vegetables,
The Mental Wellness Connection
garlic, saunas, supplements like HCl, lipoic acid,
chelation. All these things play a big role. And I can
tell you, if you have heavy metals it can lead to
not only depression, but also neurodegenerative
issues and many, many other things.
Dr. John Dempster: Are you seeing any other
sources of metals other than from fish? I think
another big topic is what is in our mouth. Silver
metal fillings. Where else are you seeing mercury
these days?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well I think that’s mostly where
it is. I think mostly in the mouth and the fillings
that you have. It’s mostly in the fish that we’re
eating. Some in pollution from the environment.
But those are all really all of it.
Dr. John Dempster: And then how would
somebody go about getting that removed in a
safe and effective way? I would imagine it’s a very
customized approach to each person. Are there
any general thoughts and things that you could
share with our audience right now?
Dr. Mark Hyman: You need to see a biological
dentist. Someone who can safely remove them
without causing a lot of problems. Which is often
the case when you get the toxins in your system.
You can get them out, but you have to make sure
you do it safely. Otherwise you can get quite sick.
Dr. John Dempster: Right. You can get reexposed
and basically build up your burden more than
what you went into it with. In terms of removing
this from the body, once you get the fillings
removed, would there be some top tips you could
share?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well I think the things I just
mentioned. Increasing the level of cruciferous
vegetables. Garlic and onions. Saunas. Exercise.
Making sure your excreting it. Getting lots of
fluids. Bowel movements.
 7
Also I think the other factor is using chelators like
n-acetyl cysteine, lipoic acid, selenium, zinc. Even
things like chlorella or other things can help bind
it. Silica. And then chelators like DMSA or DMPS
can be very effective.
Dr. John Dempster: Great, thank you. There’s
a lot of research showing that many case of
depression are dealing with certain nutrient
deficiencies. Which ones do you see as the top
three right now?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Oh my gosh, that’s easy. I think
B6, B12, and folate are right up there. I think
magnesium is a close second. I think vitamin D
is a big one. I think omega-3 fats. I mean, if you
adequately replete your levels of omega-3 fats.
This woman I saw today; she had low iron, low
vitamin D, low folate, low magnesium, and she
was depressed. Of course she was depressed. It’s
easy to fix those things.
Dr. John Dempster: It’s incredible. Magnesium
alone is involved with how many hundreds of
biochemical reactions every second for every
cell. So if we’re depleted in these, how are we
supposed to function, let alone feel?
So we actually do a big workup and we measure
these nutrients with our patients. And obviously,
create a custom approach from that standpoint.
But I would say those nutrients that you just
mentioned are a great thing for almost anyone
who is dealing with depression. Would you agree?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Sure.
Dr. John Dempster: Ok. So why don’t we talk
about your top six strategies that you use to
eliminate depression. You said eat real food,
cut out sugar, exercise regularly. We haven’t
talked much about sleep, Dr. Hyman. What’s the
importance with that?
The Mental Wellness Connection
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, sleep and exercise are
the other magical powerful levers. Because when
you look at sleep, most people don’t realize how
powerful sleep is in restoring and repairing the
brain. If you’re not sleeping, you cannot be happy.
Second is exercise. Exercise is basically like
miracle grow for the brain. It can help repair, and
heal, and actually encourage the body to repair
from depression. It’s very powerful. Looking at
the research; regular vigorous exercise is more
powerful than Prozac. And so I think those are
really critical components.
Meditation, also, is another powerful thing to
reset stress, and those factors. So I really think
it’s so important for us to understand that we
need to get those things sorted out. And getting
nutrient levels up. The folate, B6, B12, omega-3
fats, magnesium, vitamin D. All those things that
we talked about.
So when you do a combination of real foods and
basic supplements, getting people off processed
foods. Getting them off of sugar. Getting them off
of common food allergens. Exercising. Sleep. Most
of the time, it’s very powerful.
My daughter went through a terrible depression
before she went to college. And she was in high
school. Just kind of rebellious, and didn’t really eat
well despite my protestations. And she got very
inflamed. She had lots of allergies. She gained a
lot of fluid; gained weight. And was just exhausted
and depressed and felt terrible. And she was
about to go to college, and I was like, listen.
[Inaudible] But she kind of wanted to be better.
I said, can you just give me 10 days? 10 days. So
we put her on an elimination diet. We got her on
some supplements. I started running with her
every day. I got her outside. We just did some
basic things. She totally transformed in 10 days.
So I think it’s really, really important for us to
 8
realize. We have that capacity, at any time, to
reset our systems.
Dr. John Dempster: That’s powerful. That’s
awesome, Dr. Hyman. Well listen, thanks so much
for what you do and everything that you’re doing
going forward. Like I said, you’ve been a very
powerful inspiration to many. Including myself.
And we’re very grateful for all the work you’re
doing right now, to spread the word of functional
medicine. Especially in the field of mental health.
If anyone wants to find you online, where should
they look for you?
The Mental Wellness Connection
Dr. Mark Hyman: Go to DrHyman.com. and they
can find me there. I have lots of my programs.
They can do the Eat Fat, Get Thin challenge.
They can do a 10-day detox. All of that is really
awesome.
Dr. John Dempster: That’s great. Listen, thanks
again for everything. We really appreciate you
being on the Mental Wellness Summit this year.
Look forward to seeing you in the future.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Ok. Thank you.
Dr. John Dempster: Thanks Dr. Hyman.
 9
Discovering Bliss in
“Unfocus”
Srini Pillay
Jonas: Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to
the Mental Wellness Summit 2.0. I am a co-host of
the event along with Ross and Dr. John Dempster.
And today, we’re very excited to have a very
special guest with us. His name is Dr. Srini Pillay.
And Srini is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, brain
imaging researcher, and author most recently of
Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try: Unlock the Power of the
Unfocused Mind, which is a book I happen to have
a great affection for. And we’ll be talking about
that today, among other topics as well in the
wellness and field of integrative healing.
Srini is globally recognized for translating complex
findings from psychology and brain science
research into practical suggestions to help
people improve productivity, creativity, and self-
connection. As the CEO of NeuroBusiness Group,
which is voted one of the top twenty movers and
shakers in leadership development in the world,
Srini works with nonprofits and fortune 500
companies globally to help leaders understand
how to change the brain blood flow to manage
risk, uncertainty, and volatility, and to harness
creativity.
He has founded three start-ups in the brain
science technology space. So he’s not an
unambitious guy. And he’s also an in-demand
keynote speaker and wildly sought after by the
media. You may have seen his TED talk. And you
also may have seen him on outlets like CNN and
The Mental Wellness Connection
Oprah Radio, Fox TV, New York Times, The Boston
Globe, Forbes and Fortune. And you can find out
more information about Srini at drsrinipillay.com
and at neurobusinessgroup.com as well.
Well, Srini, thank you very much for being here.
How are you today?
Dr. Pillay: I’m great. Thanks for having me, Jonas.
Jonas: A pleasure. Good to see you again. And
I’m curious to dive in. I know you’ve been very
focused on the release of the new book. But I
think as a framing lens on your work and what
separates you from so many other medical
doctors in the established community—your
work, as I put it before, what started is really,
from my perspective, at the intersection of
heart science and neuroscience specifically and
psychiatry, as well as human creativity and human
potential. And so there’s that whole curiosity
space.
And knowing your sensibilities personally and
given our conversations in the past, why don’t
you talk about what’s brought you to this place
in terms of your understanding of mental health
and why our understanding of the brain is so
important?
Dr. Pillay: Sure. So I think when it comes to
mental health, I’m very invested in having people
think more deeply about what’s going on in their
 10
psychologies, which is one kind of metaphor. And
also, to think more deeply about what’s going on
in their brains. And what I think is really important
at this point is that people evaluate the scientific
information out there and then decide how to
implement that in their own care.
And I think a lot of what I see is people will
sometimes just take it for granted or just accept
whatever they’re told or accept whatever is going
on in the system. And as much as I have a deep
respect for research within the mental health field
and have been a researcher myself, part of having
been a researcher is that I see both the strengths
and the challenges associated with conventional
research and conventional attitudes in mental
health.
So specifically, if we take one particular issue,
which is diagnosis, in all of medicine, diagnosis
has a certain heft to it. But in every other
discipline besides psychiatry and mental health,
diagnosis is based on tissue diagnosis. We look
at what’s going on in the tissue and we see
what’s abnormal. In psychiatry, we have no tissue
diagnosis. So as a result of that, we can very
highly reliably make diagnoses of depression or
anxiety all over the world. But the validity of those
diagnoses is always in question.
And so what we try to do with brain imaging is
we try to articulate what structures may not be
working the way they should be working, how you
can change the way those structures are working.
But we’re far from knowing absolutely what those
solutions are.
And I think if you look more deeply at how
research is done, the gold standard in research is
the double-blind placebo control trial. Meaning,
we take a group of people who have depression,
for example, a group of people who don’t and
then you—which is the controlled sample—and
you administer a treatment. And you try to see if
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the treatment has a specific advantage in people
with depression.
The problem is the eventual statistic, as helpful as
it is in giving you a sense of the average impact of
the medication, for example, it tells you nothing
about any particular individual. And the people
in the studies are often so different from general
people in the community that I’m humble about
how I interpret those findings when I’m applying
them in my practice.
For that reason, I use the science as a framework
in my practice. So I have a clinical practice.
I’ve done brain imaging research. I bring that
information into my practice as a means of
discussion, but it’s not autocratic. I think when
people come in and they say, “Well, what’s my
diagnosis?” Let me just take a step back here. I’m
going to tell you a diagnosis that’s based on…
That’s not that heavy duty. There are a lot of
things you need to question about it. And in terms
of the best treatment, it’s more a discussion than
it is something that’s absolutely known.
So I would say that for someone who is in the
mainstream psychiatric establishment, I am
different in the following ways. I question the
value of the double-blind placebo control trial
in clinical medicine. And I’m more on the side
of what we call n=1, which is, how can we begin
to say what’s the most helpful thing for any
particular human being who comes into my office,
as opposed to taking an average statistic and just
applying it willy-nilly to people?
I think number two, I have a deep respect for
how we have studied what goes on in what we
call disorders like major depression and anxiety
disorders. But I also have a lot of concern over
the over-interpretation and overuse of psychiatric
diagnoses.
I think the third thing is that I feel like when

it comes to treatments, the pharmacologic
treatments are often very helpful as are the
psychotherapeutic modalities. But I also think
that we’re learning more and more about how
we can change the brain ourselves. And so I think
taking on one particular treatment, people need
to become more aware and educated, that they
are making a conscious decision to impact their
brains, that a lot of that we know and a lot of that
we don’t know.
So I prescribe medications myself, but I do it in
a pretty humble way. One of my teachers was
someone named Ross Baldessarini, who is a
world-famous psychopharmacologist. And when
I used to present my cases to him and I would
say, “The patient is on the following medications:
Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft.” He would say, “Sorry, what
was that?” And I’d say, “The patient’s on the
following medications.”
He said, “Do you know what these medications do
in the brain?” I said, “Well, they enhance serotonin
and they decrease dopamine.” And he would
say, “I’m asking you do we know what they do
in the brain?” And I would say, “No, I don’t know
what they do.” He said, “Well, for now just to get
you used to what you’re doing, why don’t we
say… When we come to medication, say ‘current
toxins.’”
This is somebody who is a hardcore scientist and
a hardcore psychopharmacologist. But what he
was trying to get me to understand is that we
should not take things at face value. And that a
good doctor in psychiatry is someone who would
explain that to a patient rather than someone
who would be a pill pusher and try to get
someone to simply eat up whatever the scientific
establishment is putting out.
But I think that it’s in this balance and tension
that I find myself. And I’m excited to enter the
conversation with people and also excited to
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11
figure out how we can use technology to refine
the different ways in which we deal with mental
health.
Jonas: So it is an inherent rebalancing of power
if you’ll allow, how I’m interpreting this. So it’s
rather than a power over pushing a patient out
the door with a pill in hand; it’s more of a much
more reflective, interpretive, subjective, and
empowering approach, power with or power
sharing with the patient, right?
Dr. Pillay: Yes, very much so. I believe sincerely
that all the methods that we have are a little
bit metaphorically like vehicles. But the fuel
for recovery or the fuel for reinstating, for
rediscovering your own power in the world, is
ingenuity, which I think lies at the core of every
human being.
Jonas: I absolutely agree, by the way.
Dr. Pillay: I just feel like it’s such an important
message for people thinking about mental health
to recognize that you cannot leave your own
ingenuity out. And by the way, I don’t think this
applies only to mental health because your brain
is connected to the rest of your body. I think it
applies to hypertension. It applies to cardiac
failure. It applies to cancer.
If you ask anybody what’s the 5-year prognosis
for a very lethal cancer, if it’s very lethal they’ll
say, “Well, 90% of people die.” Well, why do 10%
of people not die? What are those people doing
that’s different compared to the 90%? So I think
those are the kinds of questions we need to ask
all over medicine.
Jonas: Let’s talk about the plastic nature of the
brain. Because for me, and you know that I had
a stroke when I was quite young and have been
a devoted learner and voracious reader around
this topic. But I want to get your perspective on
 12
this notion of, one, the question of can we really
change our brain? And what does that involve?
And what does that mean? And then what’s the
evidence? How do we know that we can do it if
that’s the case?
Dr. Pillay: Yes. I think that I am pretty convinced
from the available data that we can change our
brains. And I think that the brain science shows
us that people with stroke, for example, who are
using imagery, if they use imagery in a particular
way, they can cause tissue to behave in a different
way. And they can take over functions that were
lost in the tissue that was damaged. So we know
that using imagery properly can be helpful.
And we also know that there are certain devices
like brain-computer interface, when you add that
to imagery, so when you are imagining moving
a lymph, for example, you change brain blood
flow. When you get feedback from the machine
on what you’re imagining it’s doing, it helps you
change brain blood flow even more and it helps
you improve faster.
So we know that the brain can change from
studies in neurology and studies in psychiatry
as well. So people with obsessive compulsive
disorder, people with anxiety disorders, people
with depression, with certain cognitive techniques
like reframing or refocusing, we can shift brain
blood flow. And also, this shift in brain blood flow
correlates with an improvement in symptoms.
So we do know that the brain can change across
a wide variety of what we call disorders. And
we also know that the brain can change… That
you can do certain things—that certain things
are more effective than other things in order to
change the brain.
And the brain can change with medication. But
it can also change with psychotherapy that is
cognitive. It can change with psychodynamic
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therapy. It can change with self-talk. So I think the
more we learn about how we can access this…
There are some very dramatic examples. There
is a girl, for example, who was diagnosed with a
very severe form of intractable epilepsy. The only
treatment for this epilepsy is actually removing
one entire hemisphere of the brain. So she had
the entire hemisphere removed.
And actually, its peripheral effects of… Dr. Ben
Carson was one of the people who did the
surgery. But she had this removed. And after this
was removed, she regained function almost fully
because she engaged in the exercises that they
had prescribed. And as a result, the one side of
her brain started taking on the functions of the
other side of the brain.
So conventionally, we think there’s a left brain.
There is a right brain. They do very different
things. If you lose one you’re going to go lose
function completely of the other side of the
body. But if you actually think about it deeply, all
human tissue came from a sperm and an ovum.
And they came from stem cells, basic cells that
then differentiated into other organs, then into
different hemispheres.
But cells possess this innate characteristic of
being able to behave in a different way. And so
if we can teach cells how to behave differently…
and we’re doing some amazing things right now
pharmacologically. Like I think, we’re learning
how to turn genes on and off and all of a sudden,
cancer is reversed. So we know we can impact
genes. We know we can impact the brain. That I
think is a really stark example.
Now, not everybody can recover to the same
degree. It depends, I think a little bit, on the
person’s effort and the extent of damage. But
another example. Recently, a student of mine
had her father in hospital with a massive stroke.
And when I talked to the head of the ICU who

is actually a friend of mine, he just said, “This
damage is extremely extensive. The chances of
this person recovering are just very, very low.”
And she was very determined to follow the case.
I helped her follow it. Talked to the different
physicians. There was an extra amount of care
because she was a doctor as well, and so she was
very on top of everything. And fast forward to six
months later, and he’s actually able to walk and
talk.
And he’s recovered so much function because
his brain had the capacity to change. And he had
the necessary interventions to change that. So I
think that that’s just a super optimistic thing, that
we can change our brains, not just for the brain’s
sake, but for the body’s sake as well.
Jonas: Absolutely. What’s interesting as well,
beside the fascination in both of the cases that
you just walked us through, but these are extreme
cases of damage. And if we think about more
chronic issues, anxiety, which we’ll talk about
in a moment, depression and other types of
challenges that we deal with, those might seem
on the surface, based on what you said, probably
much easier to address depending on a number
of factors obviously and willingness.
Dr. Pillay: Yeah, certainly at the very least, we
would say we would be encouraged that we can
address those two.
Jonas: Sure. So let’s talk about anxiety. And
specifically, how we might change our brains to
feel less anxious or worrisome or preoccupied all
of the time or to lessen those voices that we hear.
Dr. Pillay: I’m starting to direct the Anxiety
Disorder Service in McLean Hospital. And when
I first took it over, I was like, “Oh, this is going to
be so nice.” Because I know benzos take away
anxiety immediately. And I can throw in an SSRI.
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13
People are not going to be anxious. I’m going to
be happy. The patients are going to be happy. It’s
going to be perfect.
But then I realized that there were lots of points
of naivete in myself as a clinician. I realized that
some anxiety is actually helpful. It keeps you on
track. And I found myself, for example, treating
entrepreneurs who are on the edge of an idea,
but super anxious. And I would take their anxiety
away, but it would also take the idea away.
And then they’d be like, “No, I don’t have the
motivation to do that anymore. It’s fine. I’m cool.
I’m chill.”
So I thought, Wait a minute. Anxiety is not… So
there’s you eustress and distress. And eustress is
actually good stress. It’s stress that keeps you on
top of things. It gets you to the edge of different
ideas. It’s the edge of chaos. But distress is when
anxiety goes awry. And that’s basically when
you’ve gone past the middle and now you’re going
more toward burnout. And you’re eating up your
brain resources and it’s not helpful.
So from the perspective of how we can change
the brain, aside from pharmacologically, you can
actually change the brain through a number of
techniques. Like all scientific research, I would
say I both believe and don’t believe anything I’m
saying. It’s true. And as much as those are all the
caveats, I don’t want to overstate everything.
But having said that, there are a bunch of studies
that give us a lot of reason to be encouraged
about what we can do. So there’s a mnemonic
that I use called CIRCA. And when people are
listening, I would encourage them to take out a
piece of paper and a pen and write down C-I-R-
C-A.
The first C stands for chunking. These are all ways
in which you can shift brain blood flow away from
the brain’s anxiety center back to the thinking

brain. So if you are very anxious, the amygdala is
the part of the brain that processes all emotions
and it does process anxiety too. And often, anxiety
or fear jump to the front of the line because they
are, from an evolutionary perspective apparently,
we need to protect ourselves first.
So if we have too much blood going on, there’s
too much tissue activity in the amygdale. You’ll
want to take the blood away, have it shunted
away to where you need it, which is in the thinking
brain, which is directly connected to the anxious
brain. So CIRCA is a 5-step process, which doesn’t
have to occur in order, that actually helps people
shunt brain blood flow back to the thinking brain.
So the first C is chunking, which is breaking it
down into parts. So somebody comes in and says,
“Hey, you’ve got to finish this project by the end
of the week.” And you’re like, “Oh my God! How
am I going to do it?” Say, “Well, okay what do I
do today? What do I do the next day?” And just
by using self-talk, which is the mechanism that
underlies all of these different mechanisms, by
saying to yourself out loud or in your head, “I’m
going to break this problem down.” It actually
decreases the intensity of activity in the anxiety
center.
The second is I, the I of CIRCA, is ignore mental
chatter. And what that is is mindfulness, which
essentially means that rather than paying
attention to the internal narratives and stories,
we simply look at them. We observe them. And
as simple as it sounds, by simply placing your
attention on your breath, you can change brain
blood flow so that the anxiety center is not
overwhelmed by this blood flow anymore.
So I would say of all of the different techniques,
this probably has the most scientific data backing
it up. And not only that, but using this technique
can also change your genes. So at the end of
your genes are telomeres, which get shorter
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14
and shorter with aging. And if you do regular
mindfulness, pilot studies show that you can
actually protect these chromosome caps. And as a
result, age more gracefully and more easily.
The R is reality check, which basically is, this too
shall pass. And as obvious as that sounds, all of
us know that feeling of, you suddenly open your
email and you get some kind of negative response
or you get some bad news and you freak out.
But what a lot of people don’t realize is that most
things are going to pass. So saying to yourself,
“This too shall pass.” Asking yourself, “How long
is this going to last like this?” Actually, your brain
then registers, wait a minute. This initial feeling
like this is going to last forever is not true. It was a
form of catastrophic thinking.
Then the second C is control check, which is
basically like the serenity prayer. And control
check simply means what is the stuff that you’re
trying to control that you can’t control and that
you’re not actually going to do anything about?
So often people will complain about the political
situation. Or they’ll complain about the weather.
Or they’ll complain about the stock market. And
this adds up. If you want to be miserable, it’s quite
easy. You just have to look at the entire world.
There’s a lot of reason to be miserable and a lot of
things you can’t control.
So at some level, you have to decide with your
brain, what you want to feed it and what you don’t
want to feed it. So if you want to be miserable,
just switch on the news and just Google. Use a
search engine and just type in “tragedy” and then
go into news. And you’ll see enough tragedies to
keep you busy for months.
But with control check, what you really want to do
is say, “Okay, what stuff can I not control? What
stuff can I…?” And then just think of one thing, and
I would encourage everybody to just simply say…
And if you want to do it tangibly, you can do it

too. You can just write it up, put it in a bottle, and
throw out into a river. And you can actually let go
of whatever that feeling is.
And then the last piece is attention shift, which
is basically, attention is like a flashlight. So we
usually have our attention is on the problem all
the time. But if we take it off and put it into the
solution, then we start to ask different questions,
“How is this possible?” “What did other people in
my position do?” And the more you ask questions
like that, the better it is.
So CIRCA is control check, ignore mental chatter,
reality check, chunking, and attention shifting. I
switched on the C’s there. But by using this 5-step
technique…I think most of us do 1 or 2 of them.
What I would encourage people to do is meet with
someone you trust and try it out with them.
And I do this a lot in my workshop when I’m
working with executives. I do this a lot in my
practice. And people first underestimate it. And
when they do it, they’re like, “Wow, it really helped
to say out loud that what I thought was a huge
catastrophe was a pain in the neck. But it was
manageable and doable and there is a way that I
can do this.”
And so there are actually 2 types of worry. There’s
type 1 worry, which is worrying. Then there’s type
2 worry, which is worrying about worrying. You go
around saying, “Oh my God, I’m so stressed. I can’t
believe it. I’m so stressed. I’m freaking out.” Then
you’re worried about the fact that you’re worried.
Type 1 worry, in preliminary studies, doesn’t have
that much of a negative impact on anything. Type
2 worry, which is worrying about worry, it does,
on your blood pressure and your cardiac indices.
So you want to not worry about your worry. You
want to understand what’s going on with the
worry.
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15
And I think in lieu of that, so why do we worry
then? Because a lot of times we worry even like
we wish we wouldn’t. People worry about their
kids. They worry about their futures. They worry
about…so why do people worry? Well, the recent
meta-analysis showed that—more than forty
studies show that there’s one key reason that
most people worry. And that is that we all have
peak experiences in life and we have trough
experiences. And people worry in between
because they want the fall to trough to be much
shorter. They don’t want to be having a great time
and suddenly get bad news and then they have to
dip. It’s just that dip that makes it worse.
So on the one hand, worry is protective because
it keeps you between extremely happy and
extremely sad. And so you’re just worried.
On the other hand, you are limiting your
peak experiences in life. And you’re basically
saying, “I’m going to just not commit to a peak
experience.”
And there have been some phenomena,
associative phenomena, which warn us that the
brain may… The default state of the brain may
in fact be to avoid peak experiences. There’s a
construct called repetition compulsion. And the
classic story is Freud and a bunch of people are
standing around watching kids and how they
behave.
And they’re saying, “Okay, this is weird. They’re
throwing their toys out. Like why are they
doing this? And what does this mean for adult
behavior?” Then they say, “What’s even weirder
is they’re crying about it after they throw it out.”
They’re like, “Hey, you threw your toy out. Now
you’re crying about it?”
And then they go on to say, in terms of looking
at the child again, what they see that the child
then starts laughing when the child gets the toy
back. But then the child throws the toy out again.

They’re like, “Okay, what is going on here? You
own something. You threw it out. You cried about
it. You got it back. And you threw it out again. Can
you not stop this behavior?”
And one of the theories around this is that we are
wired to master disappointment and not to seek
fulfillment. So we like to be really good when life
sucks. We’re like, “I want to be so good that I’m
going to invite adversity over and over again so
I can triumph over it.” And it’s this triumph over
adversity that drives a lot of people.
But what it alerts us to is that there is another way
to seek pleasure. And that way is to actually seek
fulfilling experiences. And so one of the questions
I would have for people is, I ask this question a
lot when I meet with people and say, “How many
deliberately fulfilling experiences have you built
into your schedule this week?” “None, maybe
one.”
And I’d be like, “Come on, get real.” “I’m busy. I
have to cook. I have to look after the kids after
they come home. Or even if they don’t, I’ve got to
finish my work projects. They’re going to come
home. Like how am I going to do this?” It’s like,
“Well, I’m not telling you, you have to do it.” In
fact, I don’t like to tell anybody to do anything.
But what I like to say is I think it’s worth thinking
about, just a simple fact.
So everything that I say, no matter how academic
it is, comes from a fairly simple framework that
I believe in, which is you live, you die, you do
something in between. And so it’s up to you
what you want to do with this in-between time.
And I think that if we are not building fulfilling
experiences into our lives, perhaps we should
question it. And perhaps we should say, “What
would make me feel fulfilled?”
Jonas: And that’s a profound question and it’s
also a very subjective question. I want to return
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16
to you and we can talk more about it. And we can
get into the creativity layer and into the new book
as well, because that’s a great tie-in to trying new
things and finding fulfillment.
I would argue that most people don’t know what
fulfillment actually looks like or have maybe barely
scratched the surface in terms of fulfillment. Now,
I say that personally as someone who is driven
every day to try a number of new things just
to have those experiences. Because I have this
abnormal paranoia around my own coming death
and, hopefully, I can avoid it in the next 5 minutes.
But you never know. That’s an ongoing worry and
neuroticism.
But let’s talk more about, if you would for a
moment, returning to this idea of you were talking
about what sounded like the evolutionary basis or
this sense of favoring failure and disappointment
over triumph and success. So maybe let’s dive
into why is that? Why are so many of us operating
on a model that is driven toward this, the
disappointment?
Dr. Pillay: So, there are probably a lot of different
reasons. The first thought that comes to mind
is a guy who I think a lot of people know about,
Kierkegaard, who actually suggested that anxiety
is the dizziness of freedom. That actually we
say we want freedom, but freedom is like being
without gravity. So it’s like floating out in space,
and we sort of love it and hate it. And so for that
reason, we find ways to put balls and chains
around our ankles so that we can also be attached
to gravity.
Now, I would say to people, there’s different ways
of being grounded. You can be grounded like
connected to yourself and the earth. Or you can
be grounded like a ship. Or you can be grounded
like just with balls and chains around your ankles,
not moving in life. And the choices you make in
life, whether they have to do with your career or

the partner you find or having kids versus not or
how much money you want to make, all of these
things are often things that have the capacity to
serve you and also work against you.
And we want to just always be in dynamic
appreciation of… The question I would ask
everybody is, “Is there one ball and chain in your
life right now that maybe you could remove? Is
there one thing that just eats at you and it just
makes you feel heavier than you want to feel?”
But recognize that after you decide this, your
brain will launch a major attack. Because the
message the brain gets is, “Hey, brain. I’m about
to free myself.” And your brain’s like, “What? Like
no gravity?” And you’re like, “Yeah, I’m going to be
free.” And your brain is like, “Hmm.” And also, it’s
going to be new and I’m not going to know what
it feels like. And if I don’t reach the pleasure that I
want to reach, we’re going to be disappointed.
That just does not sound like a good idea to your
brain. Your brain’s conflict detector, the anterior
cingulate cortex, creates this cognitive dissonance
or brain chaos. And so what a lot of people do is
they just go back to doing what they were doing.
But what you’ve got to recognize is that there is
a way that you can quiet your brain down. And
I do talk about this in the new book, which, and
there are a lot of ways of doing this. But once
you learn how to get your brain on board to pay
the psychological price that we call switch cost
of change, you can actually make this particular
change to greater freedom.
And the Unbearable Lightness of Being stands
as a great metaphor for this because there is
something so unbearable about being unshackled
and light. I once presented this to a group of
people in an inner-city community where they
were talking about what was going on in their
lives. And there was an incredibly lovely woman
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17
who was listening to this and heard all of this as
an insult. She said, “Who do you think you are to
tell me not to have twelve children and a husband
and to stay at home and not to eat what I want to
eat and not to be able to move? Like I make these
choices. I make these choices.”
I said, “I’m not here to tell you who to be. I’m here
to ask you to question what your existence is. And
to ask you to think deeply about what you may
or may not want to change.” But there are people
who are attached to their balls and chains. And I
think everyone of us, if we take a close look, will
find that there are at least a couple of things that
are like that, certainly for myself. There’s always
this question of the things that keep me grounded
versus the things that don’t.
And so I think that life is more about, in terms of
peak experiences, life is more about engaging
this flux because I’ve never been in the state of
continuous euphoria that’s lasted for years. I’m
happy when I get a little glimpse of it. It sort of
makes me feel good.
But to that point, there are 2 kinds of pleasure.
There’s hedonia, which is basically sex, drugs, and
rock and roll. And then there’s eudaimonia, which
is essentially around meaning and purpose. And
studies do show that in adolescents, adolescents
who develop a stronger sense of meaning and
purpose are protected against depression later on
in life.
So I would say that one of the key questions to
ask, and the book I think was inspired by this
notion, is what means anything to me? What is
the sense of purpose? And not to expect that your
brain is going to come back with, “Hmm, I think
what life means to you is X, Y, Z.” Or, “You will get
your sense of purpose by serving people.”
I always tell people virtue signaling is not a
solution to the absence of meaning. Like saying,
“I just want to serve people. I just want to help

the poor. I just want to help the medically ill.”
Of course, you want to help people. We know
this. That does not create a sense of purpose. If
anything, it creates guilt, frustration.
Other people may admire you for at a certain
level. But there is a lack of authenticity that comes
from saying, “I don’t care about myself.” Because
I think a lot of other care comes from self-care.
And the self-circuits in the brain, when they are
activated… What’s funny is the default mode
network, which is an unfocused circuit, the self-
circuits overlap with the understanding of others.
So if you think about singers, for example, and
they are in an audience. When a singer wants to
connect with the audience, they don’t look out to
the audience and try to connect with the audience
only. They go deeply within themselves, reach
that high note. And when they are self-connected,
you’re like, “Oh my God, I feel so connected to this
person.” Self and other overlap a lot.
And I think a lot of times what I recommend in
general is pay attention to your self-connection.
Because if it’s others that you want to serve,
when you serve from that authentic place, it’s a
very different kind of giving. It’s inspired giving as
opposed to obligatory giving, which feels more
like, “I guess I better try to have a purpose.”
I don’t think purpose is about trying to serve X, Y,
Z people. I think purpose is about having a deep
self-connection that leads to whatever this form
of inspired giving is.
Jonas: I agree. It’s interesting because I think
what you’re suggesting is that purpose requires
a deeper level of inquiry and introspection. And
maybe a more frequent introspection, which
takes me back to this CIRCA framework that you
laid out, the mnemonic device.
And I’m curious how often or with what type
The Mental Wellness Connection
18
of frequency do you recommend our audience
use that framework? Is it a daily journaling
experience? Is it a monthly reflective where you
take an hour and you work through the CIRCA
framework? What do you recommend?
Dr. Pillay: So again, we don’t have any data
to support the use of the entire framework.
But I think when you have a challenge that is
particularly difficult, start off by using it in that
way. I would say independent of that, I think
having a regular practice, where there’s exercise
or walking or meditating. And there are lots of
forms of meditation. There’s a walking mediation.
For those people who are cringing saying, “Oh
my God, I just don’t want to sit still, like in a yoga
position.” There are lots of ways you can meditate.
So anyway, my feeling about how often is, is start
with something that’s difficult. Apply that to that.
And then do that over and over again and you’ll
find yourself automatically looking at any problem
in that way. The moment someone throws
something at you, you’re like, “Okay, I will chunk
it down. Will I pay attention to, ignore the mental
chatter? Reality check, this is not going to last that
long. Control check, I can’t control that. I can’t
control that. I can’t control that. I can control this.
So I don’t have focus on that.”
And in terms of how to solve this it seems like
such an impossible problem. Has anyone else in
the world solved it? And if so, what did they do?
Because that will give you a sense of possibility,
which I think does change your brain circuitry.
Like when you have intake or one of the things I
talk about is possibility thinking, which based on
placebo studies, we know that when you believe
something’s going to work, you actually increase
your brain dopamine. And you stimulate reward
pathways in the brain. And you decrease opioids.
So you decrease the amount of stress that you’re
feeling.

And this changes your motivational state. You
can go after things more. So in the states of
possibility, I always say to people that if you want
an exceptional life, by definition, an exception
is a low probability event. So you don’t want to
ask, how likely is it I’m going to be happy? Not
that likely. How likely is it that I’m going to be
anxiety free? Not that likely. We don’t care about
likelihood when it comes to mental health in that
way. What we care about is what can I do to make
myself happier or less anxious?
Jonas: And I’m curious because you have
obviously a very active brain and imagination,
Srini, and I imagine there is some degree of
worry that you deal with as well, as not only a
practitioner, but as a writer, an author, an artist.
What are some of the other things that you
personally do to affect positive change? And is
there a mantra that you work with? Let us a little
more into your sort of own cerebral world.
Dr. Pillay: Yeah. I think what’s in my Twitter
profile captures that most accurately, just
somewhere between martinis and meditation. I
think sometimes I go the martini way. Sometimes
I go the meditation way. And I find that that
for me, that works well because it keeps me
connected with myself and also with people who
are in those worlds.
I’ve never really been only in the martini world,
but in the meditation world, when I got absorbed
in whatever there was, I was like, “What is going
on? Why are they really behaving so weirdly?
Why is everybody blissed out all the time? What’s
happening here? What happened to like the
nice people?” All kinds of things like that. Then
I thought, Wait a minute. There are nice people
everywhere. Just open yourself to your own life. And
so I think for me, I think that’s important.
I think the second thing, which is very
controversial as a brain scientist is that I believe
The Mental Wellness Connection
19
in God. And by that what I mean is that I have a
hypothesis that there is an unknown force that
is involved for coordinating basic biological and
earth-related processes. And I like to live my life in
pursuit of what that force is.
So if you ask me do I know God? No. Do I have
an experience? Well, I think there are 3 forms of
experience. The yoga sūtras of Patañjali are a
really cool framework for me because they, in a
very sort of non-denomination way, talk about
how to think about this question. And so they, for
example, talk about 3 levels of evidence. That the
first is scriptural testimony, which is what do the
books say? Which is interesting. But in their terms,
it’s the lowest level of evidence.
The second is inference. Something amazing
happened so there must be a force. It’s like, you
look at how human life is created. And I think a lot
of people will be like, “Oh my God, this is… What is
going on? Like what is making these cells do this?”
So inference.
And then there’s direct perception, which I think
is an experience of consciousness. Some of my
friends call that temporal lobe epilepsy. I call it an
experience of God. But I’m open to their critique.
I don’t know that certainty and logic is part of that
world. I think that God is a hypothesis and that life
is an experiment in the service of that hypothesis.
So I think that framework does help contain me.
That said, I do have peak moments of anxiety and
worry. Sometimes my brain will play around with
me. I’ll even say this while I’m working out. Like
I’ll say to my trainer, I’ll go like, “My brain just is
saying things like, ‘You can’t lift this weight.’” I’ll
be like, this is ridiculous. Like what is this random
information that is coded in my brain that’s like
working against me in some way.
And then I think, I know it’s useless like, “Why
do you think so much when you’re exercising?

Most people come here so they can work on
their muscles so that the…”And I was like, “Well,
my brain is not independent of my muscles.” So
I think exercise for me is a very big outlet. I think
especially since I love food so much. And I love
lots of kinds of foods that are not recommended.
So I think—
Jonas: You mean you’re human?
Dr. Pillay: You’re right. I think coming to terms
with that humanity is also… One of the most
humbling things being in the mental health
profession is seeing that nobody is immune to
suffering and that suffering doesn’t obey social
economic variables, gender, class. Suffering goes
all the way through.
And so I think perspective, which is basically
taking a step back and being like, “Okay, mostly
you don’t know what’s going on. So chill with that
for a second.” I think that’s an okay thing for me.
And I think it’s also been an anxiety relieving idea
to realize that there are many more things that
I don’t know than things that I know. Because a
lot of times we go about expecting ourselves to
know.
And sure, I’ve acquired more information over
time and I’ve acquired more experience over time.
But that really shows you how much you don’t
know as well. And I think if people could learn
to relax into that that would be great. Those are
some of the things that I do. Meditation, exercise,
martinis, and sort of being human.
Jonas: Well, thank you for that. I appreciate your
vulnerability. And I also I wanted just to add a
little color. One, on the third level or layer of
Patañjali and this idea of perception and living
through perception and being open to new
experiences and awareness. I actually equate that
personally with the sixth sense, developing our
consciousness or connection to a god or source or
The Mental Wellness Connection
20
energetic awareness more simply.
And for many of us, the great quest is in how do
we develop that as a tool for insights and deeper
meaning? I’m mapping back to that what you were
describing as the front door to consciousness.
And then beyond that, you were also talking
about your coping mechanisms and rituals. But
also the integrative way that you operate, whether
it’s seeking new experiences or curiosity or trying
a new food that may not be the healthiest for
you. But which gives you pleasure and fulfillment
because that’s very important as well.
And I think that we have a cohort of practitioners
in our audience who would probably benefit
greatly from hearing that. Because it’s easy as a
patient, as a non-practitioner, to fall into the trap
of not really caring about what that practitioner,
the kind of stress level that they may be dealing
with. And so anyway, I appreciate that and it’s
important.
I want to talk about the new book. So Tinker,
Dabble, Doodle, Try, which is a wonderful title,
very playful, obviously. And one of the core
components of the book is this notion of unfocus.
I think the predominant wisdom certainly in
the business world and also in the educational
space is that focus is everything. We must stay
focused, focused, focused. And we must learn
the discipline of focus. And there is some truth to
that.
But the other side of that equation is this area
of unfocus and creativity and curiosity and
exploration without really thinking about it or
thinking in a different way. So why don’t we dive
in there and get some insights from you on why
this is so important and how it’s so helpful for us?
Dr. Pillay: Yeah. The brain occupies 2% of the
body’s volume. And it uses 20% of the body’s
energy at rest and effort tacks on another 5%. So
 21
in terms of energy utilization, we want to be good.
The brain needs to be fantastic when it’s using
this 20% of energy. You don’t want to waste that
energy.
I think another factor to remember is if you
ask most experts how much of mental activity
is unconscious, they would say between 90 to
98%. So only 2% of mental activity is conscious.
Yet organizations spend 100% of their budgets
on conscious mental activity. We always want to
know what are the 5 ways we do this? What are
the 3 ways? That’s all conscious activity.
Now strategy is super important. As you said,
focus is very important. Being able to focus gets
something done, it’s important. But strategy is
like a plan, and that’s the 2%. The other 98% is the
unconscious soil. And if we learn how to till the
soil of the unconscious, then the plant’s roots can
actually be more firmly entrenched in the soil. And
the plant can grow more strongly.
And so that’s why some people have strategies
that work beautifully. And if you trying to copy
that, it doesn’t work because you don’t have the
unconscious that the person has. You’ve not tilled
the soil of the unconscious in that way.
So in this book, what I wanted to do in a more
light-hearted way was to introduce practices that
people could use to till the soil of the unconscious.
And the unfocused circuit is called the default
mode network, which we used to think of the
do mostly nothing network. But in fact, it does
a whole hell of a lot when you’re actually sort of
thinking about it.
Metaphorically, focus is like a fork. And so, when
you are focusing on something, the parts of your
identity that your brain is representing are parts
that can be picked up metaphorically with a fork.
Like your LinkedIn profile basically, like what’s
your demographics? What you think your gender
The Mental Wellness Connection
is. What your age is. What work you’re doing.
What your history?
Everybody knows. Like if I said, “Are you your
LinkedIn profile?” Like you probably wouldn’t say
yes. It’s like, “Well, I don’t know. It says something
about what I did.”
Unfocused, metaphorically, invites other
silverware to the table. So it invites a spoon for
the delicious mélange of flavors of your identity.
So the scent of your grandmother, the smell
of apple pie in a crisp fall day. These are the
things that make up our consciousness on a
day-to-day basis. But we never bring this to the
engagements.
So if we have this stuff online all the time, and you
know we have this multisensory experience of the
world. I feel like that a lot when I go around the
world and like, “Oh my God, so beautiful,” because
there are so many things that are happening.
In addition to that, unfocus metaphorically invites
chopsticks. So you get these connections and
things are connected in the unfocused state that
the focused brain usually rejects. It’s like, “I’m so
happy and I’m so lonely.” Your brain is like, “Wait
a minute. Are you happy or are you lonely?” “Well,
I’m both.” Like, “Okay, I am soft-spoken and I am
very strong.” It’s like, “Wait a minute.”
So in the unfocused state, the chopsticks can
bring these ideas together and you feel more
coherent. And then it also invites the marrow
spoon or [millet] spoon, which basically goes
into the nooks and crannies of your brain and
fragments of memory. Standing in the middle
of the school ground. Crying on a particular day
because you lost something. Staring into the
mirror and hating yourself, whatever these little
memories are, unfocus can activate all these
different memories.

And so when you are focused, you have your
LinkedIn profile type of identity. When you are
unfocused, you’ve got the fork, the spoon, the
chopsticks, the marrow spoon. You’ve got a much
more complex representation of who you are.
And with regard to any goal, any goal that any
person has—I want a $100,000. I want to be in
better shape. I want to be healthier. I want to lose
my obsessions. I want to be less anxious. People
have techniques.
But the reality is that the “I” piece of “I want” is
as important as anything that you want. So you
don’t just make more money without you being
involved. So how much of you is showing up to
the world on a day-to-day basis? And are you
actually paying attention to the unconscious soil?
So that when you present yourself in the world
you’re presenting your primitive self, your shadow
self, the stuff you don’t like, the stuff you like.
Our power comes not from representing
our strengths only. Our power comes from
recognizing that we can be vulnerable and we
can have a lot of strengths. But having the whole
is where the power of being human really comes
from. So in this book, I describe practices that
people can build into their days. We spend 46.9%
of our days daydreaming anyway.
Jonas: Is that right?
Dr. Pillay: And a lot of times it’s the kind of
daydreaming that doesn’t work. So Jerome
Singer, who studied daydreaming, found that
in the 1950s, actually found that if you slip into
a daydream it’s not helpful. If you have guilty-
dysphoric daydreaming, like maybe too many
of the martinis, you said stuff you didn’t mean.
The next day you’re like, “Oh my God, what did I
do? Why did I freak that person out?” And so that
doesn’t help either.
But there is a type of daydreaming that does help.
The Mental Wellness Connection
22
And it’s called positive constructive daydreaming.
And positive constructing daydreaming improves
your creativity. And it also causes what we call
attention cycling. It gives your attention circuits a
chance to regenerate and to get the energy back.
So with positive constructive day dreaming, you
can do 3 things. You identify a period in your day
when your brain is on low anyway, and you…
Fifteen minutes. The second thing is you withdraw
that flashlight of attention from being outside.
You turn it back inwards towards whatever is
going on inside you. And the third thing is this is
best done when you are involved in some kind of
low-level activity, so knitting, gardening, walking,
rather than doing nothing.
And these 3 things will activate this unfocused
circuit that I just talked about. Your brain becomes
the time machine that it is, the photo albums
of the past, being in the present, the crystal
ball of the future, these prediction circuits. New
prediction circuits are made, because there’s new
data that’s available, because of all these nooks
and crannies and all these odd memories and all
of these more abstract ideas about yourself.
And so your brain is able to predict the
future much more effectively. People like Ray
Kurzweil, for example, who takes these big
trend approaches to life, are able to observe
these trends because they are shifting position
to observe where the trends are. So positive
constructive daydreaming is one thing.
Napping for ten minutes improves clarity.
Napping for ninety minutes improves creativity.
Doodling, scribbling on a piece of paper while
someone’s talking, in a conference call or in a
meeting, improves memory by 29%.
And then there’s a technique called psychological
Halloween-ism. Well, I call it that. But it’s
essentially base on a study by Dunbar and his
 23
colleague that showed that if I give you a test,
like here’s a brick, and I want you to give me a
hundred uses of the brick in one minute.
If I ask you to behave like an eccentric poet, you
are much more likely, at a statistically significant
level, to be more creative than someone who
behaves like a rigid librarian. And obviously, not
all poets are eccentric and not all librarians are
rigid. But these are the stereotypes they use. And
if the same people take on the other identity, they
have the same result.
So it’s a great practice for if you are at the table
with your kid, if you are with a group of friends
and you say, “Okay, we’re trying to solve a
problem.” Or you’re trying to get some kind of
innovation going. You say, “Today I’m just going
to behave like any particular person.” And if
you were to behave like Da Vinci, like Jay Z, like
whoever you want to behave like, take on that
identity.
It’s a pretty cool thing to realize that a lot of times
you are in your way, that when you remove the
identity of you, of what you think is you, you find
a capacity to solve problems that was there all the
time. It’s just that we are attached to a much more
stable and fixed sense of identity ourselves.
And when people say, “Well, how do I get started
on this?” I say, “Think of when the slump is.” It’s
like midmorning, after lunch, midafternoon,
at dinner. I particularly like the Italian title of
the book, which it translates which is Il Potere
del Cazzeggio, which translates to The Power of
[inaudible] which I think is a fun thing to do when
your brain’s not working anyway.
It’s sort of like, well you go, focus, focus, focus,
fatigue. Rather than doing that, go focus, unfocus,
more brain energy, unfocus, focus, unfocus. And
then most of the day, you’re working with a brain
that’s been continually recharged.
The Mental Wellness Connection
So find a fifteen-minute period. Use one of these
techniques. I actually have a desktop app which
people can ask for, which is a calendar desktop
app that is called a Tinker Table that syncs with
your calendar. And it will block off as much time
as you ask it to block off, for as many days as you
want it to block off. Because it will find where
there is some kind of blank in your schedule and it
will prevent you from going back to back.
So I think starting with a technique like that is
particularly helpful. As fun as tinkering, dabbling,
and doodling, and trying are, and a lot of people…
I’ve outlined this in the book, from Einstein
to Mark Zuckerberg, to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates,
Picasso, a lot of people have used some of these
techniques to have their greatest discoveries.
And I think that to the extent that we really
want to take care of that 98% of mental activity,
perhaps we should give a little bit of time to that
unconscious so we can till that soil.
Jonas: I love it. I know for me personally, and
this feels very intuitive, by the way even before
having read the book, there’s this idea of the
creative breakthroughs happening in the white
space of your calendar, the times when you least
expect it to. And I think that’s true in terms of
solving problems, perhaps, if you’re dealing with
relational challenges or maybe a work issue. But
giving clarity is such a big piece of that unfocus,
which is counterintuitive, right?
Dr. Pillay: Yeah, I think something like 75% of
scientific findings are found by chance. So we
have these beautiful frameworks in life. But I just
don’t think we take advantage of this incredibly
beautiful brain that we have to allow ourselves to
unfocus.
And I think unfocus puts people off. It’s like, “Oh
my God, I’m already so distracted. I don’t need to
unfocus some more.” But we’re not talking about

distraction. We’re talking about the fact that your
brain can only take so much focus. And so, you want
to treat it well so that it can do the best for you.
Jonas: And so, let’s talk about just the archetypes.
So if you’re a type A personality who is resistant
to this idea and you are driven, driven, driven.
And you are the breadwinner in your family. And
you feel like you must stay focused 100% of the
time, what would be some ways to ease into the
unfocus experience? Is it, again as you said, the
fifteen minutes a day? Is it something that you
openly communicate, “Hey, this is going to be a…
I’m going to be starting a new phase of unfocus in
my life. So please allow me that space”?
Dr. Pillay: Yeah, and I think to reflect on the
results of it. I taught a course once at Harvard
Business School where we worked with a bunch
of very successful entrepreneurs. And everybody
was super focused, high net worth, up to five
hundred million dollars and trying to figure out
what they wanted.
And they brought in, as one of the case histories,
somebody who was a super driven guy, who,
like all super driven people believed that he was
immune to any of the side effects of working too
hard, and then got a heart attack. And when he
got the heart attack was when he learned, “You
know what? My body has limits and I should care.
If I want to live, I probably should care about
building in this time.”
So it’s not about frightening people into it. But I
think it is good to be realistic about the fact that
there are limits to which we can drive ourselves
in that way. That doesn’t mean you should stop
being ambitious or stop being on top of your
game. It’s just that I think it’s worth an experiment
with some of these techniques.
So choose a fifteen-minute period. Try the
ten-minute nap after lunch. First, decide what
The Mental Wellness Connection
24
productivity variables you want to measure,
number of output, number of meetings, number
of telephone calls. Then try 2 weeks where you’re
building a ten-minute nap after lunch. And see if
that changes materially. And I think for yourself,
you’ll get some initial data that will give you a
sense of, you know what? I think my brain is
working differently.
For the vast majority of people, I think that they’ve
learned over time that unfocus is key when it
comes to having eureka experiences, knowing
what to do when you hit a wall. Unfocus has been
implicated in a lot of…this default mode network
doesn’t work well in Alzheimer’s disease. And we
don’t know what that means particularly. But we
do know that that emphasizes yet again why this
network is so key and so crucial.
Jonas: Yeah. It’s interesting. Again, that
juxtaposition and that continuum, there’s forced
experience and we can I think place focus in that
bucket to some degree. And then there’s more of
pure flow experience, which doesn’t actually have
to be forced. It can be completely unforced and
totally natural and organic and serendipitous. And
granted, there’s some overlap between the two.
But in any case, this is fascinating stuff, Srini.
And I want to remind people where they can find
more information about you and your work at
drsrinipillay.com and neurobusinessgroup.com is
that right?
Dr. Pillay: Neurobusinessgroup.com.
Jonas: Neurobusinessgroup.com. Okay, great.
And the book again is Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try
and that’s available in bookstores. And I highly
recommend it. And beyond that, Srini, I’m sure
we’ll be doing a follow-up at some point for the
Mental Wellness Tribe. But on behalf of myself
and my co-host Ross and Dr. Dempster and our
whole team at Health Talks, thank you very much

Anti-Inflammatory Diet for
Reducing Depression and
ADHD
Julie Daniluk
Dr. Dempster: Hello, everyone! And welcome
back to the Mental Wellness Summit. My name is
Dr. John Dempster. And I am your cohost along
with Ross McKenzie. And we are delighted to have
celebrity nutritionist Julie Daniluk here with us
tonight.
Welcome, Julie!
Julie: Oh, so great to be here, John! Thank you
so much. I’m so honored because I know you’ve
got a star-studded group of people that are really
going to be bringing some light to this subject. So
thanks!
Dr. Dempster: Well, we’re very excited to have
you on board because we know you’ve got lots
to talk about with mental health and food and
inflammation.
And we’re going to hear lots about the different
aspects of inflammation coming from our food
and nutrients.
So before we do that, I know you’ve been on a
very busy book tour. And that’s why we are very
grateful that you are taking this time. You’ve been
in…How many shows have you done in the last
few months? You said 180?
Julie: One hundred and eighty on the book tour.
So that was a year long. So it’s a lot of media. And
I’m so grateful that people are really connecting
The Mental Wellness Connection
25
inflammation and food. Thank goodness, we’re
starting to understand that food isn’t just fuel. It
makes up every cell of our body. So therefore,
we’ve got to regenerate our tissues with what we
eat. And, therefore, all these anti- inflammatory
foods are all the buzz. It’s so great to see.
Dr. Dempster: So cool! And I know I want to say
a little bit about your books as we go into the
interview here.
Julie: Sure.
Dr. Dempster: But I know this topic of mental
health and wellness is really near and dear to your
heart. Do you want to give us some background
on that?
Julie: Absolutely! So I was a [inaudible] as a little
kid. I was unbelievably hyperactive, so much so
that I never slept a wink. I did terrible in school.
I couldn’t even read the alphabet. And my mom
found the work of Dr. Feingold. And he wrote this
book, Your Hyperactive Child in the 70s. And thank
goodness she took it to heart. And she completely
radically changed my diet.
So I went from eating a lot of chocolate and
cheeses and hamburger helper to being on an
incredibly healthy organic diet with unbelievable
attention paid to the removal of any artificial
flavors, artificial colors, and sugar. And all of my
symptoms, I’m talking within 2 weeks of going

on the anti-inflammatory menu, my grades went
from Ds to As. And I was able to sleep through
the night for the first time. I was a completely
different kid. My parents truly feel that I was…
Dr. Dempster: Within 2 weeks?
Julie: Within 2 weeks! That’s all it took! That’s how
lit up with brain inflammation…I had so much
brain inflammation from all of these artificial
foods that I was eating. And it turns out I’m
incredibly sensitive to sucrose. So when I would
eat sucrose, I’d get unbelievably spastically hyper.
And then my serotonin would drop. And I would
get incredibly sad and really weepy.
So my mom was, “Wow! She’s either crazy hyper
or she’s holding onto me crying. What am I going
to do with this kid?” So she was firmly committed.
She even churned my butter because in the
70s it used to say, “Color on butter.” So she was
that concerned, that she made everything from
scratch. And I’m so grateful to her. She really is a
lifesaver.
Dr. Dempster: And she was very much ahead
of her time, Julie. She was so ahead of her time
doing that.
Julie: So ahead of her time. Really, back in the 70s,
let’s face it, health food tasted like cardboard. So
I’m so lucky she made stuff from scratch because
health food stores were a bit interesting. We’re so
lucky that nowadays there’s thousands of healthy
choices.
And that’s what I can’t wait to share today is
my whole life changed. And I can’t wait to see
how people can transform their own lives. And
that’s why I was so committed to sharing this
information with 1,500 published studies. And my
first book, Meals that Heal Inflammation, backing
up how the anti- inflammatory diet dramatically
reduces any mental health issues or joint pain or
The Mental Wellness Connection
26
gut problems. Let’s face it. Our gut really is the
second brain. So heal the gut, we heal the brain.
And that’s how I’ve just been so excited to share.
Dr. Dempster: Wow! Fantastic! Well, let’s dive into
it. I’m thirsty for this information. And I’m excited
to hear the latest and greatest in the evidence.
And I know you back a lot of your claims up with
studies, which is huge.
Julie: Yes, and I’m happy to share those studies.
So I will create a real reference sheet for our
talk today so that people can go research these
studies on their own because it really helps
solidify that’s it’s really worth giving this dietary
change a real try.
Dr. Dempster: So since the topic is based on
inflammation, can you define what inflammation
is and how that affects our mental wellbeing?
Julie: Sure. So inflammation is the body’s
emergency healing response. It’s essentially
there to help you, to safeguard you, to protect
you whenever there’s an incoming invader. And
there’s really 4 major causes of inflammation. And
the main 4 causes, I like to call them the 4 Is. So
think 4 Is for a moment. And you’ll have it.
It’s injury. The second one being infection. The
third one being irritation caused by food allergies
or toxins in our environment. And the last one
is imbalances—nutritional imbalances causing
hormonal imbalances. So if we can really resolve
these 4 causes with dietary changes, we really are
able to turn inflammation around quickly.
And I have thousands of testimonials from people
who within, say, 2 months, their inflammation is
down in their joints. Their gut is happier. Their
anxiety is down. Their memory is stronger. Their
moods have improved. And their attention span is
certainly increased.
 27
Dr. Dempster: And probably even in cases of
bipolar and schizophrenia. You’ve seen some
improvements with that, as well.
Julie: Absolutely! Any mental wellness, any
diagnosis that someone gets that is in the mental
realm, know that it can be assisted with nutrition. I
feel it’s so important because our neurochemistry
is so critically linked to the nutrients that we need
to make our dopamine, our serotonin. Therefore,
how could we not look back to what’s missing and
supply the body what it needs to repair itself?
Dr. Dempster: And you mentioned a very
important thing is nutrients are the building
blocks for our hormones and for our
neurotransmitters. And this is something we do
with every one of our patients is we make sure we
measure, find out what nutrients they are missing.
And I know you want to speak about some very
specific ones.
Julie: Yes!
Dr. Dempster: So the floor is yours, Julie. Let’s
hear about some of these magic nutrients and
how it affects mental wellness.
Julie: Well, one of the biggest ones that’s huge
nowadays is a deficiency of omega-3. I think it’s
such a crime that children are not able to have
nuts in schools because, of course, children could
die if they have come in contacts with peanuts.
And peanuts are often cross-contaminated
with other nuts. And children have a lot of nut
allergies, as well. So they just banned nuts, which
I understand. But that means that children often
do not get the essential fatty acids they need for
their brain to function.
We absolutely need DHA—docosahexaenoic
acid—for a child’s brain to work correctly. Yet,
oftentimes, we have 25 times the amount of
omega-6 to that critical omega-3. So we’ll have a
The Mental Wellness Connection
25:1 ratio. And if we look back to the Paleolithic
period, we see that we had incredible balance
of the essential fatty acids. We saw a balance
as much as 1:1 omega-6 to omega-3. Really,
you’re fine as long as you’re getting even 4 parts
omega-6 to 1 part omega-3. But when it grossly
goes to 25 times…
And we’re getting these omega-6s from a lot of
the soy oil, the canola oil. So soy, corn, and then
the canola and the cottonseed oil, these are
genetically modified oils that are so present in
everyday foods that poor kids who are eating,
anything from a Pop Tart to a potato chip or just
being inundated with these negative omega-6s. So
we’ve got to really put in the omega-3.
And it’s so important for depression. There’s
a wonderful story just on at the end of 2014
showing how people who have inflammation
saw a dramatic reduction in depression when
they upped their omega-3s. And we’re talking
serious omega-3s. I would really love people to
focus on fish oil because it’s pre-converted to its
anti-inflammatory type of omega-3 called EPA,
otherwise known as eicosapentaenoic acid. You
require EPA in very high amounts to reduce the
brain inflammation. So if we really reach for fish
and fish oil, we’re really going to help a lot of
people.
It’s been proven with children with ADHD and
adults with ADHD that you may be lacking a
critical enzyme in your body called delta-d-
desaturase. And delta-d-desaturase helps you
make your plant fat omega-3 into the painkiller
and the antidepressant form of the omega-3
called EPA. So if you’re missing this critical enzyme
step, you’re not going to be able to make your
really happy hormones the way you really need
to. And you’re not going to be able to have the
focus in school that you really need to.
So if you’re missing this critical enzyme…And

that’s really cool that you guys can actually
measure that. You can actually measure delta-
d-desaturase. We really want to make sure that
a person has the pre-converted form. So please
consider if you don’t like fish, at least having
things like LG oil. There’s a great product called
NutraVege, which gives you the preconverted
vegetarian form if you don’t like to eat fish.
But fish oil, good quality small fish. So I like to
avoid krill, because we’ve got 80 percent depleted
krill stocks at the moment, but focusing on
sardines and anchovies, little fish that allow us to
really get that deep amounts of the EPA and DHA
to make our brain light up like a Christmas tree.
Dr. Dempster: Wow! It’s very powerful. And thank
you. I think a lot of times people are looking at
vegetarian sources of omega-3s as the equivalent
to fish oil sources. What’s your thoughts there?
Are they the same thing?
Julie: Well, the problem with flax oil is there’s
less than a 5 percent conversion from ALA—
the plant source—into EPA and DHA so very
poor conversion. And the reason why is know
that this critical enzyme to convert it—delta-d-
desaturase—is actually shared with the omega-6
pathway.
So if you’re eating too many omega-6s, you’re not
actually able to get enough of the ALA converted
into EPA and DHA. Then we also have one other
major thing. Delta-d-desaturase requires a lot
of vitamin Bs, especially vitamin B6. And we also
have to have magnesium, iron, and zinc.
Well, that’s where all the deficiencies are. So if
a woman’s low in iron because she’s got these
heavy, heavy periods or if a man’s low in zinc
because he loses zinc when he has a good time,
we’re really not going to be able to convert our
omega-3s properly. So please keep that in mind.
And especially if you have an inflammatory
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28
condition already, you’re going to really be
taxing that delta-d- desaturase. And I really want
everyone to consider a strong omega-3 source
and get enough.
Because did you know that Canada has just finally
increased the allowable suggested amount of
omega-3. It used to be a piddly 2,000 milligrams
a day. And now they’ve recently saw so much
good data that we want to bump it up to 5,000
milligrams a day.
So the average adult, a sweet dose for really
reduction of depression is sitting around 3,000
milligrams of combined EPA and DHA. That’s not
total fish oil because that’s where a lot of people
get confused. They take just 3 tablets of fish oil,
thinking that’s enough. But you’ve got to read
the label and make you’ve got enough combined
EPA/DHA to equal a real life-changing dose of
something that’s going to make a difference for
you.
Dr. Dempster: There’s a big difference between
recommended daily amounts and a therapeutic
dose.
Julie: Yes!
Dr. Dempster: That’s what you were thinking to.
And it’s often the analogy I give my patients is, “If
you show up to a forest fire, do you take a water
gun?” [Both laugh] That’s not going to happen.
Julie: That’s a good one! That’s a good one! I also
really love that both you and Bryce are big fans of
checking people’s omega-3 ratio. Like, “How are
you doing?” It’s one thing to have omega-3s going
into you. But what’s happening on a cellular level?
And I love that the new blood work will actually
show us omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, which is so
important so that we can get that visual
feedback and become dedicated to looking for
omega-3 sources. And not to say that fish oil’s

the only place to get it. There’s some beautiful
sources. So just know that all of the omega-3
foods will be mood-boosting.
So I’d love people to focus on really great seeds
that…The hemp hearts are a great choice. Sacha
inchi seeds are really popular from Latin America.
We’re going to see perilla from Japan—that’s one
of the greatest sources of omega- 3—the camelina
oil from the Prairies of Canada, flax and chia.
These are so exciting that we have a plethora of
vegetarian sources. But we do want to make sure
if you have any of these depressive or attention
span problems, that we focus in on the high-
quality pre-converted forms of the fish oil or the
algae oil
Dr. Dempster: And to your point about the
balance between the omega-6s and the omega-3s
and being such skewed, I find it very interesting
that we’ve got so many 6’s in the Standard
American Diet. And the acronym is SAD. So it’s…
Julie: I love that! Yeah. It’s crazy that everyone is
just surviving versus thriving. Isn’t it absolutely
bizarre that 1 in 4 people will suffer from a
depressive episode in their lifetime? That’s a really
scary ratio of people.
And now the medical world will say 7 percent.
But when we look at parents who are watching
ADHD symptoms in their child that’s as high as
9.5 percent of parents report ADHD in their own
children, so that’s really scary statistics. One in
10 and 1 in 4, that means that we all need to
seriously look at food as a way to help soothe,
to help heal because it comes with side benefits.
That’s what I love about it.
Dr. Demster: Not side effects, side benefits.
Julie: Yeah, there’s no side effects. Unfortunately,
there’s a lot of side effects with Ritalin that we
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29
choose not to talk about. Let’s just be really
factual that Ritalin is speed that’s legalized for
children because it works to speed up the brain
until it crashes. And I can’t believe that that’s
okay. And children who take Ritalin often as teens
are so addicted to Ritalin that they have a real
connection with other real serious substances. So
that’s one thing we want to watch is do we need
all these kids on Ritalin when there’s so many
amazing healthy options to help them calm down
and focus.
Dr. Dempster: Yeah. And that’s awesome. One
of the sad things that I see is patients will come in
initially and they will be told by other practitioners
in their life that, “Oh, don’t take any supplements.
There’s no science behind it. There’s no studies
behind it.” And I see you’re rolling your eyes there.
Well, I’ll tell you right now—and I know you’re
in agreement with me—there’s no drug on the
planet that has had as many studies done on it
than fish oil.
Julie: Yeah! Absolutely! There’s over 10,000
published studies on fish oil. Whenever anyone
comes back to me and says, “Oh, but I heard
this one study…” please know that in the media,
they give major air play to any study that shows
omega-3 is problematic because there’s such a
huge pile of evidence that it’s amazing for you,
that they look for the outlier and give it real
attention. “Oh, look there’s new information that’s
showing omega-3 may be problematic.” And I’m,
“Okay, it’s such an outlier.” And when I go and look
at those studies, they’re very poorly constructed.
So I want people to really look at large bodies of
evidence where we see…Like The Nurse’s Study
is a great example. I love seeing any data mined
from there because we see its 65,000 people,
right.
Dr. Dempster: Right. It’s massive.
 30
Julie: So when I talk to the ADHD study, I love
when I see a sample size of 1,000 children. That’s
when I get really excited.
So I just wanted to share another big topic that’s
near and dear to my heart, which is the avoidance
of pesticides for children with ADHD. And
certainly, we can extrapolate out that if it’s causing
problems in ADHD, know that when a person has
ADHD, they have often depression later in life.
There’s a real link there. So we do have to look at
whether there’s a real linking factor.
So with pesticides, pesticides actually interrupt
our acetylcholine. And acetylcholine is a critical
neurotransmitter for us to be able to think clearly.
So it’s no surprise that they did a large study on
1,100 children. And this was a great study. It’s
done through Harvard University and University
of Montreal. So it was an awesome merge.
And this was just so powerful to see how children
who were exposed to pesticides had a 35 percent
increase in ADHD symptoms. And if their urine
was measuring high in pesticides, that’s when
they saw a serious spike in their ADHD. But get
this, those children that were measuring high
for pesticides, they could get their pesticide’s
exposure down substantially by switching to an
organic diet for only 5 days.
Dr. Dempster: That’s it?
Julie: Five days. They could see the plummeting
level of organophosphate pesticides. So this is
things like Roundup that is sprayed on so many
different crops right now. And it makes me so
upset because we know it’s a hormone disrupter.
So we know it’s going to potentially impact
depression in a way that it can totally throw
off a woman’s estrogen to progesterone ratio,
which we know can be problematic. But it’s also
absolutely horrific for a child’s brain.
So we want to really remove pesticides.
The Mental Wellness Connection
And if you can’t afford to get rid of pesticides, I
totally understand that not everyone can afford
organic food. Please check out EWG.org, the
Environmental Working Group, because they have
an incredible list of the clean foods. The Clean 15,
they call it. The foods that are low in pesticides
and then the Dirty Dozen. And what tops the list
for the Dirty Dozen every year are the foods that
are very fragile. The foods like strawberries that
we have to spray and spray and spray…
Dr. Dempster: Yeah, it’s crazy.
Julie: because they’re so fragile, they’re going to
be eaten by pests. So definitely move towards
things that are rustic that you can peel to get
rid of the pesticides. For instance, things like
avocados or a pineapple. Because we peel off
such a large amount of it, inside is actually quite
low in pesticides. So it’s good to know that there is
a healthy food supply for every budget.
Absolutely.
Dr. Dempster: That’s great advice, Julie. And I
know actually the organic prices are collectively
coming down.
Julie: Yes!
Dr. Dempster: And also as the demand goes up,
too. So this is good.
Julie: I wrote a great article on my website about
how to afford healthy living because I really feel
for people. I’m actually writing an ebook right now
on the anti-inflammatory diet done on a budget.
So it will be meals that heal on a budget because I
think it’s so important for us to solve this obstacle
because that’s what people always say to me,
“I can’t afford to eat healthy.” And I’m, “Did you
know I actually did this really cool study. And I’d
love to show you the photos so you could maybe
use it.”

Because I did up a Happy Meal that’s truly happy
where I had healthy beef and really delicious
organic bun and really nice home cut fries and a
stevia lemonade. And that cost me about $4.80
cents to make. And then I went to McDonalds.
And I bought myself a—didn’t need it—but I
bought a Happy Meal. And that was close to
$5.00. So I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt,
that you can actually eat the equivalent if you’re
willing to make it for yourself.
Dr. Dempster: Now, that’s huge because that
is one of the biggest obstacles and one of the
easiest ways to get out of trying to get healthy,
too, is to say you can’t afford it. And you know
what? At the end of the day, there’s no free
lunch, right. We do have to take care of…
Julie: Pay me now or pay me later. It’s very, very
expensive to be ill. For sure. So I do hope that we
can share some delicious ingredients that are also
affordable I this talk. For sure.
Dr. Dempster: Well, absolutely. And I know you’ve
got a special ebook that you wanted to share later.
Julie: Yeah, I can’t wait. I just want to invite
everyone to take advantage of a mini ebook that
actually has the entire anti-inflammatory chart
that we’re going to talk about today so that you
can go shopping with that. It’s got a beautiful
pyramid that you can post on your fridge so
that you can really, at a glance, know how many
portions of the different food groups you want to
eat to have your brain healed.
Dr. Dempster: Thanks, Julie. That’s very generous
of you.
Julie: My pleasure.
Dr. Dempster: The next side of inflammation.
We’ve got a couple of other things I really want to
hit on today. One is sugar. What does sugar do to
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31
our brains? What does it do to our mood? What
does it do to our attention?
Julie: Yeah, I’d say one of the most inflammatory
things ever! Absolutely. So refined sugar spikes
our insulin really dramatically. And the problem
with very high insulin levels, know that that
actually crashes our serotonin. So if you eat a lot
of sugary foods, you feel good in the moment.
You get that dopamine lift immediately.
But the problem is that you have the insulin
spiking so high that it will cause your serotonin to
go low. So that’s what I really noticed. And still to
this day, know that I have an ability to focus for
8 hours solid, writing books and giving lectures.
And I’m totally focused. Give me white sugar and
watch out! I’m a completely different person. So
I’ve really learned that sugar is my poison for my
mind.
And I really want to encourage anyone who’s
suffering from depression, if you have an
addiction to sugar—because it’s very common—
to really get into counseling for that. Know that
I’m actually certifying right now as an eating
psychology coach just to help people with the
food addiction side because people really struggle
to let go off that connection to sugar.
But I really say that other sweeteners can be
incredibly nourishing for the mind. So I’m not
saying you have to go without sugar. I’m just
saying that I really encourage you to get off of
white refined sugar and artificial sweeteners.
Artificial sweeteners make you go on a calorie
hunt. Your insulin spikes, lowers your blood sugar.
And then your body goes, “Oh, my gosh! I’m in
such low blood sugar. I need calories now!”
And you end up craving more bread and more
starchy things. And people don’t realize that every
piece of bread is 2 teaspoons of white sugar.
It’s 95 on the glycemic index. It’s like a French

baguette. It’s so high on the glycemic index that it
spikes your blood sugar more than anything else
you can possibly handle. So if you want to really
watch any insulin spikes, both for ADHD and for
depression, these are 2 critical areas that we’ve
got to keep our blood sugar nice and balanced.
So really the reason why sugar is so dangerous
to inflammation is that it can actually cause
something called advanced glycation end-
products. And that’s where if sugar is constantly
trying to get into the cell and you require too
much insulin over and over again, the insulin
receptors become unresponsive on every cell of
your body. So you’re not able to get the sugar into
the cell. And that’s where we end up with heavy
advanced glycation end-products. And that can
cause serious inflammation from head to toe.
There’s a wonderful study with Dr. Lustig out of
California that measured healthy college students
drinking sugary beverages. And it turned out after
6 teaspoons of sugar for girls and 8 teaspoons of
sugar for guys, inflammation markers climbed.
The average American is having a shocking 35
teaspoons of white sugar and other serious
sweeteners like corn syrup every single day.
So you only get 6 and 8, and boom, you’ve got
inflammation.
So please definitely move away from that. And
let’s substitute. Let’s find you other sweets. My
favorite probably being date is one of my favorites
because it’s only 35 on the glycemic index. It’s
rich in a lot of vitamin Bs that nourish the brain
and very high in fiber, which is going to buffer the
sugars so it trickles into your body slowly.
Dr. Dempster: Well, this is huge because I know
we always giggle and laugh at sugar. It’s a sweet
thing. And it’s not an innocent thing. And it’s
not something that we should take for granted
because it is actually 10 times more addictive than
some of the street drugs that are out there right
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32
now.
Julie: Yeah!
Dr. Dempster: And so when somebody comes to
me and they say they’ve got a problem with sugar,
we don’t just say, “Okay. Yeah, well, just ditch it
and tough it out, will ya!” We really have to bring
in the psychological component. And we have to
bring in the nutritional deficiencies. And we have
to treat that person as a whole to really help them
with that very real addiction.
Julie: Yes. Very real. And I love the fact that you
are able to help them from when they first walk
in the door and measuring to see a difference
because that’s one thing I love with my clients is
there’s a really powerful inflammation marker
called C-reactive protein. And I just want to
mention that Duke University did a study showing
that C-reactive protein is much higher in all people
that suffer from depression.
So I really think that having a CRP test done as
they come in to see you is so lovely because
everyone comes to see me, they start out with a
high CRP. And over 3 months of being on the anti-
inflammatory foods, I see a drop in their CRP. And
I’m able to just be so thrilled for them because
their pain in the joints is down. They’re moods are
better. Their gut has improved. Their digestion
has improved. And we see it in their blood work.
And that’s what makes people feel like they want
to stay on it for a lifetime. I like to call it the live
it. The anti-inflammatory live it versus the anti-
inflammatory diet.
Dr. Dempster: Okay. Good. That’s awesome.
Now, do fruits count as sugar?
Julie: Well, fruits do contain sugar. But know that
it is a less impactful sugar. And certain fruits are
very, very low on what we call that glycemic index.
The glycemic index was actually developed right

here in Toronto. And now it’s worldwide. It’s a
beautiful scale that measures your blood sugar.
Any food—they give you 50 grams of a certain
food. And they measure how fast that food affects
your personal blood sugar. And 100 is measured
as pure glucose. And zero is water. And every
food is measured between these 2 points how
close is it to glucose. So when we eat a baguette,
it’s 95 out of 100. That’s crazy! But when we eat
say blueberries, it’s only 25. So you can have
sweetness on the tongue, but actually have very
low impact to your personal blood sugar.
And that’s why I really want everyone to lean
heavily into fruit, especially the northern fruit
because it’s very low in sugar. So sour apples,
which are really native to here, lots of the
beautiful plums, and gorgeous amounts of
berries, whether it’s the blackberries or the
raspberries, they’re all rich in beautiful nutrients
that actually reduce brain inflammation. And
scientifically proven to reduce your cortisol
because let’s face it, there’s such a link between
anxiety and depression, that if we can get foods
into us that reduce cortisol, we feel so much
better. Absolutely.
Dr. Dempster: Now, what about fruit juice?
Julie: Ah! Ugh! Yes. Being a nutritionist, we have to
mass memorize all the caloric and all of the carbs
and everything. And so I can’t believe that a glass
of orange juice has 55 grams of sugar in it. So
we don’t just look at the glycemic index. We also
want to look at the glycemic load. And that’s how
many serious carb calories are going on in a food.
So that’s the only trouble with fruit juice. So I
never ever drink fruit juice straight. I find it very
deranging for my blood sugar.
th
I really like to do 1/8 juice. So I put about 1
ounce of juice for 8 ounces of water. And then
it’s delicious. It’s so good. And if you’re having an
ice down, you just feel like, “Whoa! This is such
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33
a nice amount of fruit.” But you’re not blowing
your blood sugar away because you’ve got to
remember, there’s 4 or 5 pieces of fruit in every
cup of juice. So it’s so intense that we want to go
back to having all the fiber and eating it blended
into a smoothie or having it whole. It’s really
important.
Dr. Dempster: Well, thank you. That’s powerful
information. Another side of inflammation
when it comes to food are allergies, sensitivities,
intolerances. What’s the difference between the
three?
Julie: Yes. So the serious issue with food allergy
is very well known. And allergists will often
administer a scratch test where you’re able to
see whether you have an inflammation response
on your skin. The only trouble with that is not
everyone responds with their allergies just
specifically in this sort of test.
So I prefer doing a blood work to check allergies.
I really like checking your IgE antibodies to see if
you have an allergy.
But then moving on, there’s also food
intolerances. And food intolerances sadly have
2 definitions. So it can confuse people. The first
definition is if you lack the ability to break that
food down. Let me give you a great example.
Lactose. So lactose is broken down with an
enzyme called lactase. And if you’re missing
lactase because you’ve been exposed to heavy
antibiotics or you genetically have a poor ability
to digest it in the first place, then you may not
be able to break that lactose into its 2 sugars—
galactose and glucose. And if you can’t break that
down, you have major digestive problems, a lot of
excess mucus. You have digestive pain, bloating,
and gas. And all the microbes in
your gut gobble up all that undigested lactose.
So you really end up with culprits there. But that
 34
is well known, as well. What is lesser known and
why I find it’s so important to see a naturopathic
doctor is because real MDs have gotten behind
the actual food intolerances that are caused by
IgG antibodies. So IgG antibodies are very subtle.
You can actually a feeling of allergic reaction up to
72 hours after the initial impact.
And that’s really problematic because how do you
do a food journal for a person who’s reacting to
chocolate the next day? Because I find that I don’t
have any problem with sugar in the moment. I
feel amazing on sugar in the moment. But watch
out, I’m going to turn into PMSy the next day if I
eat something that I’m allergic to.
So I just want everyone to keep in mind that
IgG really have some great messages. And it’s
wonderful that I know you do IgG and IgE testing
in your clinic for people. That’s so important.
Dr. Dempster: And we also must pay attention to
IgA and IgM. And these are other antibodies, as
well.
Julie: Yeah, that’s amazing because very few
people go beyond the IgG and IgE. So that’s
incredible! What I love about your work is every
time I connect with you, you’re on the breaking
edge of the latest, coolest advances. You’re real
focused on epigenetics. And I’m just so excited to
be here. That’s one of the big reasons I wanted to
be a part of this.
Dr. Dempster: Thanks, Julie. Yes, it’s our passion
over here.
Julie: Definitely.
Dr. Dempster: Science is evolving fast.
Julie: It is.
Dr. Dempster: So we have to keep up with it. And
The Mental Wellness Connection
that’s why I’m glad that you’re so well versed on
the studies because I think just recently we saw a
study come out. What was it? CAM-H…
Julie: Yes!
Dr. Dempster: that put the study out that
depression was linked to a 30 percent…I’ll let you
speak to it. You go for it.
Julie: CAM-H did a very powerful study using
PET scans that showed that people who were
depressed had 30 percent greater incidence of
inflammation. And that really clinched it for me
because Duke University had already spoken to
C-reactive protein being elevated, but now seeing
on a PET scan that there was a co-relationship
with inflammation…
Dr. Dempster: Which is an image, which you can
actually visually see.
Julie: You can visually make the connection.
There’s really a very solid piece of evidence there
saying let’s get on the anti-inflammatory foods
because if we can naturally reduce inflammation,
then we can really help people recover faster.
Dr. Dempster: Great. When you have
somebody that comes to you with, for example,
schizophrenia or anxiety, bipolar, whatever the
label? Depression, ADDH, GHD, whatever the
label they’ve been given? What are some of the
top anti-inflammatory foods? I know sugar, we’ve
talked about. What are some of the other top
foods?
Julie: Yeah, the big thing is substituting their
favorites because a lot of people have food
addiction when they’re dealing with their
neurochemistry being off. They’re often really
running after the next reward. So that’s a real
thing. If they have other low dopamine or their
dopamine receptors are not working correctly,

we really have to help them feel satisfied and
happy within a contrast of something that tastes
absolutely fantastic. So you’ve got to really
have it be healthy and gourmet. They’ve got to go
together. So we work on direct substitution.
So say for gluten because gluten not only is
problematic for a joint pain and gut inflammation,
if you’re allergic to it, it can cause serious
inflammation through your whole body. But we
really see it causing a mood disorder, so really
problematic for depression.
I had one client who is actually suicidal if she
had gluten. It was absolutely shocking to see her
improvement. Now, this was a person who was
a former cocaine addict, and got into treatment,
was able to powerfully resolve a lot of her food
addiction by using direct substitution. And it was
just amazing to see her blossom. Just such a
loving connected happy person.
So I really want to give person hope that is worth
giving a try. I also had recently a child with quite
interesting issues. He had Asperger’s on the
autism spectrum and taking gluten out of the
equation, but also then going further because
he found that he was not able to break down
disaccharides. So his microvilli were so damaged
that he wasn’t able to break down disaccharides.
So by removing a lot of grains and legumes from
his diet, wow just magical how we saw such an
incredible connection point. This is a kid who
couldn’t meet your eyes, would bounce up and
down, would have incredible sadness and worry.
And now beaming, eye connection, more verbal.
Just so beautiful to see. So it’s absolutely worth
trying that out.
And that’s really checking out the carbohydrates-
specific diet, which is something that I’m very well
versed in. Really focusing actually on repairing the
gut lining using things like bone broth because
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bone broth actually has such amazing amounts
of nutrition. We’ve got gelatin, which is providing
a ton of collagen. We’ve got a beautiful amount of
minerals.
Because any time I dip into the research, we see
greater incidences of depression and ADHD if a
child is low in magnesium. What is better than
taking a bone, putting some apple cider vinegar
on it so that the bone is actually dissolved into the
liquid and pulling out all that nutrition for 24 solid
hours?
So a big part of my job because you’re the
naturopath, you have all the understanding
of the blood work and the connection of the
medical model. That’s what’s so amazing about
naturopathic doctors is they bridge the gap
between the natural world and the medical
world. As a nutritionist I pick up— because you’re
so busy—I pick up and make sure that you can
integrate those changes. So if you prescribe the
anti-inflammatory diet, then I know how to help
people substitute out those foods.
So I have a very powerful list of direct
substitutions. I’ve actually memorized all of the
foods and even gone and looked for the links
that people can go find them and make sure that
they have access to these things even if they live
in remote places. That’s why I love doing Skype
consultations so that I can help people get these
foods into them. So we want to remove a lot
of the gluten, the sugars, and move into tasty
choices.
I’ve got a great example, Slimming Meals that
Heal, provides a life-changing loaf. And I call it life
changing because you feel so satisfied. It’s elven
bread from Lord of the Rings. You eat a piece and
you’re actually satisfied because there’s so many
fiber.
Dr. Dempster: You mean it actually tastes good,

healthy food?
Julie: It tastes amazing! I think it tastes amazing.
It’s more of a loaf than a bread. But it tastes so,
so satisfying. And it’s full of flax seed, which really
buffers your personal blood sugar. So you’re
going to find this absolutely delicious. And it
makes a great vehicle.
Because let’s face it, what is bread? It’s a vehicle
for the tasty stuff we put on top of it. So if we
can give you something that doesn’t have any of
the negative gluten and then we can put some
delicious seed butter on there like a pumpkin
seed butter and really make sure that it’s delicious
and tasty, then kids feel like they can fit in in
school and still have amazing nutrition.
Dr. Dempster: That’s so powerful because we get
so caught up with foods that need to taste good.
And we associate foods that don’t taste good
as being unhealthy for us. So how can we have
healthy good tasting foods? And it sounds like
you’ve got lots of options in your book there.
Julie: Definitely!
Dr. Dempster: I got a question for you. Now,
we’ve heard lots of good things tonight. But if
you had to do 1 thing, maybe 2, what’s the most
important first step to help reducing inflammation
to help with your mental wellness?
Julie: Well, the number 1 thing I would say is
instead of taking things out and feeling like you’re
being punished, can you start by putting the good
in so that you have enough energy to take it to
the next level. So while we’re prepping someone
for the elimination plan, which is a very important
part of figuring what you really need to heal, we
want to start that person with direct substitution
and buffering them and giving them lots of
deliciousness so that they never feel deprived.
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36
I hate food prison. Know that I was living in food
prison for many years. And I couldn’t wait to bust
out of it. And so I would come off of such a rigid
ADHD plan. And I would binge eat like anything!
I remember sitting down to buckets of popcorn
and caramel corn and then move on to buckets of
ice cream. I completely understand the binge. So I
want to really help people get their psychological
connection to food sorted and give them delicious
things.
I have this outrageous key lime pie that’s actually
made from avocados. And avocados are one
of the most nourishing antidepressant foods
in the world. It’s so good for you. Between its
incredible amounts of vitamin B6, which is critical
for so many, between our neurotransmitters and
very, very important for hormonal balance, our
feminine hormonal balance, it’s also a rich source
of omega-9s and omega-3. And it’s just such an
incredible thing that I would say it’s one of my top
picks. So why don’t I start by putting these foods
in?
Once I change the belief that eating healthy is
actually difficult, the number one thing I hear
from clients I first start working with, “Eating
healthy is hard and eating healthy is boring or
eating healthy is gross.” And I’m here to say,
“Guys, I actually have 4 times the cool variety.
I globetrot. I’m eating from Ethiopia. I’m eating
from Japan. I’m eating from Thailand.” So you
can’t call my diet boring because it’s pulling from
everywhere in the whole planet. It’s so amazing.
And it tastes incredible! Because what’s one of
the most incredibly nourishing things—the anti-
inflammatory spices.
So if I can get lots of cinnamon into you, if I
can get lots of incredible basil and cilantro and
turmeric and cumin and amazingness of ginger
into you, we’re pulling down your inflammation.
We’re resolving inflammation on a gut level.
And that’s going to translate to a better brain.

So please believe that healthy eating can taste
absolutely incredible. That it can taste better than
the junky junk food.
Dr. Dempster: I think you just shattered that
myth. So well done!
Julie: Okay. Cool. Absolutely.
Dr. Dempster: Well, thanks, Julie. This has been
a real powerhouse of information tonight. Now,
listen if we want to get some more information
about your books—I know we’re going to put that
up on your site or below your talk here on the
website for the Mental Wellness Summit—but in
the meantime also, where can we get some more
information about you?
Julie: Well, I absolutely love sharing on social
media every single day. Every single day, I post
1 to 2 recipes on Instagram because I’m in the
kitchen constantly. So please check out my
Instagram handle, which is just my name @
JulieDaniluk. It’s also on Twitter @JulieDaniluk.
My Facebook feed is JulieDanilukNutrition. And I
really recommend that you go get that free anti-
inflammatory mini ebook on how to start the anti-
inflammatory foods to help you feel better today.
And that’s at JulieDaniluk.com. So definitely go to
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37
JulieDaniluk.com and just download that.
I can’t believe how much new cool stuff is
happening every single day. I’m developing a
stress busting workshop that is really science-
based to show people how we can use yoga
and anti-inflammatory foods to bring down the
cortisol and boost up our moods naturally. And
that’s my next big thing.
That’s coming up in May. So I’m really looking
forward to seeing how we’re going to bring all this
forward.
Dr. Dempster: Well, congratulations. And thank
you for everything that you do.
Julie: Thanks.
Dr. Dempster: And thank you again for joining us
today on the Mental Wellness Summit, Julie!
Julie: It’s been such an honor. Thank you! I
appreciate it!
Dr. Dempster: You’re very welcome! And we’ll talk
soon. Okay?
Julie: Great. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you.
Dr. Dempster: Bye!