Nutrition and Mental Health with Stephan Neff

In this episode of Overcome, Dr. Stephan Neff shares his journey through trauma, mental health struggles, and the transformative power of functional medicine. He discusses the societal pressures surrounding masculinity, the impact of childhood experiences, and the importance of self-compassion in healing. The conversation delves into the role of nutrition and gut health in mental well-being, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to health. Dr. Neff's insights encourage listeners to confront their past, embrace their vulnerabilities, and take proactive steps toward a healthier future. Travis White and Dr. Stephan Neff delve into the intricate relationship between nutrition, mental health, and personal growth in this conversation. They discuss the importance of a balanced diet, the psychological aspects of eating, and how food can provide comfort. Dr. Neff shares his journey with PTSD and the transformative power of functional medicine. The discussion emphasizes the need for self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the courage to seek help in overcoming mental health challenges. They also explore practical steps for improving one's diet and mental well-being, highlighting the significance of community and support in the healing process.

Please join us on this journey, for this is an episode you don't want to miss.

Learn More About Stephan Neff:

http://neffinspiration.com/

Follow on Instagram: @neffinspiration

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Chapters

• 0:00 Breaking the Taboo: Honest Conversations on Mental Health
• 3:12 Navigating Masculinity: The Pressure on Men Today
• 6:04 From Trauma to Transformation: A Personal Journey
• 12:31 The Illusion of Alcohol: A Double-Edged Sword
• 18:51 Rebuilding After Destruction: The Path to Self-Discovery
• 25:19 The Toxic World: Understanding Modern Health Challenges
• 30:58 Functional Medicine: A Holistic Approach to Health
• 40:39 The Power of Nutrition: Healing from Within
• 48:30 Hope and Change: The Journey to Wellness
• 55:03 The Intersection of Food and Creativity
• 56:52 Psychological Needs and Food Choices
• 1:00:15 Nutritional Insights and Healthy Alternatives
• 1:02:05 Modeling Healthy Eating for Future Generations
• 1:05:32 Transforming Taste Buds and Dietary Habits
• 1:08:11 The Role of Hypnotherapy in Healing
• 1:11:39 Harnessing Trauma as a Superpower
• 1:14:27 Emotional Intelligence and Personal Growth
• 1:18:00 Taking Responsibility for Health Choices
• 1:22:27 The Importance of Professional Guidance
• 1:25:19 Functional Medicine and Holistic Healing
• 1:30:27 Addressing Trauma and Coping Mechanisms
• 1:35:27 Creating a Vision for a Better Life
• 1:40:30 Resources for Personal Transformation

Transcript

Travis White (00:01.447)
Hello and welcome to Overcome, a mental health podcast where you can openly talk about your mental health issues, struggles, I should say. I don't like to call them an issue. I am very excited to have on today's guest, Dr. Stefan Neff. He is a retired anesthesiast and a functional medicine nerd. And I'm just going to, we're just going to jump right in to his story today. And I'm going to turn the time over to him.

Dr. Stephan Neff (00:32.314)
Thank you very much, Travis. It's an honor and it's a privilege to be on your show. Thank you very much for providing such a platform where we can have honest and meaningful discussions about topics that otherwise really are too much still a taboo in our society. Maybe not a conscious taboo where no, we will not talk about it, but rather where there is so much insecurity, shame, guilt and other negative emotions.

linked in our subconscious to whatever has happened. So many BS beliefs that do no longer serve us but that are still riding us like monkeys on our back. So we need these open and honest discussions to bring light to that. Especially we men nowadays, we are so trapped in a world where we are supposed to be everything.

We are supposed to be leaders, but then again, as soon as you are a bit more clear in your leadership, then you're toxic masculine chauvinistic swine. And it is hard. I feel very sorry for my young men, my two sons, which are in their early 20s and the world in which they are living and have grown up.

It is a very confused world. It's a very weird and that's the same probably for the girls as well. Because for the girls, they have to be out there and they have to break the glass ceiling. They have to be excellent lovers and enjoy their life every moment of the day. They have been superb housewives. have to be, you know, everyone has to be superb in every bloody role. And then we have to document it on social media 24 seven. My God, what a life.

And I think these kind of all these, this is all part and parcel of our life, but it's all running subconscious. So we are already living in a world of heightened cortisol, heightened adrenaline, heightened all that. That's really, really hard to actually then step back and say, wow, where is the mass confusion? is, what are these all these negative things in my head? Where are they coming from, et cetera? And then add to that.

Travis White (02:34.012)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (02:53.022)
adverse childhood experiences add to that the trauma, the real trauma that you're encountering. Bloody hell! What's your chance of being anywhere normal, whatever that normal is? So I think if we all agree, okay?

Travis White (02:58.86)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (03:08.058)
Yeah, that's that's that's the question is what is normal

Dr. Stephan Neff (03:12.808)
Exactly. And normal people, they scare me. OK, that is if you have got it all sorted and you know it all, then hang on, there is something seriously wrong. Are you really from this world or? So, I think that the reality is we are all broken. We are all damaged. We all have got things to hide. We are all victims. But it's the question, how do we deal with that? And can you create?

those dark times, can you take them and make them stepping stones for your future? Can you let those difficult times in your life change you, give them the recognition for what they were, not in the sense of, I'm so ashamed of what has happened. Or could you actually say, wow, that has happened to me? And I've responded in this and this way.

rightly or wrongly so, and can I learn from that? And once we adopt this kind of nature, this kind of attitude towards our past and our present, an attitude of radical self-compassion, an attitude of love, then we can learn and we can move on and we can move away from the victim mentality towards a survivor and then later a friver.

mentality. And I think that is something that I'm still doing and I will continue to do so because trauma has got a nasty habit of reoccurring. And maybe in my life I've had far more than I like to wish on my worst enemy. But it is what it is. It is, mean, once upon a time I was 13 and I had a relatively okay childhood prior to that. There was with Hansard, there was some

Emotionally neglect and neglect there simply because there was an early divorce. My mom was a had to work Away, I was brought up by my great-grandma Of course, this was not the most stable environment but not not that there was violence or something like that It was just yeah, I was left to my own devices a latchkey child so to speak but there was certainly a lack of male role models and I sort of made it up as I went

Dr. Stephan Neff (05:38.254)
And then at age 14, I found myself one night in the wrong place, wrong time, and became the victim of a gang assault. And they sort of beat me up, knocked my teeth out, threw a knife at me. And I still, to this day, don't know how I did not end up more severely injured than I was. And it was very strange.

The assault stopped when the train arrived. I was at the train station there and witnesses arrived. So the gang moved on. But later on, I brought the dude, the gang leader behind bars. He got three years for assault and for something else. And he threatened me, I will kill you when I get out, I will kill you. And so in my 13 year old 1980s or 1970s mind,

I was awaiting a lethal weapon showdown. I, you know, die hard, those kind of things. I expected it in reality. And so my bruises hadn't even healed when I started training martial arts and I became very good at that. And I've really focused during the day on my school. And then afterwards, I either went working to

get some money in or and shall I say trained and I would do three four hours of training a day and the patchy teenager turned into Rambo and I became a very different specimen. A specimen with a lot of muscles and a specimen who was essentially living in the darkness. PTSD had me fully and it was the 1970s nothing was recognized and suddenly I had no clue about it.

And even later on, I had reframed those experiences into something positive. So, hey, look, ha, here I am, the man, look at me. And this positive reframing went on for a long time. In fact, only maybe seven, eight years ago, I realized that I had a full house of PTSD symptoms. And I thought, you're kidding me. And it only became clear to me when I saw a...

Dr. Stephan Neff (07:59.758)
friend who was ex special forces who was completely falling apart with his PTSD and one day he came back and looked me in the eyes and said look it's going to be all fine and I thought oh shit is he thinking about a fast exit here and he said no no no I've met this woman this woman she's a a she's a counselor helper and she has taught me things and I'm going to be fine

And in my mind at that moment in time, I quietly said, you've got to be joking. Here you are. You have got an in my mind, I went down all the tick list of PTSD symptoms. And the moment I did that, I suddenly realized I'm describing myself. And I get goosebumps right now here because that was a realization that was so bizarre. Here I had these symptoms for a very, very long time.

Travis White (08:39.079)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (08:59.406)
and I had not recognized it for what it was. So therefore, it is bizarre. It is bizarre. We often live either in a world of denial or live in a world of simply lack of knowledge. And that is so hard. You don't know what you don't know. And even if you have an educated mind, I mean, for crying out loud, was an anesthetist. By that time, I had run a large pain clinic here.

So I could smell a depression or an anxiety disorder a mile away in people who came into my clinic, yet could I see those things in me? So it's very partial blindness, you could call it like that.

Travis White (09:33.573)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (09:39.184)
in

Yeah. Yeah. And I, was with my anxiety and depression. I was in denial for years. Like, I knew I had a problem. I didn't quite put the scope on it, but until I got out of the denial and like, was like, you know what? I really need to do something about that. Like I couldn't move forward. I was just pretty much staying stuck.

Dr. Stephan Neff (10:04.652)
Isn't it? And that's the hardest thing. And you see that again and again and again. I I for five years of age 13, assault for five years, martial arts, Rambo. And then I entered university in a different town and that was the 80s. And it became clear to me that this guy will never ever find me. It's as simple as that. There is no way this was this was way before Internet and social media. So there was no chance.

This guy would not find me, number one. Number two, there are girls. Number three, by now my teeth had been fixed and actually done, so I was a little bit more at ease because prior to that, you're still growing, they don't put permanent implants in. So you had to these kind of crappy things that from now on then fall out and you look like an old man or like a pirate. You can imagine what that does to the confidence of a teenager.

Travis White (11:00.241)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (11:03.938)
Dark times. And then I remember one Saturday in the first half year of university, sitting in a beer garden with two friends I had met there in the university. And we were having a big glass of beer and that was nearly gone. And I was not drinking prior to that. Not really, nothing. So it didn't have any kind of lure to me. But...

there I was under this beautiful huge oak tree, the sun was shining and it was just lovely. And suddenly I heard this laughter, a real belly laughter. And I literally looked around and thought, who is laughing this loud? And I realized it had been me. I had laughed. There was this freedom, this joy, this dopamine feeling coming over me. And it was the most beautiful feeling. And again, I've got a

very emotional physical response here that the goosebumps because it was such a revelation that I was able to love that was able to relax that I was able to let go. And that was just absolutely bloody amazing. And unfortunately, this was such a beautiful feeling that that was forever laid down in my memory, irreversible as alcohol.

is beautiful. Alcohol is your solution to the problems. And that was such a curse. Yet, if you think back, alcohol was the solution to a severe problem I had. I had not found other solutions at that time, but I had found alcohol. So I was grateful and I used alcohol.

very skillfully because alcohol has got a lot of advantages. Here I was the shy teenager but give me the right amount of alcohol. I bring out a guitar. I wasn't the best guitarist. I wasn't the best singer. I didn't care. Didn't care. It was just amazing. In fact, these two friends I was talking about a year, two years later we went on a road trip down to Spain and

Dr. Stephan Neff (13:27.17)
We would go on the beach and just sit there, free guitars, and none of us were great singers or so. But my God, like moths to the light, the girls just arrived. Okay, so here I was, a physical specimen who had lost his inhibitions with the help of alcohol, who had gained a control of his sex drive.

Because at one stage in my life, I was able to control my erections in such a way that I could easily ask a girl, well, how long would you like to make love? Should we do an hour, hour and half? And she would laugh. And an hour later, God, finish it already. It's enough. Okay. And it is amazing. So the alcohol gave me nearly superpowers. Okay, it was. There was an ability to function.

which was great, but of course, alcohol is nothing but a wrecking ball. And unfortunately, I had continued to use that in whatever situations I deemed appropriate, which was always. And I dealt with any kind of challenge in my life with the help of alcohol. And you already see that there is a problem appearing there. I have to say though, the alcohol was a solution, but I had found some other solutions.

One solution was work. I threw myself in work initially in school, then as a student and I became very good at that. So I dare to say I was a workaholic long before I was an alcoholic. But both means were A socially accepted. To drink alcohol in Germany is part of life. To be good in your job and to excel and have one accolade after the other was just, yeah, I was very accepted.

So here I was actually living a burnout lifestyle, going all out and then calming down with alcohol. Yeah, you can only do that this long. And I paid the price for it because I, for a long time, did not learn different coping mechanisms and only relied on alcohol. And life threw me more trauma.

Travis White (15:41.511)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (15:55.448)
far too much to now go into here. But yeah, there was grief that I never really worked through. There was a lot of, I guess, betrayal and despair there. And I'm often trying to figure out, well, was that only near perception or were there really some shitty people in my life? And I guess both. So only because you're paranoid doesn't mean to say that they are not after you.

So I think both things held true, but then again, I had not developed the skillset that I've got today. And I think that is just fact. We need to find ourselves in some really hard times before we stop, learn to feel, learn to figure out what is actually really happening and then make sense of it and then deal with it in maybe different ways.

Travis White (16:48.059)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (16:52.07)
I was forever running away from my feelings. And it's only really, in all fairness, in the last maybe 24 months that I have really excelled in emotional intelligence. Simply spoken, talk about more trauma, my marriage was always volatile and challenging and we were brought together by sex.

But then over time, financial pressures, children, et cetera, take that part more into the background and you sort of coexist. And once the children left the house, I had found myself in a situation that I certainly did not have any of my needs fulfilled, neither had my wife. So ultimately we were two strangers living together after 30 years of marriage.

And that ended up in a divorce and that divorce destroyed pretty much everything that my previous life up until maybe 24 months ago had signified. It led to a job loss for me. It led to me selling the house, selling everything and losing everything. So the old Phoenix literally has burned to ashes. And that was one of the hardest times probably in my life.

So there was this new trauma. But this time I had began to learn different skills and I now went on fast forward as far as learning was concerned. And to anyone out there that is probably the best place to be, that you are forced to be so far outside of your comfort zone, that there is simply no other position, no other possibility than actually to take massive action.

And that's hard because my coping mechanism is fear avoidance. So I would love to run away. That is completely deep dark in my soul imprinted. You, there's the tiger, run. Or if there's the tiger and you can't run, fight. But that is all blinkers, adrenaline and those kind of attitudes. And I had to learn.

Travis White (19:13.87)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (19:20.042)
more about these emotions. I did a course on radical self-compassion and that was one of the hardest courses I did because I had to learn to sit with my emotions. One of the exercises was to conjure up a negative emotion and immediately fear came to me. So I had immediately this kind of, God, and

It was very easy. Fear is a very old friend of mine. My goodness. I could go back to age 13 when I was lying on the ground or at any one time is including there. And then I did the course a year ago and my my life had just turned completely upside down. So it was not difficult for me to just let that fear wall up. And it came like a bloody tsunami. And then the skill was to sit with that fear for five minutes.

and feel it, taste it, see what it does to your body. That's the longest five minutes in my life because I would have normally run away, done anything, scroll social media, I have to write this email, I need to do whatever. No, you have to sit still. And I did that. And then thereafter, you have to learn to calm that emotion down, be introspective, and then nurture yourself.

Travis White (20:21.863)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (20:41.752)
then actually love yourself and calm it all down. And that was a very, very, very beautiful experience that I was able to do that. This has led to me completely changing in my attitude nowadays. I'm far more compassionate to myself. I'm far more accepting to myself. I'm no longer getting angry with me.

if my mind is a bit befuddled when I say, I want to write this talk now, this course now, I want to be productive. And my mind said, yeah, about that. And I can't even string two words together. And that's OK. I'm now accepted as what it is that I can't be 100 percent, that I can't be that perfectionist that I want to be. And this is beautiful. So.

Here we are in a journey of far too much trauma, of far too many coping mechanisms that in the long run did certainly not suit me and that probably brought me my own hell to live in. Yet, here I am at age 58, finally coming to a point where despite even more trauma, despite even more destruction in my life, there is also

a level of creativity, because the opposite to trauma and destruction is creation. So creativity is a beautiful thing. So here I am reinventing myself. I am taking time out to feel, I'm taking time out to think, well, what is important in my life? And I look at Maslov's pyramid of needs.

and think, okay, you need to feel secure. You need to have food, water, shelter, fire, those kinds of things. And then from there on, we can build up on that pyramid. I make sure that this foundation is as solid as I possibly can get it. So with functional medicine, I know how to incorporate the right nutrients. I am eating G-bombs left, right and center. I am using the right nutraceuticals.

Dr. Stephan Neff (23:02.476)
making sure my hydration is good, making sure that there is exercise included in every day. I'm fiercely defensive of my sleep. So I make sure the baseline nowadays is really, really good. And then I take it from there. But my aim is to at least every day put 15 minutes into becoming a better man in addition to maintaining the baseline.

So the baseline doesn't count. So you can't say, okay, I've done 15 minutes of a workout or went for a walk. That's it now for today. No, no, no, no. Guys, live your life to the fullest. That means get the foundation right. That's a given. And now how can you become a better human? How can you become a better man?

Travis White (23:53.639)
Yeah, functional medicine that that pretty much saved me and there was so I suffer from anxiety and depression. All of my stuff, like I started recognizing when I was going through a spout of seizures. It took me years to realize that I had a problem. And so my seizures started back in 2009. But

You know, I just do the normal like neurologist type stuff and medicine. And then they kind of died down, but jumping fast forward to like last year, my seizures came back full fledged and I decided to go the functional medicine route. And it was a life changer. It was the best decision I ever made because they're like, no, like we're not going to put you on any meds. We're going to actually do your blood work and figure out what.

nutrients you're lacking, get you some supplements. And with those supplements, I've lost weight. don't, my body doesn't feel bloated. I've changed my eating habits. So like when, like this really resonates with me, like it's, I was, it's really cool to see the difference in my life that like going to a functional medicine doctor has done.

Dr. Stephan Neff (25:05.688)
little bit.

Dr. Stephan Neff (25:19.98)
I'm so pleased to hear that because our world is changing and unfortunately it's changing for the worst. We have got increasing stress levels, increasing job insecurities, increasing climate insecurities and a media certainly in the United States which is at best advertising, at worst mass, what's the word?

we had in German, there are some nice words for it because our Nazis were so good in it. They made sure that there is a radio in every household so that they can bring home the hate messages. It's nothing else now in the modern media that we see there. It's a very divided life that you guys are living over there and it's not so much better over here. And it's a very difficult world. Our world has become

Travis White (26:03.173)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (26:18.158)
really toxic, not just from the media and from our own attitudes, but also in the way we are living. Your standard American diet is not for nothing abbreviated sad. So there are so many nutrients are missing and instead of nutrients, we're having toxins included in that. I'm just putting together a course on microplastics and nanoplastics and it is amazing.

Travis White (26:28.807)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (26:47.97)
the amount of shit that we are getting into our system through the air, through food, through water, through our cosmetics that women typically put onto themselves, the amount of rubbish that we are getting. I mean, it's estimated that you're about having a credit card worth of plastic that you consume that every week. There are about 160,000 chemicals out there and the number's growing and forgot that we are exposed to. For example, in

about 16,000 chemicals that are used to create the various plastics that we have got, of which 4,600 chemicals we know are toxic. Now, they are all there in small amounts, but there is what we call the cocktail effect. Cocktail effect means that when you have a few cocktails, you probably feel the worst for wear the next day, but you can't say, it was the gin in that cocktail, or it was the vodka in that cocktail. No, but it was all of them working together in a synergistic fashion.

Travis White (27:28.647)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (27:46.604)
And here we've got the same thing with the toxins that we are having, a degree of mold toxicity depending upon in which humid environment you're living. You have got heavy metals, you've got all kinds of things. And that's just the toxicology side of things. Then we have got the gut health side of things where probably a huge proportion of your listeners are suffering from a great...

Travis White (28:02.236)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (28:11.49)
disbalance of the many beautiful trillions of bacteria that are living within your gut. And there's Q with. There's some goodies and there's some baddies and chances are your baddies are having a great time. And that then affects the gut lining in its own right. So now a very fine lining that is there that's supposed to protect you from whatever's inside the gut and only let the good stuff through. Well, that's leaky now. And you've got all kind of trash coming in.

No surprise that suddenly autoimmune disorders are on the rise. No surprise that we have got metabolic syndromes going through the roof, that you have got diabetes worsening, obesity worsening, that you have got type 3 diabetes, which is the neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's going through the roof. So you have got essentially a population that is getting worse and worse, that is getting sicker and sicker.

And despite the fact that we from now and then have a little bit of a snippet of a breakthrough, for example, the GLP-1 agonists, the Wegeva, the Ozempik, those kind of things, everyone jumps onto them as if a very expensive injection a week would somehow undo the fact that you're under an incredibly stressful life, that you are

that your nutrients are over the show and typically the key nutrients such as the zinc, the magnesium, all those kind of things are absolutely low. Vitamin D is barely existing in your life. All those kind of things. If you look at that and you think suddenly that wonder pillow, that wonder injection or that wonder diet is suddenly changing absolutely everything. What a BS. And BS stands for bad science. No, there is so much more and that's where functional medicine comes in.

Travis White (29:48.743)
you.

Travis White (30:04.999)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (30:07.938)
That's where we actually look at your gut, where we look at your sleep, where we look at your exercise. And there's so many beautiful studies. It's not brain surgery. It's not rocket science. We have got the data out there. But there is such a tsunami of data hitting you. And it's often click bait. There's so much click bait, so much bullshit when you look at what Google shows you as breakthroughs in medicine or whatsoever. my God.

Travis White (30:27.067)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (30:36.342)
So now there's so much more.

Travis White (30:36.887)
So So in regards to functional medicine So I hear about you know, all these products whether it be food or like toothpaste I mean for example They say well, you know what this has traces of lead in it and then I hear people say okay Well, it's only traces of lead So that's okay for me to take it But I yeah, I don't see it that way. Yeah. Yeah

Dr. Stephan Neff (30:58.318)
Well, that's the problem. That's the cocktail effect. That's the cocktail effect. You've got a bit of lead here, a bit of arsenic here, a bit of whatever, know, take any of these probably 10,000 things that are really negative to you and now you add them up. You have no clue which one interacts with the other one and causes significant toxicity. That little bit of lead, the impact of that might be dramatically increased by

Travis White (31:19.025)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (31:28.046)
effect of another toxin that maybe blocks an enzyme or blocks something that normally helps you to get rid of the lead. I'm making it up as I go, but up in bottom line, is there enough examples out there where one plus one doesn't give you two, one plus one gives you five. Okay, so it's really, really important to recognize that. You could of course say, my God, there's so many chemicals, what do you want to do, Stefan? There's nothing you can do, come on.

Travis White (31:38.567)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (31:45.095)
Two.

Dr. Stephan Neff (31:57.962)
And look at me, I'm anyhow healthy. Yeah, first assumption, I'm anyhow healthy. That's bullshit. Maybe you're just lucky that you're scraping through without having, without showing major signs and symptoms. But if we do some careful blood work on you, I can measure how bad your autoimmunity is, how bad your systemic inflammation is, how much you are leaky within your gut. And people accept

Travis White (32:08.881)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (32:27.118)
their state as normal. And then when we actually add in the right nutrients and change the nutrition, suddenly the lights go on. Literally, someone switches the lights on, they think, why am I so clear? Have I been in so much mental fog all the time before? And it's so amazing that you see that transformation. It's beautiful, it's absolutely beautiful.

Travis White (32:30.023)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (32:52.878)
Things that people take for granted, maybe waking up at night three or four times, suddenly their sleep improves when you change their nutrition, when you change the way that they are eating, the amount that they are eating in which part of the day. When you add in magnesium, which so many of us are deficient in, suddenly your restless legs are gone, or your cramping is gone at night, or you just sleep better. You don't even know why, and think, what's going on? And yeah, it's the magnesium.

or the zinc in many men is so low and therefore we are not the best when it comes to testosterone, when it comes to serotonin, when it comes to all those kind of things that make life really, really nice. no, mean vitamin D is zinc, your protein intake and your fibers. I think these are the low hanging fruits where most people out there, certainly in the United States are falling down big time.

Fiber is such an important bit in your diet. That's the reason when I earlier referred to the G-bombs. These are G-bombs, so the greens, the beans, the onions, the mushrooms, the seeds. So you've got those kind of part of your diet that have actually a lot of phytochemicals, so healthy chemicals that help the body to work better. They have got the

macronutrients and the micronutrients and they have got a fiber. So you've got three macronutrients and I call them actually four macronutrients. You have got the protein, the fat, the carbohydrates and then you've got the fiber. Now the first three are for you as when I say you for those cells that come from mummy and daddy. Now these are actually the minority of cells. The majority of you Trevis is bacteria by number.

So actually there are more bacteria which are nowhere from mommy and daddy in you than there are things that you normally define as you. Now there are about one and a half kilogram or kilogram one and a half different figures are out there. And if you think about that, that's actually amazing. 100 trillion bacteria. And we have only scratched the surface as far as our knowledge about that because

Travis White (35:17.276)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (35:20.494)
Now we know that serotonin, when it comes to depression, 95 % of the serotonin is not produced in the brain, it's produced in the gut. So therefore, you need vitamin D, magnesium, and protein, the essential amino acids. You need to dose things as a minimum to create the serotonin. But in order to create serotonin, you need the factories for the serotonin, which are the bacteria. What do the bacteria live on? Fiber. Hello, hello, hello.

Travis White (35:43.079)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (35:49.664)
If you're worried about your lead and worried about all the nasty things in there, well, what do you think? Where does the lead go? Because, or any kind of toxins go, the liver is the major detoxifier in our body. Now liver typically takes these compounds and then either puts it out through the bile or through the blood that goes into the, well, the ultimate end result is that it ends up in the poo. But if you don't have fiber there, then

The stuff gets thrown into the large, into the colon, in the large gut with the view of getting it out there, but now there's no fiber there. So the stuff looks around and says, well, there's no transporter here for me to go out. I might as well go back into the bloodstream. So you've got actually toxins thrown into the gut with the view of being excreted, but there is now no carrier. There's no fiber. There's nothing there waiting for them to be carried. So it gets reabsorbed. Duh.

Travis White (36:42.086)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (36:46.124)
And that's the reason that so many institutions recommend 30 gram of fiber a day as part of your diet. And we typically fall very short of that. In the Western diet, have got, if you get 15 gram, then you're lucky. And that seems to be sort of the average or even less in the United States. And you can change it dramatically.

Travis White (37:07.953)
Yay.

So you've mentioned gut health a little bit. It relates largely to physical health, but how does it influence your mental well-being?

Dr. Stephan Neff (37:20.27)
We said, for example, the serotonin that it is created. Serotonin is the neurochemical that, neurotransmitter that we link with mental wellness. And I say link because in the past we sort of had this imagination that if the serotonin is low, then you get depression. And if the serotonin is far too high, then you get other problems. It's probably not so straightforward.

there is there is there's a balance of neurochemicals that affect that. And that's the reason that for example, sometimes serotonin reuptake inhibitor, something that increases your serotonin works and then some other people it doesn't work. So why is that it should be it should be pretty clear serotonin low, give something get the serotonin up, you're happy. It doesn't work like that. So therefore,

The best example is the serotonin that we have now figured out is in the gut. But also there are so many other receptor systems within the body that again, we are only beginning to tease apart, beginning to learn about. But I think if you just look, for example, at blood sugar regulation, if you look at the gut and mental health, I can create you a diet that within a week,

I can create panic attacks, I can create a very nasty life for you that is very ratty. The only thing I need to do is make sure that I feed you basically lots of sugar and then let that sugar drop down so you get that massive spike up of blood sugar and your insulin is getting poured out and everyone says, my God, so much sugar. And then quickly, quickly work with it, get it into the liver. The liver says, what shall I do with all that?

Travis White (38:58.896)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (39:13.066)
Okay, let's create some fat. Let's push it somewhere. Who knows? Can we push it into the muscles? No, he has not even done anything. It's been sat on his ass the whole day. Well, okay, the muscles are closed. Then, okay, what can we do? Well, let's create some fat or let's create some other products that are probably not so great. Okay, half an hour later, you're crashing down because now all the insulin is out there and you have got actually low sugars, which give you the kind of jitters, give you the kind of anxiety.

Add to that now the lack of vitamins, the B complex. B complex is so important for us calming down and providing so many of the enzymes, so those kind of magic little proteins that create miracles within our body. They need certain cofactors, they need certain support, and the vitamin B complex as an example is so important there. Well, if I strip you from that.

Travis White (40:04.678)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (40:11.424)
you gonna feel shit because you simply, is a, the wrong mechanisms are switched on and the right mechanisms are not working so well. So you've got toxins building up, you've got all kind of things building up and you feel like crap. So if I want to create that scenario, I can do that. I have got the skills. Now if I can be a very nasty piece of work and create that,

Could I not also create a bliss for you? And yes, we can very much do so. Now, everyone will sit on the edge of a seat and say, yeah, tell me, tell me the magic. What do I need to do, the magic? I want to know it right now. And immediately within your audience, will be the vegans who say, no, it's vegan, vegan, we can only use, no, meat is awful. Nothing that has two eyes should ever be eaten. Okay.

Travis White (40:40.955)
So... Mm-hmm.

Travis White (40:47.387)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (41:07.896)
And then there are the meat eaters, the keto guys who said, bullshit, look at me here. I haven't seen a lettuce leaf in the last 10 years and I've dropped all that weight. My autoimmune disease is gone. My everything is gone. Both of them are right. When we look at certain diets, there are people who say, caveman diet, that's what we need to do. Well, if you go back to caveman,

and look at the different cavemen. There were cavemen living in the rainforest. were cavemen living in the Arctic tundra. There were cavemen living everywhere. So if you tell me that their diet was the same, bullshit. If you look at the Eskimos or indigenous people of the Northern and very South, well, were basically, main nutrients was fat and their genetic makeup was...

dare to have a very, very fat rich diet. mean, the seals, the whales, whatever. And then you have got other, let's say the stepper, you've got, you know, from now on, then a few grasshoppers and some seeds and that's it. And that was the caveman diet. So you see, you can't actually generalize that so easy. And there are certain genetic make-ups where, who clearly thrive and do well on

complex carbohydrates on complex sugars, whilst others, they don't do so well. So for me, for example, the complex sugars are nice. I certainly have them because I want the fiber. Enough, let's say, beans have got complex sugars and have also a lot of fiber in them. Chickpeas, those kind of things.

I like them and I accept them as part of my diet, but I'm actually doing really well on a protein rich diet with a bit of fat in it. My body feels really great with that. Each and every one of us will have certain preferences how their body ticks. It's partly genetic and partly just trying to work out how you really are built.

Travis White (43:14.916)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (43:25.228)
what combinations of factors play a role within you. And sometimes that can change over time. It is, for example, if you've got a very leaky gut right now, you need a certain amount of, or a certain diet to help you exclude those things that are hurting you more. This might be a diet that maybe gets rid of the gluten, that gets rid of dairy.

Travis White (43:25.669)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (43:50.412)
that has a lot of bone broth in and a lot of things that are probably more likely to help the gut lining to heal. So we wanna, in such cases, we wanna take out the offending things, take out work on the things that have contributed to the damaged gut and you having quite a strict diet and a diet that is probably not so sustainable, but maybe for a month or two, that's what you need to heal.

Travis White (44:03.845)
Yeah.

Travis White (44:17.383)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (44:19.842)
whilst we're taking away the offending things and let the gut heal. And then we can reintroduce things and can figure out, okay, how do you work best? By now we have not just healed the gut, but we have also added some of the nutrients that you need to maintain a healthy metabolic system within yourself. So that is the key. So we wanna take away the things that harm you. We want to heal what is there and then reintroduce a diet

Travis White (44:20.294)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (44:49.292)
that is balanced, that is holistic. And I mean, the typical diet would be the DASH diet or the Mediterranean diet. When you look at those things where you have complex carbohydrates together with lots and lots of levy greens and vegetables and then have smaller amounts of protein, some healthy fats in there, the avocado, the olive oils, those kinds of things that we know

are probably more omega-free, laden. So there are certain essential fatty acids. The omega-frees are more for healing and are good for you. Omega-6 is really the stuff that is not so great for you. Many of the seed oils, for example, have got huge disbalances, very little omega-free, lots of omega-6. So some people say that you should therefore not eat seed oils.

Now the other experts are saying bullshit, there's no evidence for that. Yes and no. Those people who say there's no evidence for that, these are the people who are taking just the seed oil, nothing else, and try to do studies on that seed oil and say, okay, if you have that seed oil or not that seed oil, what's the outcome? And I think that is so difficult in nowadays' lives because this is only one tiny factor of many, many other.

Travis White (46:14.907)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (46:16.142)
toxic factors that are impacting you. So therefore to now look for studies that show you that distinct difference makes it very hard. Also where are our cutoff lines? You know, do you actually run, if you've got a very expensive car, let's say a Lamborghini, and do you run the oil just enough that the oil light doesn't come on? Do you just have enough water?

Travis White (46:29.702)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (46:41.934)
so that the car just doesn't overheat. It's a bit hotter, but it doesn't overheat. No alarm is coming on. That is the kind of sick versus healthy model. And that's so often what in typical medicine and in allopathic Western medicine, what we do. Your gamma-GT is normal because your blood test for the liver, for example, is normal. When in reality, it might be just below the cutoff.

Travis White (46:51.941)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (47:01.307)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (47:08.13)
which means that your liver is dealing with shitloads of toxins. Gamma-GT shouldn't be this high, it should be much, much lower. So when we look at wellness versus sickness, we in functional medicine, we use different parameters. use, well, we might use the same blood tests, but we look at different reference ranges. We are not saying a CRP of 11, that's okay.

Travis White (47:15.783)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (47:32.556)
That means that you're not having somewhere and a pass in your elbow. Okay. I give you that or that you don't have some major rheumatic flare. I give you that, but that doesn't mean to say that this is normal. You shouldn't have this much systemic inflammation. Your CRP should be one or two thereabouts. That would be ideal. So let's look at getting you optimal rather than getting you away from the brink or even in early disease.

Travis White (47:36.368)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (48:01.304)
try to bring that down and optimize things. And suddenly your life changes in ways that you didn't even know. So it becomes, it's difficult to measure wellbeing. But once you experience wellbeing, it's like coming from out of the darkness into the light. And that's where the functional medicine is. That is, it gives you a new lease of life. It might not change your longevity as much as we would love it to.

Travis White (48:13.413)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (48:19.974)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (48:30.37)
We all are striving to live until 130, 150. Well, some people might be able to achieve that with some very expensive interventions and maybe we learn more and can do more. But my longevity is not really my main issue. What I'm striving for is not prolonging my lifespan, but prolonging my health span. I want to be healthy as long as humanly possible. I don't want to be an old man at the age of 60.

I want to be an old man when I'm an old man, when I'm 102. Okay, then I might say, okay, enough is enough. But until then, I've got 40 years to go where I want to live in the healthiest way possible. Now we talked about trauma, we talked about alcohol, and I lived a life that was not really conducive to healthspend for 50 years. Now, I changed. And I just want to leave you with that fact.

Travis White (49:13.095)
Getting.

Dr. Stephan Neff (49:28.404)
I changed my life completely over the last 10 years. So about what, three, four years ago, I actually went to the doctor and said, I want a calcium score CT scan of my heart. That's a scan that measures how much calcium plaque is turning up in the coronaries, in the blood vessels that supply your heart muscle. So in other words, if that is blocked, you get a heart attack, you die, kind of thing.

So, and I, my dad died of his sixth heart attack, my biological father. And I thought, yeah, great. Yeah, I've got the genes. I had a rough lifestyle. I had the trauma to prove it. My God. But I had changed. I had changed my nutrition by then. I changed a lot of things. My calcium score is zero. There was not a single plaque in the coronaries. And that was such a revelation for me. The past does not equal the future.

So whatever your past was like, maybe full of pain, both emotional and physical, due to all kind of shit, by taking one step at a time, one tiny baby step, but consistently increasing those baby steps and adding further baby steps in. In all the various pillars of your life, you can suddenly reap tremendous rewards.

You guys can change. So whatever your reality right now is, however much pain you are in, there is so much you can do. There is hope, there is help. Don't let any of these bullshit voices in your head tell you otherwise. These are lies. Don't let any of the naysayers in your life tell you no. Now, this is all bullshit. You can change both from a physical point of view, dramatically improve your life, and from a mental point of view.

dramatically improve your life. That's a fact. There's no two ways around that. To which extent? That all depends on you. If you're sitting in a wheelchair and literally there is some nasty trauma, physical trauma has occurred to you, you have no more spine below the level of, I don't know, L2, well, I will not make you walk, that's for sure.

Travis White (51:47.345)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (51:47.352)
But maybe will your cramps change? Will your nutrition change? Will your well-being change? Will your mental fog change? Yeah, very likely. With the help of someone who looks more holistic at you compared with someone who looks only, let's say, the spinal cord injury or looks only at, I don't know, whatever your current problem is. So don't give up. It's a key message to anyone out there listening.

Travis White (52:13.671)
I'm a walking example of basically what you just said. There was a time, like I said, mentioned before, I suffered from seizures. There's a time where I didn't quite believe in like the functional medicine side of things. Like I, I went to a functional medicine doctor and I was, went to it I was like, okay, I don't buy this. Like, I don't know. And then I just did it. And at that time I didn't know like enough about it. And then

Dr. Stephan Neff (52:36.706)
Ha ha.

Travis White (52:40.837)
So my wife kept saying, no, like you need to go see one. So the end of last year, this is what happened. I was like, you know what? I had about 30, 40 seizures in the span of like a month. And that had already happened like years ago and it hadn't happened since. So was like, I need to do something. So I went to functional health center and they said, you know what? You're lacking this. You need more magnesium. We need to be complex. It's pretty much everything you said.

Dr. Stephan Neff (53:07.822)
Funny that is. yeah, exactly. Perfect.

Travis White (53:08.103)
Your cholesterol is way too high. You're pre-diabetic. Yep. And they're like, so you, you need to change your diet. You need to take these supplements, take it or leave it. So I got on, I got on the supplements, changed my diet. I stopped eating like, we basically cut out sugar. Not completely. I'm not saying like, do I enjoy cookie here and there with like bad sugar? Yes. But like,

Dr. Stephan Neff (53:17.496)
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Travis White (53:36.261)
just changing it, adding more protein, like everything you mentioned. And it's made my brain fog go away. I feel like I'm in a better mental health state. I feel I am not as there's like hardly any inflammation left in me. Like I didn't know how much inflammation I had. And then just looking at like pictures of me from three months ago to now, I was like,

Dr. Stephan Neff (53:44.91)
Absolutely.

Travis White (54:03.995)
It's it's honestly like a holy shit moment. It's like, this is possible. This is possible. Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (54:07.15)
I'm so pleased for you. Yeah, but that's only the start brother. That's only the start Travis. This is now you have tasted blood. Okay, now the journey will continue because there will be other things that you will discover. Now you said a cookie, for example, now comes the journey into the kitchen because I love sweet cookie as much as the next guy did. I'm crying out loud in my previous life.

Travis White (54:26.683)
Yeah.

Yep.

Dr. Stephan Neff (54:33.55)
After I went into rehab for alcohol, I thought, okay, who am I? Who do I want to be? I said, well, I always had to saying there is not enough cheesecake in this world. That was something I started saying as a student because I love cheesecake. So after rehab, I thought I might as well learn how to bake a German cheesecake because they are very, very good. And being a doctor and being who I am, I thought, well, let's not just learn it. Let's write a book. Let's write a cookbook about

Travis White (54:44.551)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (55:03.31)
German cheesecakes and I did. so that's me. That's me throwing myself into creativity, but also of course, enjoying every single morsel of these many cheesecakes I baked. Now, I learned how to cook a decent cheesecake. That means I can also learn how to cook healthy. And to go back to your cookie, yes, you can buy a store-baked cookie, which has about 18, 20 different ingredients.

Travis White (55:03.398)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (55:11.409)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (55:23.579)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (55:29.742)
of which about 15 you can't even pronounce because there are chemicals. Or you could get, eh?

Travis White (55:33.073)
Yep. Yep. Yep, that's what.

That's where we're at is we like there's there's a cookie place here in Utah that I really like that I'll indulge myself in once in a while. But we like my wife's like, you know what? We're cutting out gluten. We're and not saying that I don't have like a hamburger on a bun sometimes like I do. But we've cut out most of the sugars. We eat more greens like.

Dr. Stephan Neff (55:56.11)
Yeah.

Travis White (56:05.061)
just overall, like just a more balanced diet. And I guess at first I'm like, this sucks because I am a self-proclaimed junk food junkie. I could go to a convenience store and load up on $40 worth of junk. And I used to be able to eat at all, but now it's like, I can't do that. I don't, I stopped drinking soda. Like it's, like, I'm a, I'm a walking testimony to what you've just said.

Dr. Stephan Neff (56:15.022)
Ha

Dr. Stephan Neff (56:26.382)
Travis, brother, I challenge you. Yes, yes. But Travis, I challenge you because obviously there is a need there. And I've created a five day sugar detox course. And one of the days we are talking essentially about the psychological needs there that you're not meeting. On the one hand,

Travis White (56:50.139)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (56:52.024)
We've got of course all the nutritional factors that are to be discussed. But on the other hand, also, food is so much more. Food is warmth for the soul. Food is love for some people. Food calms you down so you haven't learned yet ways of reducing the anxiety. And I know I'm a late night snacker. My goodness. There were times I would have easily eaten the whole caloric

Travis White (56:59.365)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (57:12.519)
Yeah. Yeah.

Travis White (57:20.594)
yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (57:21.026)
day and more at 12 o'clock at night, in addition to what I ate over the day. So let's be clear about that. So obviously my needs were not met whatsoever. So on a psychological way, I was substituting love with food. That's just one reason why we eat. Now, if you don't address that, you will always, always, always remain obese, over morbidly obese, super morbidly obese.

Travis White (57:24.103)
Yep.

Travis White (57:38.278)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (57:50.022)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (57:50.466)
This will not change because you're not addressing the underlying problems. So let's be clear about that. The link between mental health and nutrition is so profound and you need to be clear about that. Now you need then in the kitchen, I told you about learning how to bake some mean cheesecakes, but I've also learned how to create bliss balls. Little quick tip for all you guys out there, get yourself some dates, get yourself some walnuts, maybe some pumpkin seeds.

Travis White (57:54.096)
yeah.

Travis White (58:07.153)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (58:20.046)
Get yourself some dried fruit, get yourself some real cocoa or dark chocolate if you want to add some of those beautiful phytochemicals in there because dark chocolate, so 95 % dark chocolate doesn't taste so nice. But it has some health benefits just as much as all the other things have health benefits I've just said. And then you put that all into a blender. Add some

Travis White (58:33.969)
Yep, that's I've.

Dr. Stephan Neff (58:48.778)
spices in there. I'm a big fan of spices. Something like that. I would put a pinch of cayenne pepper in there. I would put some cinnamon in there, which regulates the blood sugar. And I would, it would turn out a bit like a, like from a taste a bit like Christmasy. And you have got all that mixed it in a mincer, roll it all up and have that in a bowl. Maybe roll it in some dried desiccated coconut.

You have got the most beautiful, nutrient-dense sweet that you could possibly wish for. Full of fiber. it's lovely. Now, please don't eat a whole bowl of it because it is nutrient-dense. It has some complex carbohydrates in there. So whilst your blood sugar will not go through the roof, it has a lot of healthy fatty acids and it has a lot of fiber and a lot of healthy

complex carbohydrates, but yeah, it has calories. So let's not be silly there. You need calories, you need the fat, you need the essential fatty acids, you need the fiber, and you need to a certain degree, the carbohydrates. When I say to a certain degree, there are essential fatty acids. So certain fats you need, your body can't make them. There are essential amino acids. So certain types of the protein you need from the outside.

there are no essential carbohydrates. In other words, carbohydrates is a give or take. Some of us do really well on complex carbohydrates, some of us not so well, but no one does well on high fructose corn syrup, which is laced with some glyphosate, some Roundup, because that is your American diet. And add in another, I don't know how many chemicals in there.

Travis White (01:00:39.503)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:00:43.246)
your FDA and your regulatory bodies should be slapped, you know, left, and center, because you allow so many intriguing components into the food that in their own right, I mean, any mum with an ADHD child or with an autistic child will tell you, if I give my child those fruit loops, he is going nuts and not a good nuts, you know.

Travis White (01:00:48.807)
Yep.

Travis White (01:01:08.039)
Yeah, yeah, we've been we've been taking out a lot of the the red dyes in our kids diets because it's like our son You give him some candy and you'd know immediately that we gave him candy because he just He's already Just a very strong like personality to begin with he's really intense So give him some candy and he just makes them more intense

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:01:14.956)
Absolutely.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:01:27.886)
Absolutely.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:01:35.022)
Thanks. Yeah. And then again, how do you, the question then is how do you replace it? And you, it's all a matter of practice. If you go to Japan, for example, and you go into the schools and the preschools and the first two, three years and look at the children and ask them, what's your favorite food? Carrot. You what? Broccoli. What? Brown rice. What? So.

Travis White (01:01:45.287)
Yeah.

Travis White (01:01:57.99)
Yep, that's.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:02:04.878)
It's up to us how we bring up our children and what we introduce as normal and what we model.

Travis White (01:02:09.051)
Yeah, we.

Travis White (01:02:12.847)
We've lucked out because all of our kids really like vegetables and fruits and stuff, so...

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:02:18.7)
That is really lucked out, but it's also modeling. It's also something where you can model. And in that case, you're actually lucky because you want to show a good nutrition. So you've got a second driver there, a second incentive, not just for you to get better, but also, God, as a parent, I really need to model. Great. So you might as well play with them in the kitchen. Make your own pasta. Don't go into the store and get some fricking ramen noodles. Bullshit.

Travis White (01:02:34.982)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:02:39.97)
Yeah.

Travis White (01:02:44.538)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:02:47.628)
Make your own pasta. Three ingredients, flour, salt, egg. End of the story. Mix it together. If you want some color, fine. Cook some beetroot and then mince it down, put it into that. Just a little bit less egg or a little bit more egg. Try to see how dry your flour is. And suddenly you've got the most pink pasta or purple pasta that you want. You can make lemon pasta. Dehydrate some lemons.

Travis White (01:02:51.153)
Yeah.

Travis White (01:03:08.933)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:03:15.698)
and then grind them up, put them in there. Lemon and pepper pasta, out of this world. Very easy to do, fun to do, and beautiful studies. When you look, there was a study done where they created two identical pasta dishes, one with homemade pasta, the other one with store-made pasta or store-bought pasta. And then they created exactly the same dish, exactly the same sauces, et cetera, with it and gave that.

participants to eat and I gave them with them with the food they got a camera and a small pill form that would take pictures every I don't think a minute or every 30 seconds or so it would take a picture and it's beautiful to see to compare these these line of pictures within basically two three minutes your own homemade pasta is completely dissolved into a mash and it's there ready to be taken up as nutrients

Travis White (01:04:04.389)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:04:11.052)
whilst the store-bought one is plastic or noodles? It's amazing! So learn! This is an opportunity for you to grow and have fun in the kitchen.

Travis White (01:04:17.595)
Yeah.

Travis White (01:04:24.025)
yeah. Yeah. I actually had a growth moment last week. So we like we've, we've stopped going out and eating as much just because most of us junk. And we, when we do, we are starting to be more specific on what we will like what restaurants we will eat. But we went to one, I'm not going to name any names, but we went to one and, you know, I just had some fries and like a chicken burger.

And that night, my stomach hurt to no end. Like for hours. And, I was like, I can't do this again. Like, cause I've, I actually feel it. told my wife, said, I feel like I'm to the point where we've been eating. I'm not going to always say it gets the best, but it's more rounded and you know, we, don't eat a lot of sugar in our house. We don't even have regular sugar. It's alulose and stuff like that.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:05:00.736)
Excellent.

Hahaha.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:05:20.558)
Beautiful, beautiful.

Travis White (01:05:22.947)
And we've started cooking with that. so my body's actually now to the point where it's telling me like, no, you don't need this garbage.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:05:32.524)
I'm so pleased for you, brother. This is the start of your journey. And your taste buds will change. If I nowadays, isn't it? If I nowadays was to go to a cheesecake factory or any kind of the commercially bought cheesecakes, and in the past I would have wolfed a whole freaking cheesecake within 24 hours, no questions asked. If I now even would have tried a slice, I would find it incredibly sweet and incredibly

Travis White (01:05:40.135)
They've started to. They've started to.

Travis White (01:05:56.689)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:06:02.38)
Yeah, chemical. Okay. So it is it's amazing how you will change how your taste buds will change. And it's all it is not an immediate wow, I've stopped the cheesecake and now I feel 10 times better. But it's an accumulative effect. It's it's really compound interest. You take tiny steps, but over a period of time, massive improvement. I hear you sniffling a bit. And now in all fairness, it's winter with you.

Travis White (01:06:05.147)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:06:27.399)
yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:06:31.578)
I, for a very long time in my life, suffered from severe hay fever. Now I've changed my diet, I've changed my nutrients, I have zero symptoms, despite the fact that I live now in an area where previously, 20 years ago, I would have been triggered to hell. I would have been crying now, and I live here now without any problems. My inflammation has changed. My whole body has changed. In the past, mean, those things that you never admit,

Travis White (01:06:37.404)
Yep.

Travis White (01:06:52.827)
Yeah, that's

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:07:00.448)
I had stinky feet. Okay. I had bad stinky feet. Gone. No longer existing. Okay. So everything changes when you put little steps in there and your body changes completely. And that's beautiful. So look forward to the journey is all I can say.

Travis White (01:07:02.458)
Yeah.

Crazy, crazy.

Travis White (01:07:19.803)
Yeah. And before like we add, you if I just go back to some PTSD things? I just have like one or two questions.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:07:25.688)
Shit yeah. Shit yeah.

Travis White (01:07:29.663)
so I'm just curious, like with all that you've been through and like your changes to your health, do you still like suffer from PTSD like symptoms or are they, that is awesome.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:07:42.126)
When I told you about my Special Forces friend, he had gone to a coach and this coach was using hypnotherapy. Prior to that, would have been a little bit dubious about that. I'm a skeptic. I'm a sarcastic man. Part of me is a sarcastic Western medicine dude who wants to see evidence, who wants to see

who has got his strong opinions about what is right and what is wrong. This dude is slowly being put in his place by experiences I've made over the last 10 years where my horizon has significantly widened as far as natural healing methods are concerned, as far as those things are concerned between heaven and earth that we can't really explain and energy flows.

Travis White (01:08:11.43)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:08:41.33)
and weird stuff is included in that. And I would have included the hypnotherapy as we had because hypnotherapy up until then was for me the kind of stage bullshit that you see. Okay, turn people into a chicken. And that's not hypnotherapy. And I learned that. in short, I had the full house of symptoms there, including hyperarousal, flashbacks, frequent

Travis White (01:08:51.525)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:09:11.71)
weird things where I would drive and suddenly as if someone punches me in the gut, and I would go like that. A physical response to a memory. So this was a very strong link. I would have a lot of these physical responses where my body responds to the way I looked at a girl 30 years ago. And you you think, my God. And I always had very weird dreams. And

Travis White (01:09:32.699)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:09:40.072)
very bizarre dreams. There was never blood and gore. So it was not a nightmare as you would maybe experience it in a Hollywood movie. No, it was just the most bizarre rubbish. But typically I would wake up and would, God, sometimes I would try to get out of that trance sleep kind of thing because it was such a dream. And these things were normal for me. I accepted them. That's just me. When in reality it was PTSD.

Travis White (01:09:43.91)
Mm-hmm

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:10:10.466)
So this woman asked some very intriguing questions and then put hypnosis scripts together for me and I had three sessions. And those three sessions of hypnotherapy dramatically reduced my symptoms by probably 70%. So much of that emotional response, or should I say that physical response to my emotions was uncoupled. The amount of flashbacks, the amount of...

physical responses would drop down to a minimum from maybe 10, 20 a day to maybe one a day. Then thereafter, I started writing my book, My Steps to Supriety. And with that, that was essentially a very powerful way of journaling. And I began to write about that impact that really this assault had on me.

and I accepted PTSD for what it was and I wrote actually a book chapter for someone else called PTSD is my superpower. So I actually really worked on it from an emotional point of view and a brain point of view that reduced the symptoms further by about 20%. So I now was down to 90 % reduced. I still have a life in which I have experienced violence.

and potentially life-threatening violence. And this has changed me forever, and it will so. I will always be the dude who is sitting with the back to the wall, who knows where the exits are, who probably knows how to handle himself, who immediately knows about 10 different weapons that are immediately within my reach that don't look like weapons, but that I will use as such. So I, and I'm glad that this dude is there. I'm glad that this warrior is there.

this martial artist because one day he might very well rescue my life. In fact, he has already rescued my life several times because as part of my training, I did the German version of Jiu Jitsu where you do a lot of rolling, you learn judo techniques and things like that. And I was very good. One of the things would be that you learn how to forward roll over a table or over something like that.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:12:35.798)
And one day I was driving on my bike and a woman next to me saw a car park and she went whoosh in there, took me with her into that curb car park broke. And with that, we came from maybe 30 kilometers an hour to zero like that. My car, my bike was blocked and I was cut up all that over the over the bike in a kind of hero Superman position flying through the air. And I

felt myself in the air. There I was. Shit, what do you do now? And actually my training kicked in and I rolled and I ended up with a few scrapes, but that was it. It's not so good when you impact on things, but there was a tree, there was a lamppost in between and I actually by sheer luck ended up flying between the two, then rolled and stood up. My bike was totalled, but here I was. The training that I had put in had rescued my life in this case.

Travis White (01:13:14.712)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:13:26.233)
Yeah. Crazy.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:13:34.434)
And it probably saved me later on in many other situations where I had the situation of awareness to say, okay, this is dodgy, let's get out of here now, or et cetera. So that's part of PTSD, the race, the situation and awareness. And I don't want to get rid of that because it made me a good doctor. It made me a man who is aware of what is going on around him. And I don't want to drop that. don't want to be this kind of.

Travis White (01:13:43.942)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:13:47.377)
Yes.

Travis White (01:13:52.666)
Yeah.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:14:00.63)
walking through life with my cell phone mobile and think of nothing else and be completely. So that's the PTSD story. There is an advantage when you have got PTSD, just as much as there is an advantage if you get diagnosed with Asperger's or any kind of neurodivergent way that your mind works. Once you find out the traits within you, there will be some traits that you can really be proud of.

Travis White (01:14:04.697)
Yep.

Travis White (01:14:21.403)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:14:27.66)
Others that you typically don't want to be proud of, yet they can become superpowers if you get to know them and harness them for the advantages that they can give you. And I think that is so important. You, for example, have harnessed your depression, your anxiety, and have harnessed that as a purpose in your life that you are now providing this platform here, that you're going out there and say, I've got so much shit happening in my life, there must be a sense behind that.

It gave you the purpose. It drove you forward to become the better human. That means that you will become a better husband, that you will become a better leader in your family, that you will become a better father. And for that, I congratulate you. Now, you could say you could whine and be the victim. No, why do I have seizures? Why do I, my god, my life was so terrible. Or you could say, yeah.

Travis White (01:14:57.871)
Yes.

Travis White (01:15:14.311)
I spent way too long doing that and I can't do that. I have young kids now. I need to be able to be the best father that I can be and I need to be able to be the best husband. I want to be here like...

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:15:21.762)
My point.

Hahaha

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:15:35.386)
I know exactly I know that now and I regret that because I didn't know it when I was in your position I was probably a shit father because I defined myself as the breadwinner I defined myself as the doctor going out there look at me I'm making all this money I'm working about 16 hours a day what a man am I was I there for my children no was I there for my wife no I did not fulfill her needs neither did she fulfill my needs

simply because we both had no clue what our needs were. So there was, we were emotionally, I don't want to call it retarded. We were, although that is probably the right word. I'm still lacking a better word, even if this word is no longer accepted in the nowadays language, but I had no emotional intelligence. Now I've got it, but now it's too late for my children. The damage is done. You are ahead of me on that.

Travis White (01:16:05.425)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:16:25.35)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:16:31.246)
You're ahead of me on that path and for that I congratulate you and hopefully those people out there who are listening can draw a line in the sand and say okay maybe I was not my best in the past due to the many many reasons that they are but what can I change now to become the best version of myself and show up for myself.

Travis White (01:16:50.277)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And I can tell you that there's still plenty of things that I can change that I'm working through and working on and to become a better me.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:17:03.79)
I love it. And I congratulate you on that fact because you have done, you've taken an inventory, which means you actually stopped. And you could be grateful to your life because the seizures made you stop for a moment, made you feel, made you think, put you into a place way outside of your comfort zone where you had to make changes. And now you've reaped the rewards.

Travis White (01:17:22.149)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:17:31.291)
It's this.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:17:32.556)
The saddest thing is for me to see those people who have been lying or have been sitting within their comfort zone, but just on outside. They just sort of lived and then they come to a point late in their life where they say, well, what was this all about? And you are forced and I have been forced to be outside. We have been forced to make decisions and choices and many of these choices.

Travis White (01:17:43.547)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:18:00.846)
in my case the alcohol or other addictive behaviors that I'm not proud of. But then again, they created the experiences that forced me into learning about emotional intelligence, learning about my feelings, learning how to name them so that I can tame them, making me realize that I have got so much more power and so much more choice every second of the day.

Now can't change climate, although I can do my best to reduce plastics or do recycling or whatever it is. I can't change the amount of microplastics that are in the world, but I can maybe reduce them in my immediate environment and raise awareness for others. I can't change that the United States is using far too much GMO food and therefore is able to use glyphosate, but I can choose

Travis White (01:18:31.527)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:18:42.439)
Thank

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:18:56.814)
how I prepare my vegetables, that I wash them, that I choose to know about the dirty dozen and maybe be very careful about them. I know how to reduce toxic input into my body. I know that exercise is of paramount importance, that maybe there's a little bit of benefit in sweating in the sense of either doing a very vigorous exercise or indeed actually sauna. There's a bit of evidence that that helps in detoxification.

Travis White (01:18:59.185)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:19:23.803)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:19:25.79)
And even if it doesn't literally get rid of many toxins, just a little bit, it still changes my physical state, brings in the parasympathetic nervous system. And therefore the rest and heal and restore kind of state within the body. All those things are my choices. And when I add them up in the day, then I have to say that I do a hell of a lot. And that makes me smile because

Sometimes there's little that you find great or gratitude for. There's little that you think you can celebrate and then we actually see, wow, okay, you had some really healthy food, you're hydrated. Last night you made sure you sleep, et cetera. Suddenly if you focus on those things, you suddenly say, okay, I did all that. I can be proud. So guys, do that out there. Guys, just, guys and girls and whatever label you have got, go out there.

Travis White (01:20:08.923)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:20:23.414)
and make those choices. Don't be the victim. Yes, shit has happened to you. Shit continues to be happening to you. And you might be in a really, really, really dark spot. And I congratulate you for being in there because that makes you listen to Travis's show here. That makes you curious. You seek information. You begin to discern bullshit in your life and messages that are

clearly there for you to make money for someone else, that you eat things that are just, where probably the packaging is more nutrient rich, the cardboard compared with what you actually have inside the package, that you learn about all those things and that you start to change. And that's where the magic happens.

Travis White (01:21:14.663)
And I have one last kind of it's a kind of a two-part question for you so number one anybody struggling with a mental health issue whether it be PTSD anxiety depression whatever like What would you say to them? What advice would you give to them?

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:21:17.4)
Mm-hmm. Got it.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:21:36.024)
There is hope in the first instance. Don't give up. Don't live in denial. You know that there is something wrong. 95 % of people who drink too much try to convince themselves and others that there's nothing wrong with them. BS. So stop the denial and accept that maybe you are behaving in ways that are not so great, that you have got a hair trigger, that you're con...

constantly angry that there are times in your life where your family is running away from you. That could be a young woman with PMS, that could be a man under the influence with alcohol. And I'm talking maybe cliches here, but I'm trying to give you examples so that it hits home.

take action and the first action should be talk to your GP, talk to your family physician. Because often enough there are other reasons that you want to rule out. For example, if you're completely depressed, maybe it's a low in mutual assay, then maybe let's have a look at your hormones. Let's run a blood panel to look at what is your thyroid doing, what are other hormones doing in your life. Because there might actually be medical reasons that are causing that.

With in your case the seizures, you did exactly the right thing. You had a neurologist looking at you because seizures that start in adulthood automatically means you have got cancer until proven otherwise, a brain tumor or something going on in your head that we need to rule out. So a CT scan or an MRI or whatever is the appropriate examination needs to be done to rule that out. So therefore check that out, check those things out where clearly there might be something there that

that is there. So if you've got suddenly severe back pain, don't immediately go for the psychology route where you say the issues lie in the tissues. It's all my stress. It's all that. Yes, it might very well contribute to a huge part to your pain and to your inability to function. But it might also be that you actually have got a tumor in your back or that you actually had fallen or slipped and actually have got a slipped disc there. Okay, so

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:23:55.682)
Let's be clear, rule out the nasty stuff and then work on the basics. Nutrition, sleep, hydration, physical exercise. And when I say nutrition, I really wanna break that up. Add those things that are really important that are good for you to heal your gut and replenish your system, but prior to that, remove those things that are further holding you back.

that includes the alcohol, the smoking, the recreational drugs, that includes the high sugar content, high fructose content, that includes the toxic heavy metals, other toxins. And it basically takes a little bit of Sherlock Holmes work to look at what is really going on. But remove those things that are harming you or holding you back, introduce those things that are likely to help you.

And with that already, you will find that there are amazing things happening within your mental health. And I say mental health because it's not necessarily disease. We always like to put things or people into a nice pigeonhole. You have got depression, boom, there you go. Or you've got a personality or a disorder, boom, there you go. Or you've got both, God, you're fucked. So.

Travis White (01:25:05.212)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:25:19.658)
It's not like that. There is often the big spectrum of the disease ranging from sort of normal to absolutely in a mess and homicidal, suicidal, a threat to the world. But there's so much in between the gray zones. And sometimes because we're in a gray zone, the gray zone is normal for us and we don't know how bad we are. So that's then where actually some people come in who can talk to you. Like, for example, my PTSD.

was certainly affecting me, but I didn't need medication for my PTSD. I needed someone to listen and then ask the right questions. Allow me to put things together. And in this case, this woman, I'm forever obliged to her because she made me realize, wow, okay, this is how it all works together. And then with the hypnotherapy, she uncoupled some of the physical responses from the emotions and it was beautiful. So.

a psychologist, a counselor, a life coach, someone who is trained in trauma, who is trained in mental health to help you to unpack some of the garbage that you have been carrying around. And as a rule of thumb, if you're still upset about something that happened more than 18 months ago, it's probably a time that you need to talk to someone. Okay, so as a rule of thumb. And so,

you've got the basics of functional medicine or of living, the basics of living, you should really call it. Then you have got the knowledgeable input. So when I say you need to speak to someone, I don't mean your Auntie Jenny from down the road or your best friend. Now your best friend, if she is a psychologist and a counselor, okay, you could say that's good. Although I dare to say that as a good friend, she might not ask the right questions.

Now you need someone who knows what they are talking about. And then there are the roles of specific interventions of the nutraceuticals that, there are some nutraceuticals, some healthy materials that can work as antidepressants or can work to reduce the anxiety. There are medications that can be incredibly powerful and can help you. For some women,

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:27:40.402)
an SSRI, brosec or something like that can be the world of good and can make a huge difference. It can be a lifesaver. So many of the drugs, the psychiatric drugs have saved so many lives. When it comes to the extremes of diseases such as depression or of states such as depression, sometimes people are suicidal or homicidal. In such cases, more

more aggressive interventions such as electroconvulsive therapy might be appropriate to get you through that absolute extreme state of your pain, of your problems. We have nowadays got newer insights, more accepted insights from alternative medicine. More recently, ketamine as a nasal spray was introduced in the management of depression in the United States. And we need to see it's a new

that the insights that it could be helpful in depression has been there for probably at least 20 years, but it's now more recognized and it's being used in the management of PTSD and other mental health problems, ibuprofen and other psilocybin and basically a psychostimulants or a psycho, what's the word?

I've got a mental block now. Certain substances that were traditionally used more in the recreational field have now been recognized that as part of a holistic approach, they can dramatically speed up the healing from PTSD. Many of them are not recognized. Recently, FDA has chosen not yet to endorse MDMA for the management of some of these.

psychological extreme states. And it's a shame. But then again, it's hard. It's hard for a regulatory body to make these decisions. But you see already the holistic kind of approach I took there from getting the basics right, the basics of exercise and food and hydration, et cetera, and minimizing the toxins to then

Travis White (01:29:41.158)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (01:29:49.521)
Yes.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:29:59.488)
addressing the problems. I mean you can live the healthiest lifestyle if you don't address the fact that you have been for six years raped in the worst way and trafficked as a sexual victim as a child. I have my serious doubts that you suddenly grow to the best version of yourself without addressing such extreme things. And this is me just giving you one example and it might sound extreme, come on.

Travis White (01:30:26.183)
Thanks

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:30:27.992)
Well, the reality is that at least one in three women will have been sexual abused in their lifetime. One in seven men will have received sexual abuse. So let's be quite clear about it. There's some very nasty pieces of shit out there living among us and they are not great. There are, often enough, we live in lives where we have not been modeled healthy ways of coping. And so we are compounding that with the alcohol use, with us.

with our escape mechanisms, with the solutions that we have chosen right now for our pain, the drugs, the alcohol, et cetera. Well, if we don't work on the pain and removing the new not so great coping mechanisms there, you can eat healthy until the cows come home. You will still end up in trouble. So it's a multifactorial approach. Once you use all these tools,

And it will change over time, let's be clear. You might have to start somewhere. And if you're every day getting pissed with two bottles of vodka, that's probably a good place to start. So seek help with abstinence, with sobriety. At least learn how to reduce and modify that whilst you're working on the reasons that you are trying to escape so much. So this would probably be the first place. And as part of that, as part of a good rehab, you will...

Travis White (01:31:27.515)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:31:52.28)
get better nutrition, you get the nutraceuticals, the vitamin B complex that we spoke about. They will make sure that you're going to bed at a reasonable time, that you hydrate, et cetera. So they teach you how to live, they help you to reduce the toxins and increase your grasp on what is really going on and then take it from there. But once you've started the journey, wherever you start, you will be amazed because you will explore so much more.

A new trauma will come, like it or lump it, and you will, however, get better and better to deal with it. Your fear will be forever there, but you get better and better in recognizing what it is and recognizing it for the lies that it tells you. Or you might say, okay, thank you, fear. There is actually something really, really good that you have just told me. Maybe that is something that I immediately need to address. So maybe me running away from that fear.

is not the right thing. Maybe we should embrace it as a messenger. So changing your attitudes towards your emotions and beginning to love yourself, being compassionate and being grateful for your emotions, the good ones and the bad ones, that is a path that is waiting for many of us. And that's called emotional intelligence. And that then leads to things like integrity, which is defined as

doing the right things when no one is watching. And it's those kinds of things. You've got growth waiting. And some of us are just so much further down the road on that. And yeah, again, I immediately become a bit regretful because nowadays I know all these lessons, but I had to learn them the hard way. And so it took me a hell of a long time. So if those of you are a bit further advanced on the age line, that's okay. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. is.

It's important that you draw the line in the sand and now change. And don't go for the pinnacle. Don't seek out the Buddha sitting in a lotus position on the top of the mountain. Now, start with right now. You have already started. You have listened to this talk and I congratulate you on that. Next thing is, once that is finished, I want you to press the like and subscribe button because obviously there is something to do with community and us supporting each other.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:34:16.824)
how better to do than like and subscribe. And in a moment you might see where you can get further information, but you might then choose to actually have a glass of water. You have been listening here for half an hour, an hour. So have a glass of water, big glass of water, down in one. And then think, okay, later on I need to eat. okay. How can I add something green or something yellow or something purple? Okay? And with that, don't mean fruit loops.

I mean that you're okay, no skittles. Skittles are not allowed. Okay, so you know, eat the rainbow. And if you don't know what eat the rainbow means, learn about it. Now you have done already three things there. You took a deep breath, you listened to a podcast, you drank something, and you're now getting curious about life. That's four things. Congratulations, you're taking action. Not difficult.

Travis White (01:35:07.303)
Awesome. Perfect. And the last question for you. So I mentioned before that I personally didn't believe in functional medicine for a while. So, and I'm sure there's some people that are listening that are fence sitters on this. What do you say to those people that are still like, eh, I don't know if that's the right course for me. Like.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:35:27.224)
Hmm, absolutely. If you're happy in your life, then this is really more an academic question, isn't it? Do I believe in God? Yes or no. Do I believe in aliens? Yes or no. Do I believe in functional medicine? Yes or no. Who cares? If you're at a state where you're saying, actually, my life is a heap of shit and I've got all these aches and pains and the mental fog and I walk into a room and think,

Travis White (01:35:34.983)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:35:56.526)
Why the hell did I go in here and what's really going on? And I wake up more tired than I went to sleep with. Hang on, hang on, is that really the life you want to live? If you go to your GP and he is saying, you know what, congratulations, you're a diabetic. You need to learn how to manage your carbohydrates. Well, may I tell you, you probably, the same GP has told you a few years ago that you're hypertensive.

and you're half-heartedly taking your medication and that you're probably overweight. So you've got all those kinds of things. These are messages from the universe. Would you mind just listening to those messages or do you really need a two by four in the form of a heart attack or of a stroke or you being admitted with Alzheimer's? I don't think that you can get so easily back from that. But right now you've got all these messages that

you may wish to listen to. And now suddenly you have to go to your GP and he says, well, okay, let's teach you how to live with diabetes. A functional medicine doctor says, well, where's your diabetes coming from? What is really going on? And what can we do as, what is the root cause or the root causes for your metabolic chaos? And let's work on that, shall we? And suddenly you drop 10 kilos or 20 kilogram, you feel much better, your diabetes is gone.

HbA1c, the marker for diabetes, is normal. Your abnormal liver function has completely sorted itself out. Your gamma-Gt is lower than that of your children. And you think, yeah, look at me. And you feel a million miles better. That is really where the proof lies in the pudding. Or you could put the head in the sand and then die 10 years or 15 years or 20 years too young. And more importantly, live a really wretched life till the end.

full of pain, suffering, and the quality of life that's barely worthwhile mentioning. These are all the lives that many people live. And I think you being here on this show and listening to that, I hopefully have planted that seed that you should be inquisitive and curious and figure out, right now I'm in this and this place. Maybe, I tell you what, I want you guys out there

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:38:22.882)
to spend half an hour or maybe even an hour on yourself. I want you to sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and write down your perfect day. I want you to write down in detail how your perfect day would look like, what you would do, what you would feel, with whom you are, et cetera. Be very, very clear, very specific. Don't just say I'm rich. Tell me exactly how rich. What's your definition?

I want to be healthy. Tell me exactly what amount of weight you want to lose or gain. What about your musculature? As a man, do you want to be more buff? Or what do you want to do? Tell me exactly. And with that, suddenly your brain manifests exactly what the things are wrong. You might say, God, I don't want to wake up completely knackered. Okay, so obviously sleep might be something that you need to address.

You might not be aware of it until you do an exercise like that where you actually write down your symptoms, write down, and in this case we put it positive. We say, wow, okay, I wanna be out there, play with my children. Well, why are you not doing that now? Okay, because you've got pain. Why have you got pain? So you can then drill down into those kind of things and you can then say, well, okay, so I've got the issues clearly of nutrition, I've got the issues of bad sleep.

I've got issues of my finances which stress the hell out of me and so on. And then you use Ikigai or any kind of other system where you look at those pillars of your existence and you work on them. And it's very, very, very likely that functional medicine will allow you to speed up your improvements in certain, if not all aspects of your life.

Travis White (01:40:16.678)
Awesome. Great. Fantastic. love it. Stefan, where, where can people find you? Like on social media and any websites that you can drag into to find your books?

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:40:29.166)
Absolutely. Guys, if you want to go out to Neff Inspiration, choose that handle, look for that handle on all the social media. I'm on Instagram, on Facebook, and my website is neffinspiration.com. I have got three courses there. One is live, which is the five day sugar detox course, which then may lead you into a more in-depth course on

health and well-being should you wish to do so. I have got a seven-day sleep reset where we specifically look at how to improve your sleep in a very holistic way. And I'm working on a seven-day microplastics and nanoplastics reset or detox. Detox is hard because once they are in your system, it's very hard to get them out again. So it's more preventative kind of thing, but it's an awareness course.

So the sugar detox course is live as we speak. The sleep course will be live by the end of this week, coming week. And then a week later, I anticipate that the microplastics course is live. I have retired as an anesthetist, laying down the ecology, so to speak, for my future functional medicine practice, which will probably be live in March, where I can start seeing patients.

myself and treating patients. But I want to plant the seed now. There is hope there. When it comes to the functional medicine side. When it comes to sobriety side, I have written a book here, My Steps to Sobriety. And this is a book available on Amazon or through IngramSpark or any book shops there. It is now in its third edition. It's just been re-released.

with all updated information, updated kind of data and figures out there. So if you're interested in sobriety yourself or if you're a loved one who is living with someone where you just think, oh my God, this book might be help to you, especially when it comes to putting the 12 steps of sobriety of AA in a

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:42:54.382)
in a modern language. The AA was created in 1930s, so there's a lot of God in there and there's a lot of, you know, wording and phrases that are difficult to accept nowadays in a more secular culture. And so this might be of help there. I am outspoken with my own show, Neff Inspiration. So I've got now...

530 guests that I have had the honor of interviewing. Typically guests who have gone through hell and back and kept going. So I try to speak out. I try to have open and meaningful discussions. And I invite you all to do the same. I invite you all around your dinner table to actually have a discussion about things that matter.

and introduce the principles of integrity, of curiosity, of authenticity, of being open and honest with your own feelings and see how that goes. Examining what your role is. think that is one of the biggest things. mean, our role as men, when we look at what is toxic masculinity or what is masculinity, what is a good man? The same for a good woman. What is a good woman?

And there will always be yin and yang. But I think probably when it comes to men, there should probably be more masculinity and a little bit of femininity there. So with a woman, she may choose maybe to be more feminine, but certainly have a degree of masculinity in there as well. I think if you have got a partnership where there are two very masculine people, regardless of their X and Y chromosomes, and trying to compete with each other.

probably not working so well. And I lived in that kind of marriage for a long time. That's why I'm saying we need to define those things that we take for granted and maybe see, well, who do I want to become? What is my right now, my right place? And that is all waiting. So there are so many things, the emotional intelligence, many of my articles that I write on my website are about that. And of course the functional medicine. So you can't say that

Dr. Stephan Neff (01:45:13.336)
that I'm not trying to provide value to you and provide information to you because I strongly believe we all can massively change our lives and in turn change the world. But we need to change ourselves first.

Travis White (01:45:17.863)
See you.

Travis White (01:45:29.74)
Awesome. Thank you, Stefan, for being on the show today. Thank you to all the listeners that are listening. Please like, share, subscribe. You can follow me on Instagram and YouTube. I'm in the process of setting up Facebook as well. My handle is at overcome pod. Until next time.