The following text is an excerpt from a conversation with Todd Goodwin, Board Certified Hypnotist at GoodwinHypnosis.com, who was interviewed by Conor Flynn, host of the Rx Podcast (DrinkRxCoffee.com), on July 30, 2018.
This fourth segment discusses how your mind affects your health and well-being.
TODD GOODWIN: People talk about junk food, and how they shouldn’t drink or eat that and people who are health conscious who want to have a certain type of organic food. And that’s great. But what are you feeding your mind? If you eat organic, but you watch the news constantly, or you’re constantly exposing yourself to stressful input, mentally, then that could potentially be worse than eating fast food. Food is information, it informs our genes, and what we normally think of as information is also information. And it also informs our DNA, in terms of certain genes expressing or not expressing. There are lots of studies on epigenetics now, which is how the environment, the chemical environment of the cell, which is triggered by external factors, like food, psychology, pollution, all of those things actually affect the expression of certain genes, the function of cells. So our physiology is affected, potentially as much by what we’re thinking and feeling as by what we’re eating. And I think that’s something where today, people are not aware of that nearly as much as they will be in the future.
The next major step forward in healthcare, I believe, or really more from a grassroots point of view, is wellness, from the mental point of view, and the causative factors of psychosomatic conditions. You know, something like 80 plus percent of health conditions are caused by or influenced by stress. So if you can address that, whether you’re using hypnosis to remove the stress-inducing beliefs, or to make peace with something that happened in the past, or accept that you have no control in the world, or you’re just doing something else, managing that emotional or mental side is critically important to not only quality of life, but length of life, too.
CONOR FLYNN: I think that it’s interesting, you’re mentioning so much about the mental state of wellness, because in the fitness world, everything’s based primarily around working out and diet. But there’s also the sleep aspect, that’s a huge function of it, then everybody always talks about the power of positive thought you see all these people nowadays, all these quotes all over the internet. I mean, obviously, we post about them on my social media also, it but that’s a real thing, where it’s a, you know, the positive thought aspect, and the wellness of thinking is a big contributor to how good is your workout going to be? How much are you going to be able to sleep, you’re going to be laying in bed late at night, stressed out about things that are going to happen. So I think it’s very important that people do those things, you know, read a book in bed or listen to, I listen to podcast all the time before I go to bed. Because there’s darkness and I’m just hearing a voice, and it puts me almost in a hypnosis state after 10-15 minutes, and I’ll set the sleep timer. I don’t fall asleep. But I’m in a dark room. I don’t have those blue lights going. And I’m not staring at something, reading it. So it’s just me in my mind, and I’m listening to something interesting. And if I do fall asleep, it’s still playing, and maybe subconsciously, it’s feeding me something positive. I always try to make sure it’s something I can learn about too.
TODD: Yeah, I think that’s great. The mind and the body are not separate. It’s not enough to say, “I need to take care of my mind, or I need to take care of my body.” They’re connected. You know, your mental states can influence how good your workout is, your mental state is going to determine how well you digest your food. And you know, a lot of gastrointestinal disorders like IBS, gastritis, even Crohn’s disease and colitis are influenced by stress, and in some cases may be caused by them. Immune problems, autoimmune issues, and even cancer is influenced by stress levels. Elevated stress, especially when it’s chronic, suppresses immune function, which makes someone more likely to develop or proliferate cancer, more likely to get infections, or have difficulty healing. So it’s having the right attitude. And it’s not the same as having a positive attitude or a can-do attitude.
CONOR: It’s not all about the book, The Secret, you can’t just think your way. It’s a combination of multiple factors.
The next segment opens a discussion on the unhealthy psychology of social media.