Reconnect with Your Body to Positively Impact Your Health

Razi Berry, an expert in naturopathic medicine, joins JJ today, discussing how being disconnected from ourselves and others has impacted our ability to hear what our bodies are telling us.

Because we don’t have that communication, we make choices based on outside influences for when and how much to eat.  Doing a few key exercises and eating foods that feed the emotional centers in our brains can improve body intuition, thereby improving our health.

Listen to this wonderfully enlightening episode now!

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ATHE_Transcript_Ep 427_Razi Berry
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Hey! It's JJ and I have my buddy. Wait until you hear this name and it's real. Razi Berry. I have my buddy Razi Berry on today, who I just adore talking about something super cool. We never really talked about, you know, I'm big on connecting the dots between what you're eating and how you feel and what you weigh.
And we're going to be talking about connection today and really, how do you use intuition? To get healthier and what's going on with this big disconnect and how is it impacting our health? That's what we're going to be yakking about. I got the perfect person to talk about it, and that is Razi Berry. And Razi Berry is the founder of the award-winning journal naturopathic doctor news and review.
And the international journal of naturopathic medicine and the naturopathic resource for patients, natural path.net. She was awarded the champion of naturopathic medicine by the American association of naturopathic physicians. And in 2018 was elected vice president of the [00:01:00] health and wellness business association.
She also just got an award over at Mindshare as well. Homeschools while doing all of this, this is super impressive. She homeschools her two daughters and she's writing a book on the science of intuition. She has an amazing podcast, which we. Link to it's called love is medicine. It's new and noteworthy in alternative medicine on iTunes.
And I'm going to put everything that we're going to be talking about today over at jjvirgin.com/intuition, because that's what we're really going to be talking about today. How to unlock the power of your intuition and get unstuck or better health. Fitness now, before I go and dive into that, I want to do a shout out and I have a five-star from gravacado says, okay, I love this review.
All right. Five stars. I may sound vain, but you look better than most younger gals. Well, thank you [00:02:00] very much. gravacado, You can totally say that any time it says, keep up the intellectual, physical and other myriads of creative hard work, JJ. Ah, thank you. Super appreciate that. And here's my big ask.
Leave a review. Let me know what you'd love to hear more about Alrighty. Now, before we dive into this interview, here's another one of my favorites.
Razi Berry. Welcome to the show.
Razi Berry: Hey JJ, I love when we get a chance to hang.
JJ Virgin: I know we had to have a podcast so we could hang out.
I haven't seen you for a bit, which has made me so sad and owner of my favorite name on the planet. Razi Berry. I know, Hey, mine's my real name too. So there you go. So you're, you've done so many cool things [00:03:00] are in the process of doing so many cool things in the health community. I would love to before we dive in to intuition today, which I don't think we've talked about at all on this show.
So that'll be super cool. Love to know. You know how you got into doing all the things that you're doing now, magazine, publisher love is medicine, podcast love as medicine summit, like how'd you get here? Yeah.
Razi Berry: Well, I think just like all, a lot of us in this field, we have had some sort of. Challenge that brought us to really wanting to like find the answers for ourselves.
And then when we do, we want to help others. So when I was real, real young teenager, I had a, it was, I had heart failure. I was in the hospital, with heart failure. And because I had an eating disorder. I actually healed from that experience. And that could be like a story for another day, but I had last rites and everything from the priest.
JJ Virgin: How do I not know this about you all the years? I've [00:04:00] known you, this is definitely a story that, that you will need to be working on and telling. Cause wow. I mean, I didn't know. Didn't know that.
Razi Berry: Yes. So anyway, I had. Wild experience when I was in the hospital, that some people call them a near death experience.
And some people don't like that word. I totally get why, but the important thing is, is my body healed. And before that, growing up in this really allopathicly minded, like we were, you were, we were talking about. Flintstones vitamins a minute ago, I was given antibiotics as a child as if they were like candy.
I mean, my mom was constantly, she didn't know any better and every time we sneezed, we'd go to the doctor and get an antibiotic or something. So when suddenly I'm in this experience where my heart is failing and the doctors couldn't do anything, but I healed, it did kind of plant the seed of like, wow. If the doctors didn't heal me, like how did I heal?
So fast forward to my adult life when I, again got sick I went from doctor to doctor. Nobody could do anything for me. And one [00:05:00] time I'm at the Mayo clinic. And, and I'm like, look, I don't want all these pills that are making my hair fall out and stuff. I want to feel good. And the doctor said to me, one of the doctors told me to go on disability.
Well, this doctor said to me, well, this pain isn't in your body, it's in your head. And so like through tears, JJ, I just looked at her and said, you're fired. And I discovered my, that I was going to figure it out for myself. And I eventually found naturopathic medicine. And because this whole idea from natural functional integrative medicine, that really believes your body heals, when you create the right environment, it was so different from anything I'd ever known in my life.
And when. When I, after I experienced that, I was like, I need to make this a career. And that's how it started.
JJ Virgin: So now we're talking about intuition and
Razi Berry: which sounds a little woo, but I don't go in the [00:06:00] woo of it.
JJ Virgin: You know, what's so funny. All the stuff that sounds woo-woo you know, like someone might argue that meditation's, woo-woo or manifesting's woo-woo.
And then you sit down and look beyond that and into the science of. Hm. So I think that's one of the bigger takeaways with a lot of this stuff, but. Intuition, like, first of all, what what's, why are we talking about intuition? What got you interested in that and how are you putting that into health? Well, when I
Razi Berry: first sort of was kind of processing like kind of as an adult, that my prior issues with eating, I realized that when people have the
eating disorders. It's a real disconnection from yourself. I mean, obviously you're not paying attention to your body's clues. You're not really being fully in your body and listening to the messages your body gives you. If you're not even nourishing your body. And then I took a step back after publishing all these studies over the past 15 years of naturopathic medicine and saw that almost every [00:07:00] disease.
Science to back this up there's numbers to back this up comes from sort some sort of disconnection where people aren't listening to what their bodies need, either through overeating, eating the wrong things you know, eating yourself into diabetes or starving yourself into heart failure or, you know, abusing or traumatizing a child to a future auto immune disease.
So I started to kind of, kind of thinking more about why. So many people don't pay attention. I mean, JJ, you're a multiple time, New York times best-selling author and people, millions of people have gotten help from your books, but there's always this percentage of people that read your book and don't do a damn thing with all the lifesaving information.
Why is that? These people are just disconnected. They aren't, they aren't applying it because they're not listening within. So. I,
JJ Virgin: I feel like too Razi that, that we, you know, I'll give you the example of weight loss, because that's the world [00:08:00] I work in and I was pulling up the other day to sprouts market and I just across the street is WeightWatchers.
And I said to Tim, I go, my gosh, is WeightWatchers still around? Is that still relevant? And I go, that was like the first, my first foray into weight loss. Was WeightWatchers and counting up the points and being totally disconnected from, am I hungry? What am I hungry for? Like, I remember eating all my points, like at nine in the morning, just to get done with all that.
I'm so goal oriented, I've got all these points to do today. I'll just do them right now. And you know, you look at it and go. So much of what I do in my work is get people back in touch with like that, get that connection back to connect the dots. So you're saying this I'm like, oh, I love this already because I think that what we do with a lot of these things is we give of our control.
We act like we don't really know. We don't [00:09:00] really know if that food works for us. So we don't really know oh we're supposed to be working out more, but, you know, so all of a sudden you're working out hours a day. Your body hurts and it's clearly not what you should be doing. You, you allow these things to take over for you instead of trusting yourself.
So what's going on? Why is that happening? Well,
Razi Berry: the reason it happens is because we become disconnected from some of these senses and I'll, and I'll explain what they are that we. Kind of like any muscle when we don't rely on them anymore, they atrophy. And so we're all familiar with sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, you know, the basic senses.
But we have a few senses that help us perceive and understand the world around us and inside of us. So we really know what cravings or feelings are telling us we need. And one of them is a sensory sense called interoception and it's kind of a. Hard word to remember, but it's basically the scientific term for really being [00:10:00] able to be sensitive to and sensible to this inner feelings.
Like one, like basic ones are hunger, thirst, arousal. Like those people pretty much can understand that. But for millennia, we had to really tune in to these. Inner feelings to know like what to feed our family, you know, just to make every decision that we made. Well, because of our modern living, we've become so disconnected from natural, the natural world and from our, the light dark cycles and circadian rhythm.
And, and now we. We look to like Google and Siri to make all of our decisions that
JJ Virgin: we're kind of feeling. I hope we're not looking to Google for our health decision at this point.
Oh boy, that's a whole nother conversation.
Razi Berry: So, so the sense has been just sort of lost. And, and, and the studies show that people with many diseases and things like disordered eating and things [00:11:00] like Diabetes and obesity and things like that. They have this kind of numbed ability of interoception.
And so that I just started to kind of digging in to that research and I find it so fascinating because it's really kind of mediated through, of course, the Vegas nerve and part that connects, you know, our brain, our heart and our gut, and I call them the three hearts. And that's how we process. Data that's coming in, but what we do is we just don't listen to it.
We live in our head, we let other people make our decisions and
JJ Virgin: we count up our points.
Razi Berry: I'm like, isn't it just crazy that like the basic things, JJ, that make us human, like how much to you eat when to eat? Like how much sleep to get or things like, you know procreating, like the things that make us human are the things that were totally like bewildered.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. And if you just like, if you just slow it down and it's like, when people ask me how much sleep [00:12:00] should they have I go? What you need to do is go. On vacation and fall asleep. When you, when you start to get sleepy and wake up when you wake up and don't use an alarm and what you'll find after a week or so is you'll figure out exactly how much sleep you really need.
Right. It becomes really clear when, you know, and boy, same with same with food. Like, you know, Eat in the morning when you actually are really hungry, not when you have a cue, not because you saw a bagel when you were in the Starbucks line, hungry, you know, and keep checking in because probably you're not hungry.
You're not really hungry. And you know, there's no little like Q going on there that I see most of us getting tricked by is what we see on TV or a video, or we smell something baking and boom, I'm hungry.
Razi Berry: And there's been those. I guess studies that have said, like, let's say somebody's like, oh, I must have that chocolate cake, but you offer them an [00:13:00] apple.
They're suddenly not hungry and that's important.
And that's because we're not really listening. The hunger we're feeling is like, we're, we're, the signals are getting mixed up. One of the reasons is because of another one of our. We don't really understand is our chemo sense. That's kind of another crazy word cause anything that has the word chemo in, it sounds so terrifying, but chemo sensing is related to olfaction, which is smell, but it's a lot more than smell JJ.
It is these ways that we sense chemicals in food. And even in other people like pheromones. And so we have these receptors, these olfactory receptors that we thought were just in our nose. We have them in our kidneys. We have them in our gut. There are olfactory receptors in sperm cells, which just shows you how amazing our body is and how.
We just are still discovering the science. So your [00:14:00] body is scanning the environment for these different chemical signals, not just in your nose, but in your whole body. So that's why sometimes when, what we call, you know, in the everyday world, intuition is really, if you pay attention, it's your body signals really.
Asking you what you need. And this one research article in 2010 found that interoceptive accuracy, regulates body responses that are related to your emotional experience. And so the more disconnected you are, the more emotional choices you make.
JJ Virgin: So how do we, since we have become disconnected, how do we, how do we reconnect?
What can we do to start to, you know, Connect the dots again, strengthen that intuition. And I think a big part of that is actually trust ourselves. Oh yeah.
Razi Berry: I like, I like that a lot. So there are some really fun ways that have been studied to increase interoceptive sensibility and [00:15:00] sensitivity. The sensitivity is like, how sensitive are you?
How much. Plugged in, are you getting to that? And the sensibility is now, are you able to use this information kind of akin to, I read the Virgin diet and now am I going to actually do the work? I'm actually going to follow the advice and the processes. So I can go over a few exercises that are kind of like physical, and then I can talk about some nutrient of things too.
So. One study and these are so cool because they're so easy. They're not like a lot of people say, oh, I've heard of doing these, but I didn't know it did this for me. So one is power posing. It's really amazing. So some lines of research about interoception show that it is improved through this enhancement of subjective feelings of power.
So power posing is when you let's say you sit back in your chair and you put your feet up on your desk with your like hands behind, kind of like that classic, like CEO. Pose right. That you see in like entrepreneur [00:16:00] magazine or something. And when it showed that after week of doing these power poses and increasing people's subjective feelings of power, this feeling helped them become more in tune with these body signals.
So another fun power pose. And I do these with my daughters is you can just stand up with like your feet, hip width apart, and your hands on your hips with just kind of. Knowing look on your face and you can make up your own power poses too. And it's just a fun exercise, but it just goes to show that what you do with your body does translate into your nervous system.
Just like the studies that say if you're sad, but you smile. Eventually it will reactivate the actual effective feelings in your brain because it's like the top down versus bottom up of employing these, this kind of nervous system. So power posing is one of the lines of research. Another one is body [00:17:00] scanning, and it's really simple too.
It showed that people that did body scanning for eight weeks where you just. Either listen to a tape, or you did it yourself where you just scan from top to toe of each part of your body and just pay attention to what your body's feeling. So you can start from your head, your eye, you know, your forehead.
Is it, is it tense? Is, are you furrowing? Your brow is your jaw tight? Are you holding your breath? Are you sucking in your stomach? You know, all the way down and you don't have to do anything with it. It's just the act over eight weeks of people. Doing this process, help them increase their interoceptive accuracy.
JJ Virgin: So you mentioned too about food now. I think as far as the body stuff goes, anyone who's been in a bad mood and angry and walks outside, looks up, looks up towards the sky and smiles knows how quickly you can kind of start. That physiology. So you know that [00:18:00] one to be true. And so now it's just kind of remembering the power pose and getting yours.
We definitely all have our power pose, especially if you used to like posing for photos, it's like, got it. But I'm curious when you said that That food could do this. Yeah.
Razi Berry: So when we, so what the food is actually doing is it's strengthening the parts of the brain where this type of information is processed.
So there have been FMRI studies that show when people make intuitive decisions, what areas of the brain. Kind of lights up, so to speak. So a very precise part of our brain that's associated with intuition is, I mean, it's not that it's important, but it's the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. And so it's an area that stores information about past rewards and punishments and you know, damage to this area causes real changes in decision-making.
And it can cause people. To not have to not really follow the guide or have really [00:19:00] intuitive insight. They're more kind of robotic about decisions that they make. So foods and nutrients that strengthen this part of your brain and also the kind of brain heart gut axis. So it's just really, again, what I love about this research I've done is it's so simple.
So one of them is alpha-lipoic acid containing foods. So avocado, spinach, broccoli potatoes. And if you're a meat eater, like I am. You know, not every day, but pasture-raised meats and organ meats, which I know everybody doesn't like to eat that, but those are really high in alpha-lipoic acid containing foods.
And you can also take those supplements. Others are of course, flavonol rich foods. So green tea. berries and green and red veggies, like, like rainbow shard is one that's really, really good for that. And then there's foods that also help support the hippocampus. So it's a really sensitive [00:20:00] area in the brain.
There are a few things that kind of disrupt proper function and foods that are rich in DHA and EPA together are really important. So the best sources of DHA of course, are fatty fish, salmon, sardines, anchovies, hemp seeds, and hemp seed oil, algae, and Cod liver oil. And so the thing that's neat is that DH I'm sorry, this area of your brain like we now know the brain is plastic, but the hippocampus.
Been is thought to be even more plastic. So that's the good news is this area of your brain can always change. And then phosphatidylserine rich foods or phosphatidylserine supplement. So that's like mackerel, organ meat, pasture-raised beef, dark meat, Turkey, and chicken, white beans. And if you, you don't like to eat those meats and it's easy to find phosphatidylserine rich foods.
I prefer to find one that doesn't have soy if possible, it's really sometimes hard [00:21:00] to do that. So those are some of like the basic nutrients, and it's, it's less that like, oh, you take this food and suddenly you're like psychic. It's not about, oh, darn it.
JJ Virgin: I was like, I feel very, I've I feel like I've really, I get big intuitive hits and those are all the foods I eat.
So,
Razi Berry: I know, I mean, these are foods you talk about in your books. So
JJ Virgin: the intuitive diet there. Yeah. Just another reason to eat, to eat these foods. But I, I got to tell you, I think the biggest, I think the biggest reason, you know, so disconnection can hurt your health. And I see disconnection as a massive issue. We have disconnected not only.
Are we disconnected from ourselves, we're disconnected from each other, but I feel like a lot of that just has gone with people stopping, trusting themselves. So, you know, it's like learn to trust yourself. You know, right. I mean, like, you're going to know you're going to know best. I mean, that is one of the things as a [00:22:00] nutrition expert, I would just sit down and let someone
talk me through all of their stuff. Cause usually the answers were and what they were telling me, you know, it was like, it was right there.
Razi Berry: Well, it's a lot of times I'm sure many times with clients, people would be like JG. Like how did this happen? And you'd be like tell me how it happened and how often do people really know, but they are looking for that validation because as women, especially we've been taught from day one to not really trust our bodies.
JJ Virgin: Right. And then our bodies do weird stuff. And we're like, what is that? You know? I mean, which is why, when you look back to, why do, why do women get eating disorders is like trying to stop your body from going and doing all these crazy changes. So you know. Starts, it starts way back when, all right. We're up against the clock, but I wanted to just before we, before we close it off, you have your awesome podcast
love is medicine. And I would just love, love for you to explain why you called it that. [00:23:00] Yeah.
Razi Berry: I know I get that question asked a lot, but it seems to really be resonating, but here's why JJ here's. Why is that like, so I've been publishing this kind of science of natural health for a really long time.
And then again, seeing how people have we have all this amazing science that are at our fingertips and still people aren't really. Doing it right. Because otherwise, why would it be that 43% of all American adults have at least one chronic illness? And I mean, that just is like the scariest and
JJ Virgin: 70% are overweight or obese.
I mean, so I think it's probably higher now or so it's like, okay, how many people are actually in this healthy little
Razi Berry: sliver? Yeah, exactly. And that's what we're supposed to be. That's how we're supposed to live. We're supposed to thrive. we're put on, You know, we are having this like human experience to, with everything around us that we need.
And so it's been our own fault people don't like, because they feel like I'm judging. Like, we were saying is people's fault. Well, I mean, if it's about your lifestyle, then it kind of. [00:24:00] Whose fault is it? So the reason I say love is medicine is because it's kind of an act of love to reconnect yourself, to be honest enough with yourself to say like, what do I need to do differently?
How do I need to reconnect to good social connections? That's a source of love. How do I need to reconnect to like my external environment and nature? That's a source of love and how do I need to connect back to myself and love myself? And that's why I chose to call it. Love is medicine.
JJ Virgin: It's so flowing into everything that I'm really working towards right now, which is that we, as, especially as women are caretakers, we just are, it's like, it's inevitable at some point in your life.
And I know right now you're going through it. You're going to be a caretaker. And ultimately the first person you need to take care of when you're a caretaker, is you. And it is the ultimate. Like everyone sees, sees that is so selfish. And I see it as the most selfless thing you can do so that you can show up and do what you, you know, what you want and need to [00:25:00] do on the planet.
Razi Berry: You know, I, I'm realizing more and more that like my job as a parent is to show my daughters how I can take
JJ Virgin: care of exactly. Not sacrifice, not be the martyr, nothing. I have one one person in my life. Who's the absolute martyr and always has health problems always. And I'm like, yeah, because you put yourself last there's no, there's no trophy for that.
Right. And if you do have killed kids, what did you just teach them, like I'm not going to teach my kids that I'm gonna teach my kids put you put your health and yourself first so that you can then go out and do these amazing things out there in the world. Otherwise you can't, you'll be a, you know, you'll end up being a burden on others.
instead of being able to take care of others and my
Razi Berry: starting this podcast and this project was because. Fail at this sometimes too. I mean, it's one of the reasons why you're such a mentor to me, JJ, is because there've been times where you've be like, Razi[00:26:00]
JJ Virgin: well, isn't that love too? I mean, to me, I want people around me who will not let me play small, who won't let me do go off and do silly stuff who are watching out for me. He'll pick me up when I fall dust me off, but if I'm lying there on the floor being a baby about stuff, they'll go get up. Just get upright now.
So sometimes we just need to be told to get up dust off, keep going. All right now, you have a cool freemium for everybody. Tell us about it. And I'm going to put it at jjvirgin.com/intuition. So it is called the secret to unlocking your intuition. What's what you got in there. It's
Razi Berry: just a fun download that shares of what we talked about in some other things.
Some ways that you can increase that kind of muscle, the interoceptive accuracy of listening within your body. So it's kind of will give you a guide of these nutrients we talked about and a few others, and some other practices too, so you can get started to start trusting yourself [00:27:00] again.
JJ Virgin: Cool. So it's like, it's the foods help you listen to your gut.
You go, okay. You used a lot of big words in there. I'm like, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to fifth grade. This one, here you go. You're so welcome again. It's JJvirgin.com/intuition. Thank you so much. Razi for, for jumping on the show and for doing so much cool stuff out in the world for everybody we'll have in the show notes, the link to your podcast as well.
And your blog, you've got great resources and information. And really, to me, this is sort of the missing piece of health. And I, I literally had someone over this weekend who was, you know, doing all sorts of self care and everything else I go. Yeah. But what about relationships and connection? And are you happy?
You know, it's like, you know, these pieces of it this are, are probably the most important pieces of all that will guide everything else. So thank you for being a champion. Thank you, JJ.
Razi Berry: Thank you so much for being such a force in my life. I [00:28:00] appreciate you.
JJ Virgin: Ah, thank you. Now, after the break, I'll be giving you a takeaway.
So stay with me.
Welcome back. This is the time where I give you an action step. And as I was listening to Razzie throughout I go, oh my gosh, this really is about two, two big words, kept popping up trust and connection and thought if the reason that we are not listening to our intuition is because we've stopped. Trust stopped, not stopped, stopped trusting ourselves.
And so we. Really disconnected from how we actually feel. And so that is what I'm going to say is like step one is to connect back in and start to listen. I had a great mentor early on in life who said, listen, truly listen. That simple little phrase and, and boy, listen, truly listen. When you get up in the morning, one of the things I've been really working on is [00:29:00] shortening my feeding window.
So eating most days within an eight hour window at the most 12 hours, that's like my absolute do not eat longer than that. But ideally I'm doing more like a shorter eight hour window sometimes even six. So the first thing I do in the morning is I have my black Bulletproof coffee. I just do the beans and water with lemon.
And I have a lot of that until I start to notice that I'm really. And that's when I eat, I don't eat when I'm not hungry. I eat when I'm really hungry, but I've had a lot of fluids because quite often we're not hungry. We're thirsty. And then I just kind of pay attention to the rest of the day and make sure that I'm eating when I'm hungry, not when I think I'm supposed to be eating because of something else going on, or I smelled something or saw a commercial or whatever.
So looking for places where you can start to trust and connect rather than disconnect. Right from yourself and from other people again, I think one of the biggest risks we have right now to our health is that is the [00:30:00] disconnection from other people. So how can you connect more to yourself and how can you connect more to others in your life?
All right. Those are my marching orders for today. And again, you can pick up the show notes, we'll link over to. Razi's freemium and also her podcast and blog at jjvirgin.com/intuition. And if you haven't subscribed yet, remember subscribe to JJ. Super-duper easy subscribetojj.com. Go straight on over there.
Subscribe, leave a review. I'll give you a shout out and thank you so much for your support. See you next. Bye.

 

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