Summary: 

Dr. Jeff Crippen shares his journey of overcoming migraines. He discusses how he started experiencing headaches at a young age and how traditional medical treatments were ineffective. This led him to explore alternative approaches, including nutrition and chiropractic care. He emphasizes the importance of biochemical individuality, a concept proposed by Roger Williams, which suggests that nutritional needs vary significantly from person to person. Dr. Crippen believes that understanding this concept is crucial for addressing health issues like migraines. He shares his own experiences with migraines and how he found relief through a combination of dietary changes and chiropractic adjustments. He encourages listeners to explore alternative approaches to healthcare and to seek out practitioners who understand the importance of biochemical individuality.

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Transcription:

Megan Lyons: There we go. Thank you so much, Dr. Jeff Crippen, for coming on Wellness Your Way. I am very excited to have you here today.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Awesome. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here with you, Megan, and with your audience, of course.

Megan Lyons: Well, I’ve read your very impressive bio to the audience, but why don’t you just tell us in your words how you got into this line of work and what brought you here.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Great. Yeah, I’m happy to do that. And I got here probably like many people get into health, which is through an old, through a personal struggle with it. Like, I grew up dreaming of being an astronaut or a sports star. And anyway, the sports star never found out. The astronaut still seems like fun. But how I got into this was started at 6 years old. I started to get headaches. And they started as just an occasional headache every once in a while, and then they started to get worse and then they started to get worse. And, you know, parents did what they need to do, which is start with, you know, Children’s Motrin and Children’s Advent, children’s Tylenol after trying to sleep it off or just see if Jeffrey will be better in the morning. And eventually the headaches continue to get worse. So went to a pediatrician. Eventually they started prescribing some prescription medications, probably when I was 7 or 8 years old. And the headaches continue to get worse. And then at this point, like progressively worsening headaches that don’t respond to traditional pain relievers are a red flag symptom, especially in a child. You’re looking at something bad, like a brain infection, like a space occupying lesion, think cyst, tumor, cancer, the brain. So they sent, sent me for a CT scan, found something in my brain, did an MRI to see what that mass was in my brain. Turned out to be a benign arachnoid cyst. So just a benign cyst in my brain. About the size of the dime. About the size of a dime. And remember sitting down with the neurosurgeon and he said, well, you know, we, here’s what we found, here’s what’s going on there. This could be the cause of your headaches and we’re not going to do brain surgery. And I remember my feeling at that moment, which was disappointment. Like I was so set, so ingrained at that point in my life in the medical system, which you go to a doctor and you take a drug and you take another drug till you get it fixed. And if that doesn’t work, then you do surgery. And at this point I’m three years into the journey, and someone finally told me for the first time here we have. We know what the problem is. They can point to it on this, you know, early MRI machine from 25 years ago and say, that’s the issue. And then they said they’re not going to do anything about it. So it’s almost crushed. I mean, even at a young age, it was like, so we did all this work, we’ve gone to all these doctors, we’ve tried all these things, and now we’re back to the point where we don’t know what to do.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: So, you know, went through the traditional medical system for another half dozen years on that kind of drug kind of approach and kept getting worse and worse. And, you know, I kind of hit a breaking point kind of in my mid teens, which was after having a headache for about two years, nonstop, every moment, every day. And just, you know, got to the point where, you know, I can’t go on living like this, you know, if that’s even really living. So just kind of made a decision, you know, something’s got to change. And it just kind of created an intention to figure it out. And that was kind of the beginning of, you know, understanding this realm of nutrition, food healing for myself at first, and then eventually going to chiropractic school for my patients and working through kind of nutrition as well.

Megan Lyons: Wow, that is incredible. And I do hate that so many fellow practitioners have to go through all the struggle in order to get to the point where we are. So I’m sorry for what sounds like decades of pain, but I’m grateful that you use that to help so many people. Now, I know that the audience would bash me if I did not ask you about the process of migraines. We won’t talk for the whole time about migraines, but I know people are curious. Not everyone who has a migraine has this benign arachnoid cyst. If someone just walked into your clinic and had a migraine, tell me about where you would start. Tell me some common interventions, maybe tell me what you ended up doing. Anything you want about migraines to start us off.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Awesome. Yeah, totally will. And I’m just looking. I was looking back at the email just as we got started. We first connected in May around a concept called biochemical individuality, which is something I sent you and. But the idea. And I’m going to connect it to headache because I think it’s a great segue in. But Biochemical Individuality was a book written by a Gentleman named Roger Williams. He’s a PhD professor at the University of Texas and he invented or founded two B vitamins and I think his brother founded a third. So he was a real leader in the field. And the two. The most important thing he thought needed to be understood about the human body was this concept he called biochemical individuality, which means nutritional needs vary up to a hundred x person to person. So the amount of vitamin C you might need versus I might need versus one of your clients can vary a hundred X, not 10%, not a hundred percent, but a hundred times. And we all somewhat know this. You know, weightlifters need more protein cycling, women need more iron. You know, pregnant women need more of everything. Right. So we all know that on some level, but the scale of it is just really remarkable. And we saw this, you know, a great example was it, or maybe an unfortunate in some ways was with COVID right. We saw loss of taste and smell. And what you see with an acute viral issue is zinc needs can go up as one of the nutrients that can be massively depleted in that, inhibiting viral replication. Also vitamin C. And you can see some others. So this principle, like we first connected over, is, is incredibly important that we are all very unique.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Okay, so now let’s go back to the question of headaches. So un. Unfortunately to. For a sound bite on a podcast, not all headaches are the same. Right. If you have a 13 year old girl who comes in around her cycle with a headache, that’s one thing. If you have a 21 year old at college on a Sunday morning who has a headache, that’s probably something else. If you have an athlete, post, you know, post soccer game, post football with a headache, you got to rule out concussion, right. And there’s a whole bunch of other things. So. And then obviously sinus issues can affect it and you can kind of go through a lot of different pieces. That being said, when somebody’s dealing, I’ll. I’ll give an ex. So those you would treat underlying sinus, underlying hormonal balance. You know, you can look at dehydration, you can look at a whole, whole bunch of different things. High blood pressure, blood sugar. Right. So you, you. So I say that to say we’re looking at the underlying cause of it. Right. That’s really what we have to come out. But I’ll give you some more on that because some of the more difficult headaches to deal with are often migraines. Right. Kind of the traditional migraines that come in either a cluster Pattern or that come with that prodromal period, which is the sensitivity to light, the sensitivity to smell, which basically for a patient means I know this is coming on and this is going to get bad within 30 minutes to two hours. What the heck can I do in patients like that? And we’ve, you know, had a lot of success working with them. You’re typically looking. I’m typically looking at one of four underlying organ systems. So typically thyroid, adrenal heart, or kind of circulation going into the brain. Those are some of the main things we’re working with. And what you’re doing to support that depends a little bit on what’s showing up, what the stressor is and what you can do about it. But I like a lot of nutrient rich foods or supplements made from nutrient rich foods. You know, some a great source of vitamin C is, you know, buckwheat is a phenomenal source. Adrenal glands are our highest animal source of whole food. Vitamin C, which naturally contains copper. They naturally contain the tyrosinase enzyme, which is important for making tyrosine, you know, circulatory. We’re looking at building up the heart, whole food, B vitamin sources, whole food, vitamin C, obviously vitamin E, you know, so you can go through organs and systems to the heart. Thyroid, you’re looking at iodine, zinc, selenium, you know, essential amino acids, sometimes iron, sometimes sodium. And you can kind of build on those pieces from there.

Megan Lyons: But.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: But basically I’m looking systematically at what organs affected, not necessarily using symptoms as a guide, but not necessarily basing it on that and then systematically working through what’s that nutrient deficiency that’s either needed in that area or that’s overly stressed as a result of what’s going on with them. And how can you build that up? And ultimately the way you know you’re on the right track is how quickly those headaches go away and how quickly does the person feel better.

Megan Lyons: Amazing. You gave so much incredible information there. Thank you for that. I want to make sure I have in my mind because I’m going to use this, the four systems. So thyroid, adrenal circulation makes sense. Is heart a separate one from circulation or are those together?

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah. Good. So I kind of think of them as separately. Sometimes I look at like vascular, circulatory versus heart, cardiovascular. So more the cardio or the vascular. I sometimes suffer it out. Are you looking at kind of micro, microcirculation or things that, you know, circulation in general or. You’re looking more at heart actually the pump. So all of it’s generally cardiovascular, but just kind of dividing between the cardio and the vascular pieces of that system.

Megan Lyons: That’s really interesting for me, I definitely think of the vascular side when I’m looking at someone with migraines, but I don’t think I think of the cardio side. Now. A lot of the supportive nutrients that you’re mentioning, and even something like magnesium, which is going to touch so many of those and can be helpful in migraine prevention as well. I can see how that would apply to the cardio. But I like having that extra layer for me to. And for people listening to think through. That’s really incredible.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: And I’m just going to build on that. Let me just build on that real quick, if that’s okay. Because what you’re looking at, often there is a stressor. Sometimes they’re physical stressors. So we’re looking at food allergies with intolerances, underlying infections, maybe a, maybe a hidden infection. Maybe we’re looking at an underlying immune, like immune challenge, chemical toxicity. But also we could be looking at emotional stressors. Right. And I was thinking back as you were giving that answer about your, your recent interview with the cardiologist Alan Rozanski.

Megan Lyons: Yes.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Was that his name? Right. Talking about visualizing the heart and its response to stress.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Just to say that he was looking at specifically the cardio of the cardiovascular. He was looking at changes in the heart in response to stress in addition to the vascular. So you’re right. There’s a ton of overlap between nutrients that support adrenals. You know, whole food, vitamin C, whole food, B vitamins. Right. You certainly can go magnesium, you can look at iron, zinc. Right. You can, you can look at some of those things that also do the heart, that also do the vascular system. So there is some overlap, but systematically I’m thinking through those individually and kind of trying to find what’s the first domino to fall. Because depending on the severity of the headaches, often multiple dominoes have fallen, especially if someone’s been dealing it for a while or long term. We’re trying to find what’s the first domino to fall with the idea that if you can pick up that first domino, sometimes dominoes 2 and 3 can heal on their own. Sometimes they need additional support. But trying to go as close back to that first domino that fell, that you can help the patient get kind of results as quickly as possible.

Megan Lyons: Yeah, I love that. I’m also curious about your approach. Let’s say you’ve mentioned whole foods vitamin C multiple times. I would Say, and this is why I’m asking, you can have a same or different opinion. I would say there’s very little risk, aside from diarrhea, for most people to try a whole foods vitamin C supplement, whether that’s from adrenal organ supplement or other whole foods sources. So as a practitioner, are you thinking, okay, look at their diet, they’re not consuming a ton of vitamin C, let’s just try this? Or are you doing detailed micronutrient testing or both? How do you approach this?

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah, good. So this is like the million dollar question, right? In our field, right? How do you find out what someone needs? And this goes back to that question of biochemical individuality, which is you can look at someone’s diet, right? And two people can have the same diet and one can be massively nutrient depleted because of stress, because of excessive exercise, because of genetics, because of who knows what’s going on. And the other person can seemingly be okay, or have lab work that looks okay, or have energies and symptoms that say, hey, I can’t fully explain why you seem to be doing so good, right? And your sister, your brother, your best friend, your neighbor, whoever seems to be showing all these signs of deficiency disease. So good. So how do we address that? So the way I think of it, like, and when I talk to other doctors, I kind of, you know, my advice to them is, hey, you should probably have one primary method of analysis and then one secondary method analysis to try to back up and kind of catch the blind spots in the first one. Because every method of analysis is great, and every method analysis has kind of some blind spots and kind of kind of melding those two together to get the best holistic picture you can, as cost effectively, efficiently for the patient as you can. So that’s kind of conceptually how I think about it. How it functions in practice in my office is my primary method analysis is something called kinesiology or muscle testing. So what I’m doing is using the muscles of the body not to see how strong someone is, but to find out where there’s energy in the body and where there’s not. And what we’re doing is putting a slight ischemic little bit of pressure over different organ systems and using an indicator muscle to determine strength or weakness, which for most people seems different or out there. But most people who come to me, all of them have been referred and. But most of them who come have either been through frustration with the medical system where it, you know, I’m, I’m sure very similar to your Listeners and your patients where they’ve been through the ringer with the medical system and it hasn’t worked or they’ve just decided, I don’t want to go through that and I want an alternative. So what I tell them is, you know, I’ll look smarter as you get better.

Megan Lyons: Yes.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Kind of as we work through that, as they see the positive changes in their life, that’s what. That’s what we’ll do. So it’s primarily kinesiology and muscle testing. We will do a little bit of, you know, blood work, sometimes a little Harris saliva analysis to kind of back up that occasionally microbiome testing or like a omega 3 index or something like that as kind of ancillary backup test. But primarily it’s muscle testing.

Megan Lyons: Really, really interesting. I am not trained in muscle testing at all. I have no idea how it works. You definitely, if you’re listening, don’t want to come to me for muscle testing. But I think there’s something. I know there’s something because I’ve seen it in myself and so many other people actually work. So I think you, as the practitioner of something that you know and believe in and understand scientifically so much, but that’s not maybe widely accepted for the general public, that’s really hard to hold the key and not be able to have it accepted. And like we were talking about before, I think that’s part of why you wrote this whole book. We’ll get into your book and just sort moment. But your book is an amazing exploration into what’s under the hood, where what people know is there in health and the science behind health, but is just not quite like pop culture health yet. So I’m very excited to dive into this with you.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah. Awesome.

Megan Lyons: Yeah. So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about your book. It’s called Timeless Youth. Y O U dash T H. So timeless, you. Timeless youth. How do you say it? Like, verbally?

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah, I say timeless youth, and it’s obviously a play on words like you, you know, with a little th next to it. Because the most important part of your health is you. You know, as I say in big letters on the back cover, all healing begins with you. So, you know, health is not a destination. It is your natural state. So that’s the main message of the book. You know, what we start is we start with what I call the Titanic problem, which is, you know, the medical system today, which is, you know, when I thought about the medical system, I kept thinking, how is it that we have such incredibly Bright doctors. We have, you know, couple million nurses, right? You have this incredible system with like the amount of technology in something like a cbc, complete blood count and how that can come back in 48 hours and not to mention MRIs and CT scans. And just the amount of technology in the system is amazing. It’s really impressive. And yet. Right. And yet according to Dr. Gary Nall, he did a study, death by medicine a little over a decade ago and it said the traditional medical system is the number one cause of death in, in the country. So heart disease or cancer will kill about 600,000Americans this year, heart disease about a little over 700,000. And medical care of all kinds, including correctly prescribed medications, you know, side effects from drugs, surgical injuries, you know, nosocom infections, which is a nice way to say infections you get from being in a hospital, you know, among other causes that are directly related to medical care, will kill over a million people in the United States this year. So those two things didn’t fit in my mind. How could we have seemingly great intentioned people, very knowledgeable, really impressive technology, and yet an outcome that’s, you know, failing millions upon millions of patients a year. So that’s, you know, so the example I looked at, it’s like the Titanic. The Titanic, of course, as we know, was the biggest and the best and it was called unsinkable. And, and of course through the hubris or ultimately through the, the idea that it was unsinkable caused it to make a variety of errors that first night. And I talk about a few of them in the book. But you know, in the previous 10 years, there hadn’t been a major, major sinking in a transatlantic crossing until the Titanic. And there were other ships that night that slowed down, that avoided the icebergs, and that, that all survived that night except the Titanic. So, so it was that, it was that hubris or that wrong perception, that wrong viewpoint that caused that disaster. And that’s what I think is going on with our medical system is we don’t understand what health is. And like, like I was telling you when we start, if you don’t know where London is, it’s sure hard to get there. And that’s what I wanted to communicate with the book. How do you get to London? What are the underlying principles of health? Because, you know, probably similar to you, you listen to a podcast, you, you interview great guests, you’re constantly doing the research, and then you find this stuff about the magical acai berry that, you know, that comes over from Brazil and it’s a great source of vitamin C and blah, blah, blah. And you go through all this stuff and, and then there’s other great tools and interventions and there’s phenomenal technology and innovation helping happening in the health space. And I always wonder, okay, great. And what’s the underlying principle that makes that true? How did this help? How would this have applied to someone a hundred years ago or 500 years ago or a thousand years ago? So what I’m looking for through that is what are the principles and the techniques or the healing interventions or technology, you know, work through one of those principles. So that’s what I was looking for. That’s what I was thinking about. And one of them is something I call the model a principle, which is one size doesn’t fit all. I get into a few things in that chapter, including that concept of biochemical individuality, because one of the things I was looking at is I just wondered how could somebody do so well, you know, on a certain number of supplements? And how could somebody else with similar conditions need 3x the number of supplements, or 3x the liver support, or 10x the cardiovascular support, or 1/4 of the thyroid support as someone else, and do so well? Like what explains that incredible individual variation? So anyway, I traced five principles through that in the attempt to communicate to the reader what they are, how they can use them, how they can apply them, and how they can create the healthier you, the healthiest you they can.

Megan Lyons: I love it. And throughout the book, you have so many great analogies like you just mentioned with the Titanic principle and the Model A. You phrase it in such a way that the audience will really remember maybe not every word you said, but the lesson behind it. So I appreciate that and I’m sure it took a whole lot of time to write, but thank you for doing it in that way.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Oh, you’re welcome. And that’s the fun of talking to patients because, you know, you’ve got your PhD, you’ve got your advanced certifications, you’re constantly reading the technology or the shoot me the science. And then ultimately none of that matters unless you and your team can communicate it to a patient who’s a stressed out mom, got two kids going on, you know, they’re watching the baby monitor while they’re on the phone with you. And they might not understand all of that stuff, but you’ve got to communicate in a way that it works. And so I think that’s what it is to, you know, 14, 15 years of seeing patients, it’s working through that to help how do you help someone understand it as quickly as possible? And, you know, the use of analogies is a great way to do it. And, you know, there’s a guy about a couple thousand years ago who spoke in parables, and that seemed to work out pretty well. You know, that idea of using a story to illustrate a point. And I think that, you know, that’s why we remember concepts and ideas and stories a lot better than we do facts and figures. So I tried to write the book with that in mind to help people be able to take it away and get the most use and value from the book.

Megan Lyons: You absolutely did. And one of those examples was on page 151 of your book. You’re talking about how drugs and doctors and foods and supplements and all of this, they don’t actually heal the body. You have a different take on it, but you have a funny quip that says if you give broccoli to a dead person, it doesn’t really do anything. That made me laugh. I think it’s just a funny example. So tell us more about this.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah, so ultimately there’s. Because there’s, you know, that’s another thing I looked at. There’s incredible modes of healing, right? You can have people who work with acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicines and see incredible benefits from it. Obviously, there’s incredible, you know, the ayurvedic medicine, the traditional medicine of India has, you know, different branches, including movement, including fantastic herbs, including dietary recommendations. You can look at. You can look at nutrition. You can look at nutrition based on food, you can look nutrition based on herbs. You can look at homeopathy, and you can find. Right, I’m a chiropractor, so we can look at it that way. And you can find incredible healing interventions from, you know, massage, physical therapy. I mean, I could go on with the different things, but the question is, how are any of them working? And I think the answer is none of them are working by themselves. Yeah, they’re all working to the extent they increase or tap into our body’s own innate ability to heal. Like, the first. First year of chiropractic school for me was incredibly frustrating because they spent the first year training us to, in my opinion, be a bad medical doctor. We took a lot of classes on diagnosis and disease and pathology, and some of it was useful and some of it was like, you know, the lab test, the D, diagnose myasthenia gravis, which, you know, it. It, you know, useful. And I understand because, you know, we’re primary Care physicians, and we didn’t know some of that stuff. But ultimately, I would rather just take a step outside that disease paradigm and look at the idea from a, you know, look at somebody from a What’s right, you know, rather than what’s wrong and what are the organ systems that need support rather than, you know, what somebody else names it in Latin or Greek, you know, by adding itis at the end of it. So, you know. But one of the most valuable things I took away from chiropractic school was one of our first classes, what was called chiropractic philosophy. And one of the basic ideas is, you know, the power that made the body heals the body, and the body needs no help, just no interference. And that’s kind of the basis of chiropractic. Obviously, chiropractors work a lot through the spine and through optimizing the nervous system to help feed the body or to help feed the. The mental and neurological impulses. Impulses to the body, which is great. And in addition. So once your brain tells your liver what to do, does your liver have the nutrients to need it? Right. So that the chiropractic optimizes the communication lines in the body, but you still need the raw materials in there to build and heal. And I think that’s why, for me, the combination of nutrition or, you know, works so well with that chiropractic to combine to basically unlock the body’s own ability to heal itself. So the purpose of that story was to make you laugh. So I feel wonderful that it. That it did. Yeah. And then more than that, it’s to illustrate the point that we’re luck, that we’re luck. We’re tap. Any healing intervention is working because it’s tapping into the body’s own ability to heal.

Megan Lyons: Yes.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: I tell us story about that later on in the book. But the. The idea behind that is all healing comes from within. And any healing intervention works because it unlocks your own ability to heal.

Megan Lyons: Yes. I love it so much, and I see it time after time after time where I may be working with two different people on the same goal, and no two bodies are the same, but let’s just say their conditions are largely overlapping and one is all in. They’re like, yes, I believe these nutrition interventions are going to work. The supplement, I’m so jazzed about this. And their progress is just like three times as fast as the person who’s dragging their heels and kind of in disbelief. And it’s hard to explain that to someone. But you and I have Seen it over and over and over. And you really elucidate some of the reasons behind that.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah, no, I think that’s, you know, that’s such a good point because we’re getting into that question of what affects healing. And I think there’s this idea, especially in medicine, that all that matters is matter. Right. If you can’t touch it, if you can’t see it, if it doesn’t show up on a lab report, this is the person who walks in the doctor’s office, often a woman, often stressed out, who goes in and they feel tired, they feel fatigued, they feel exhausted, which is probably a huge number of the people you work with. Yes, Right. And the doctor runs some blood work and says, oh, your thyroid’s okay. You’re not anemic, Everything’s fine. They have no idea of reference ranges or they have no idea of the difference between optimal ranges versus reference ranges. They don’t know how to read it. And if they walk out with something, it’s like, well, maybe you should pick up yoga or would you like to look at an antidepressant?

Megan Lyons: Yeah, Right.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: But the person knows something ain’t right.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: And I’m not feeling good. And, you know, a huge part of that is just because it shows up and doesn’t show up in your lab work doesn’t mean everything’s okay. And you need someone who’s competent to understand what the lab work’s, you know, really telling you.

Megan Lyons: Yes.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Because there’s, you know, there’s a lot more to it than that. But that’s that idea that everything that matters is matter or shows up on that versus the opposite idea is, you know, something I call the quantum principle, which is basically an ode or an homage to quantum physics, which basically says, you know, this old idea of the atom that we learned in seventh grade or fifth grade. I promise I won’t get too deep into science, but, you know, your. Your listeners probably like to nerd out with you, so I’m sure it’s okay. But, you know, we have the. We have a nucleus with protons and neutrons, and then you have electrons that kind of circle it. Right. That’s the kind of conventional model. And I tell the story about building one of those in fifth grade. But what I realized is that was based on the old model, the atom, pre quantum physics. Now, you know, if we look at. Not what we know from quantum physics is that if the atom or if the nucleus was the size of, let’s say, a softball, the closest electron would be about four miles away. Which means these atoms that make up our body, they make up our tissues, that make up our cells and make up our organs, are not these little building blocks or Legos that connect to each other, but they’re actually 99.9996 empty percent empty space. Of course, they’re not all empty, they’re actually full, but they’re full of energy. So going back to your question, there’s an incredible amount of healing that you can do by tapping into those energetic levels. And that’s why you and I can have that experience of working with patients who have a positive attitude, who are, you know, might talk about a little more, who are grateful, who are focused, who are optimistic, and you’ll see that show up in their health. You’ll show up in that speed of healing and you’ll show up that in the quality and the vibrancy of the body.

Megan Lyons: Absolutely. Let’s go there a little bit. You have a portion of your book dedicated to building strength. And just on reading that, I was like, oh, he’s going to talk about weightlifting or something like that, which is important for many reasons. But you consider building strength, meditating, praying, gratitude, being part of community, finding purpose, all of this which I love. And I think that inner strength is so powerful. I’d love to just hear some of your thoughts on that.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, you know, I think the body, you know, if you imagine a pond, I think the body is the ripples we see.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: You know, or the water moving, but the cause point is actually the drop that fell into the pond to start that. So I think what we see in the physical starts in the infantry intangible. You know, what we see manifest in the body is actually a result that starts in the spiritual, mental and emotional realm. And we can, you know, we have some. I have some great stories around that and I’ll maybe share a couple, but one piece I’ll share is there was a gentleman, a biophysicist named McLaren out at Oxford University, and he tells that the body is a hundred times more sensitive to non physical stimuli than it is to physical stimuli such as hormones, foods. So one example I like some patients listen to that and they’re like, sometimes, huh? So one example I like to give is like, imagine walking into a party and you see your best friend in the other, on the other side that you didn’t expect to be there. How quickly do you feel that excitement and energy flowing through your body? Really quickly or. Yeah, imagine the other side, you see Someone that you just were trying to avoid, and all of a sudden they were there unexpectedly. And you just get that sinking feeling of the stomach. It happens within milliseconds. And nothing physical has happened at that moment, but the changes, the physiological changes are happening in your body instantaneously. So we use that to say that’s an incredibly powerful thing. 1. Another example I give in the book is they’ve looked at studies of optimists versus pessimists. And optimists tend to live about seven to 15 years longer than pessimists, which is really an incredible thing considering things like balancing your cholesterol. And anyway, that’s a whole another story. But, you know, might. Might add one to three years. You know, healthy blood pressure might add one to three years. You know, not smoking might do something similar as can, you know, wearing a seatbelt. And how many times you go to a doctor and they, you know, they talk, check your blood pressure, they may ask you about wearing a seatbelt, they may check your cholesterol. That happens all the time. But when’s the last time your doctor said, describe your, your mental and emotional state and do you consider yourself an optimist and a pessimist? And what the research tells us is, hey, that’s actually like three to ten times more powerful, you know, than your blood pressure that’s being checked on every moment or checked on every visit almost at every doctor. So it’s kind of a truth that’s hiding in plain sight that, that, you know, that mood level, that mental emotional state, the, the energetic mood that’s vibrator animating the body, is incredibly important and powerful for our health.

Megan Lyons: So incredible. The way that you tell these stories is just really resonant and, and I know reaching a lot on the other side of gratitude and all of the spiritual modalities is stress. Stress is such a big, broad topic. It means a lot of different things. But you make great points about how it’s hard for the body to heal when it’s under excessive stress. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah, the example I give with patients is, you know, you can’t fix a car driving 110 miles an hour on the highway.

Megan Lyons: Yeah, right.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: And that’s often what people are trying to do. And yes, you’ve talked about, you know, the, the dangers of over exercising and the tendency to do that, especially when you’re trying to keep the body in that yin state or healing state. And, you know, when is HIIT training appropriate versus when is it not right? Right. And I think that looks. I think that’s totally, you know, a very important way to look at things. So when I’m looking at stress, you know, one is it’s a very important thing because we talked about what’s manifest in the body starts on that mental, emotional, or spiritual realm. Right. It’s physically manifesting in the body. And, you know, the CDC has their strengths and weaknesses, but they’ll say about 75% of all disease is caused by stress. Medical textbooks will say it’s about 60, 80% of all disease is caused by stress. So one thing as I started learning this is I had to look in the mirror myself and say, okay, so what am I doing as a practitioner to help my patients with that? So one interesting thing and, you know, is, you know, there was a. There was a great study that was really Impactful by Kelly McGonall at Stanford, and she wrote a. Writing a book called the Upside of Stress. But one of the things. Yeah, it’s phenomenal. So one of the things she. She found is she followed 30,000 people for about seven years, and this came out in 98. And what she said with those with the highest levels of stress had an increased rate of death by about 43%, which roughly fits with our conventional idea of stress, which is stress is bad. Right. And that was 43% higher risk of death compared to those with the lowest levels of stress. But what was really interesting and what was unique about her study is she’s. She looked at people who saw. Who had high levels of stress but didn’t necessarily see it as a negative thing. And this will get to your point on. On really having a sense of purpose and cultivating gratitude and some of the meditation and some of those techniques. And what they found is those who had the highest levels of stress but didn’t see it as a negative actually had the lowest rates of death of anyone in the study, including lower than the people with virtually no stress. So what does that tell us? Stress is a matter of perception.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: And all perception starts with you present or not present. Right. Your level of presence is actually the first key driver that determines your perception, which then feeds into stress. So because of that, you know, helping patients understand ways they can reframe life, they can handle it better. Because, you know, I think, you know, you. You asked kind of about type A clients, or when we were emailing back and forth, you kind of gave that example of a type A client. And I actually think there’s a lot of good there. Like, there’s A lot of good. And somebody who’s really striving to be their best, striving to make a big impact to the world, striving to reach more people, striving to help more people. There’s often a really good intention underlying that, and there’s a whole bunch of danger that can come with it. Yeah, right. So what we want and it’s, how can we maximize the positive, the good side of it, and yet not take on all the negative? Because. Excuse me. Because a lot of times with, you know, when we’re striving hard for a goal, the more we push into the positive, the more we push into what we want, the more we’ll run into the negative, the more we’ll run into our fears, the more we’ll run into our anxieties, the more we’ll run into our insecurities, the more we’ll run into our doubts, the more we’ll run into frustrations. Like, this is like, the person you love the most is often the person that upsets you the most.

Megan Lyons: Yep.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Kind of thing. Like, the bigger the positive is, the bigger the negative is. Kind of the duality there. So one of the ways that works is for those of us, those that are watching it like you have, you’re pushing into the positive, and then that’ll push you up against the negative, the fears, the anxieties, the doubts, the uncertainties. And what’ll happen is the harder you push in the positive, the negative will push back, and you basically gotta tug a war with yourself and you’re stuck. So what we need to do is one of two things. One is allow ourselves to experience the negative, to take down the resistance, to feel the sadness, the fear, the doubt, the uncertainty, to process it in whichever way we find is best. And so instead of pushing it and fighting it and using all of our strength and tying up our attention, which does nothing but hold it 2 inches in front of our face, metaphorically, we take that down, allow ourselves to experience the negative, allow it to move through and release. And if we can do that, then I think we can get the benefits of going towards our goals, dreams, and helping people. Whatever that goal is, happens to be for us, whether that’s family related, business related, mission related. Right. You get all the benefit of, hey, I want to do some things in this world. Not. And I’ve got a real sense of purpose. Because, you know, as you look through research and you look through longevity studies, having a clear sense of purpose is an incredibly powerful and valuable attribute towards health. Yet you don’t want to minimize the downside of stress. And that’s kind of the way I think about doing it and then the techniques to do it. Certainly things like daily gratitude process or procedure, certain things like daily meditation or presence exercise. We talk about the power of prayer in the book as well, as well as, you know, cultivating that purpose.

Megan Lyons: Yeah, I love it from a listener perspective, definitely from a personal perspective as well because I am like Type A is just in my nature and I maybe a decade ago, I don’t know, when I kind of confronted myself about it and I was like, this is not something I want to turn off. It’s actually who I am and something I can embrace. I just get to be extra intentional about how I experience that duality that you said. So for me, a daily gratitude, meditation, etc practice is essential. That is like my most important health habit of probably anything I do. And that helps me use the benefits of the Type A without overdoing. Now certainly I’m not perfect, right? Definitely a work in progress. But I appreciate that you, you were able to clarify that so well. I wish I had heard you 10 years ago and not had to solve it myself.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah, well, thank you and well done to you for doing that. And you probably don’t get an Harvard MBA without being somewhat Type A as well. Right. And it’s like, but that, yeah, but that is the idea. I mean, just like, but that’s the idea is that it’s not bad. There’s great qualities in there. And I think that’s, you know, because it’s easy to say Type A is bad, you’re going to have high blood pressure, you’re going to have high cholesterol, you’re going to predispose to stress, you’re going to burn out your body. I mean it’s easy to go through all of that and you know, you’re not, you know, that’s not wrong objectively at least for most people. Right. But I think the next level viewpoint of it is that’s an incredible gift and passion to try to strive for something better. And how can we cultivate that? How can we then nourish it and how can we just kind of strip away some of the limiting precepts and beliefs around it to help you create the best version of yourself, you know, for you or for your listeners with the love and the care and the harmony and the kindness and the support that you want, you know, and I think that’s, you know, an even, an even better way, you know, or an opportunity to look at it in a different way, which I think can have even better consequences, you know, for your listeners and for each of us who have those personality traits. And I can certainly qualify in some of those areas as well.

Megan Lyons: Yeah, amazing. Well, we have literally just covered the tip of. Well maybe not literally, but we have metaphorically just covered the tip of the iceberg to tie back to the Titanic. And there is so, so so much more in the book that I highly recommend the listeners go get. So I’m going to ask you to share all the details about your book, et cetera. But before we do that, are there any other health habits that you personally really love that we have not yet covered?

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Wow. It’s a real open ended one. I think starting the day with a gratitude process just I’ll echo with you that’s something like I don’t feel complete without it and then I end my day kind of with it as well, which is kind of like, you know, set a daily goal for the day. You know, look at what I’m, what am I freely willing to give others today?

Megan Lyons: Yes.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: You know, what am I grateful for? You know, which is often, you know, inanimate objects in my environment. And what am, what do I value that a great. And I’m grateful for that another does for me. So I ask that question and what am I happy about right now? That’s kind of my morning five questions and then in the evening it’s, you know, how did I do on my goal today? And often, you know, my, my thoughts on goal setting is short term goals should be really small in like the sense they should be easily winnable.

Megan Lyons: Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Like I heard a mentor once say that his daily goal was to know more. And if he stepped out of the bed and stubbed his toe and he already hit his goal of knowing more cuz he knew he shouldn’t have put his toe right there at that time. So I think a lot of people set short term goals to big.

Megan Lyons: Yep.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: And long term goals way too small. So short term goals that are winnable. So how’d I do on my goal today? What have I done? Well, increased in value or gotten better at. And then if I were to be happier, what would I be happier about right now? And the idea is connecting myself to the positive, connecting myself to that kind of super conscious mind, really connecting myself to, you know, something larger than myself. Whether that’s you know, God or the universe or you know, angels or teammates around you. But like, or humanity, like you can feel a sense of service and passion to something bigger than yourself. So, you know, probably a lot we could go into, but I’ll just expand on that idea because I think that is, you know, just incredibly important and something that my day, you know, if it gets to be if I have a busy morning or I don’t do it immediately, like if I feel 10am, I’ll feel like something’s not quite right or sometimes I’ll, you know, doing at 6pm or whatever. But, like, I feel something like there’s a glitch in the matrix. If I haven’t quite done that at some point during the day. I just feel it’s very calming, settling and just kind of connects me to, you know, more myself and my purpose. So I think I’ll expand on that. One is maybe one we haven’t touched on yet.

Megan Lyons: Oh, amazing. Well, like I said, I know many people will want to learn more from you via your book and potentially work with you at your clinic. So can you give the listeners all the information on how to find you?

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Yeah, no, that’s great. So the book is called Timeless Youth. As you said, the Five Truths of Transformational Wellness and Holistic Healing came out last year in hardcover, and I’m excited that it came out just this fall in audiobook. So you can find that the print version through, you know, Amazon. Through our website, timelessyouthbook.com, you can actually find it anywhere books are sold. If you have a favorite bookstore, you can get it there, or if they don’t have it, you can ask them to order it. So, and for those of you who maybe listen in English but speak Spanish or would like to give that as a gift, it came out in Spanish. It’s called Tuiterna juventud, the five. You know, same thing. Lo cinco verdades de bienestar y transformacion y sanacion holistica. So you can find that there on Amazon or wherever books are sold.

Megan Lyons: Wow, that’s great. We will include all those links in the show notes. And I very, very much appreciate you reaching out. I’m so glad that we got to do this today. I appreciate all the wisdom and the knowledge that you shared, and thank you again.

Dr. Jeff Crippen: Awesome. Thank you so much.

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