Ep. 28: Brooke Goldner, MD – How to Reverse Inflammation to Enhance Healing

00:00 – excerpt from the episode
00:46 – intro (listen to discover a little more about your host. Martin will tell you a new lesser-known fact about Dr. Maya)

01:21
Dr. Maya Novak:
One of the most common statements that many doctors say to their patients is “Your diet doesn’t play a role in this,” or “No, you don’t have to change your diet because of your condition.” Nutrition plays a huge role in healing and food played a significant role in my own recovery from my ankle fracture as well. I know for a fact that it can help supercharge your healing powers when you’re adding it to mind-body work – but it’s still one of the things that is so often overlooked by conventional medicine.
For those who are dealing with any kind of autoimmune disease, especially lupus, it’s almost impossible not to be aware of Dr. Brooke Goldner’s work. We got connected in 2020 and she was one of the speakers on my Mindful Injury Recovery World Summit. And because it’s full of invaluable knowledge I decided to share it also here on my podcast. Please enjoy this amazing conversation.

02:28
Dr. Maya Novak:
In this interview, I’m joined by Dr. Brooke Goldner, who is a board certified medical doctor and the author of three best-selling books. These are Goodbye Lupus, Goodbye Autoimmune Disease, and Green Smoothie Recipes to Kick Start Your Health and Healing. She has been featured in so much media, on TV, radio, magazine covers, documentaries, podcasts and so on. She is truly an internationally recognized expert in healing chronic disease. And, as you will hear, she also has an incredible healing story herself. Dr. Goldner, thank you so much for being here.

03:05
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Well, it’s my pleasure.

03:06
Dr. Maya Novak:
So, I would like to hear why – first of all, before we go into the juicy part of healing, I would love to hear why did you become a medical doctor? What is the reason behind that?

03:18
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
The reason I became a medical doctor – goodness, I hated sleep and love stress! No, you know, goodness that’s a good question. I come from a family where one of the huge values that I was instilled with was helping others. My family was refugees to America after World War 2. They were Holocaust survivors and they went through an experience where they didn’t really get much help for years. They got rescued but many people died. And so service and taking care of people has always been a huge part of how I was raised. As soon as I was old enough at 14, my mom had me start volunteering at the hospitals. I’ve just always – and I’ve always loved it. I love service. I love taking care of people. So, that’s always been a part of who I was. And I was always that person also that if somebody has something going on, they’re going to talk to me. People wanted to come for my advice. Even people sitting next to me on a bench would find themselves just feeling like they want to talk to me and open up about things! So I think that’s just innate to who I am. Then I actually got sick when I was in high school with something called lupus and I ended up in kidney failure and taking chemotherapy and a really intense experience where I was very close to dying. And one of the things that really rescued me emotionally from how horrific that was and really letting myself think about it too much was immersing myself in my schoolwork and my studies. So, I literally would just read my textbooks, and my favorite thing was my biology textbooks, my chemistry textbooks. I was in the advanced placement classes and I just – I really loved it and it kind of gave me an escape to try to intellectualize my illness and try to understand it intellectually rather than just what I felt like. It was what exactly is happening in my body. What is the immune system? What are all these things? So I got really, really interested in biology and my initial thought was maybe I can go into research and come up with a cure for lupus, right? I thought maybe – you know – no one else has done it, but maybe that’s something I could do. So even with the chemo and the high dose meds and everything I actually graduated top of my class from high school. I got a scholarship to Carnegie Mellon, which is one of the top schools for groundbreaking research in science. And that was kind of my initial goal. I thought maybe I’ll be a doctor, but maybe research would be more important. And I actually did genetic research for three years at Carnegie Mellon into leukemia and neurobiology. You’re not supposed to be able to research until you’re a junior, but having been giving a potential death sentence when I was 16, nobody really can tell me what I can or can’t do, and I don’t know how much time I have, right? So, I’m not wasting time. So, I just kept showing up at the labs constantly until they let me work with them. So I got my research position as a sophomore. What I found was intellectually I loved the science, but I hated sitting in a lab all day. It was boring in terms of like there was no social interaction and I’m a hugely social person. I break test tubes easily, I’m kind of clumsy. It just wasn’t – and then in research, you keep doing things and it doesn’t work, right? Like that is research. You have theory and then you do something and it doesn’t work, and then you evaluate why didn’t it work, and then you try it again, and then I got a success and then I can repeat it. I’m like this is, you know – it’s very slow and difficult and just didn’t feel emotionally fulfilling for me and so that’s when I really made the decision that the best way I could help people would be to become a doctor. Specifically, my thought was one of the things I’ve always been really good at is being successful and happy in spite of living with chronic disease. So I thought, well, maybe there is no cure for lupus or the chronic disease, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a beautiful purposeful passion-filled life. A lot of people with chronic disease stop living. They’re sitting at home. They’re on disability. They’ve given up. So, I thought well, if I could be a doctor that can connect with patients to say listen, I’m sick too but I’m here. I’ve done this, you can do it too. Maybe I can teach them how to have the best life possible while dealing with illness. And so that’s why I initially ended up going into psychiatry. I thought I was going to go into rheumatology to treat people with autoimmune disease, but what I found even in medical school, was that the outcomes in our patients had more to do with their mental health than it did the physical diagnosis. I saw that as a med student and I thought well, maybe if I help people more of physical with emotional health, they’ll have better medical outcomes. So that’s how I ended up going that route. I was a Medical Director, treating the homeless out in Long Beach for a non-profit. I was rehabilitating them from their traumas to help them become a member of society again and work and all that stuff, and enormously rewarding work. But that was really where I ended up and I was able to help people who’d been on disability for a decade or more get back to living again and to functioning in society. I absolutely loved that and I still use that in my work today, but what ended up happening was that I reversed my disease completely. I changed my diet at 28 when I was in my residency training, and the lupus that I’d lived with for 12 years went away. And I mean I had kidney failure, I had mini strokes and blood clots. It was really – I mean I almost died at medical school from mini strokes. I was just sick chronically from 16 to 28, and then I changed my diet and my labs go to normal, all of my chronic pain goes away. It actually took me a few years to really understand that it was gone because I’m a western-trained medical doctor, a scientist, and I know that – I know that this is an incurable disease. I also only changed my diet and I never learned anything about diet or nutrition in medical school, and if it was actually important for disease us that, right? So, obviously, diet has nothing to do with illness. So even though it happened in my own body, I didn’t really recognize it. I just thought it was another remission, but a remission where your labs are negative is not something that happens. When I would be in remission, my labs would be stable, my pain would be stable, I wasn’t currently dying. But I didn’t know how to explain it. It wasn’t until four years later when I finally decided to take the risk of having my first child, which I was told I should never do with lupus but my labs had been negative for four years, and after having my son it still never came back. That’s when I realized that I actually didn’t have a disease anymore, and that’s when I went back to the research and started studying the impact of nutrition on cellular repair and recovery and inflammation. I found out that I’d accidentally been on the lowest inflammatory diet possible. The most anti-inflammatory diet possible, and that’s what had caused my disease to reverse, even after 12 years of being sick. And it didn’t just affect the chronic disease I’d lived with for 12 years. I ended up getting a C-section because my son was breach – he was actually butt first, so there was no way. He could not come out that way, and so I had to have a C-section and I was up walking around after my C-section and I was feeling better within a couple of days. I remember telling my OB-GYN that she’s an amazing surgeon because my patients who had C-sections usually would be in pain for weeks and still have chronic issues sometimes for months. I said I’m already better and it’s only been a couple of days. And she said to me, and I still get goosebumps when I think about it, she says, well, you – I’m a great surgeon, she said that. I’m a great surgeon, but you have an extraordinary ability to heal. I’ve never seen somebody repair themselves that quickly. I couldn’t even heal a pimple when I had lupus, and I’d had major surgery that was almost invisible within a couple of days because the same nutrition that can reserve chronic disease can also help your cells recover rapidly from an acute injury as well. So that’s been kind of my path to, I guess, first of all, just becoming a doctor, and then really what I feel like is becoming from doctor to a healer. Because I ended up retiring from my practice, as much as I loved it working at the non-profit, and switching to teaching this primarily - which is helping people recover from chronic pain and chronic diseases through lifestyle and nutrition. Over the past decade, I’ve healed thousands of people all over the world from things from lupus, to rheumatoid arthritis, other chronic pain conditions, diabetes, heart disease – all by showing them how to use nutrition for cellular repair, and it’s been quite extraordinary. And now I get to do stuff like this! I get to talk to people like you and share it, which is what I do as much as I can. I try to share the information. I share it for free online constantly because this should be the way medicine works. This should be the primary thing that people do is go, oh, you’re sick? Let’s do this for your nutrition. The prescription should be your nutrition plan, right? Rather than going into procedures and medications. So, that’s my long-winded answer! [laughs]

12:24
Dr. Maya Novak:
[laughs] No, this is great. This is so, so inspiring and that’s the reason why I was so excited to jump on the call and talk to you. Because it’s true, there are things that are not talked about enough, and one of them is definitely nutrition and how diet and what kind of role it plays in healing. Even if you’re talking about chronic disease, disease, or if we are talking about injuries and healing from injuries. It’s not a big difference between the two, right.

13:00
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Absolutely. And it’s funny because right now it’s flu season, and I’ve been getting so many messages from people who I’ve put on nutrition plans for their autoimmune disease who have been writing me messages going I actually did get the flu, but normally I’d be in bed for a month and it’s only been two days and I’m better. That’s what happens. My eight year old has always eaten this way his whole – oh no, he’s not eight, what am I thinking! I have a seven year old now, and one that’s about to turn 11 next. My almost 11 year old last had a cold when he was two – two! Because his immune system is so powerful because he’s never eaten inflammatory foods. He’s always eaten in this way and his immune system works in a way that doesn’t make sense according to western medicine. Because when I did my pediatrics rotation they said we expect every kid to get one or two colds or flus every season. It doesn’t happen. And when there is some kind of cold that goes through my house – I actually did get one a couple of weeks ago for the first time in a while – two days. And the first day I felt like I had symptoms and then the next day it was just almost gone. And I was like – there was a little bit of mucus and stuff leftover. But when I used to have lupus, I once had an upper respiratory infection with sinus problems for six months, it just wouldn’t go away. Now, it’s like one to two days, max, and I barely feel it. So, your body is actually programmed on a cellular level to repair itself from everything from inflammatory diseases to injuries. All the programming is there, like the pro software in your computer. It’s all there. We don’t need to do that, right. If you get a paper cut, you don’t glue it. You wait 24 hours and the paper cut’s pretty much gone, right, because your cells know how to fix themselves. But somehow that’s gotten lost in western medicine, that we’ve become so good at these really fancy medicines – and there’s been amazing breakthroughs in medications where people are alive today who wouldn’t have been in the past because of medicine. I am anti-medicine. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for medicine at 16 that saved my kidneys, right. Now, nowadays I would choose nutrition first. I’d rather have a green smoothie than chemo. But, it still works, right. So, we have all these medicines but we’ve become so reliant on it we’ve forgotten that the body does have the ability to repair itself, it just needs the right tools. For most people, they are completely malnourished of the tools their body needs for repair. In addition to that, they’re eating foods that cause further damage. And so when you combine those two things, that’s where chronic disease comes from, you can’t repair something that you should. It’s also why you can change someone’s diet, like me who’d been sick for 12 years. I changed my diet and within a few months, everything was gone. This year it’ll be 15 years that I’m disease free, right. So your body’s always waiting. That’s the good news. Because sometimes people think but I’ve been sick 30 years. It’s okay. Your body’s ready. You just need to take action now, and yes, there are sometimes things that can’t be fixed, it’s scarred over, it’s lost, but you can still get a healthy as your body possibly can and usually the results are more than [inaudible].

16:00
Dr. Maya Novak:
Oh, exactly. I love that you mentioned that you are good even if you get a cold there too because this is exactly my experience as well. Since I changed my diet, even if I get the flu it’s like it’s intense, much more intense because I feel that it’s compact, but it’s two or three days and it’s gone. In the past, it was a completely different story. So, can we talk a bit about this diet and what did you change? When you changed your diet what kind of changes did you make?

16:34
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Well, I can tell you really like - since we’ve been doing disease reversal and testing and optimizing things over the past decade, so I can you the really simple way to do it right now, right? Because it was hit or miss back then. I had to go back and say what worked, what did work in spite of, and what definitely contributed, right? And I think that’s what’s missing from a lot of kind of – you hear these testimonies of people who have some kind of breakthrough in their disease, and they attribute their results to everything they did, right? Like this is what I ate, so everybody just eat that. And then some people do that and they get worse, right? It’s because it wasn’t everything they did that made them better. They got better in spite of some things and because of some things, right. So, I didn’t want it to be that way and I spent over a year reverse engineering studying and retesting things to see what are the specific things that actually accelerate cellular repair, and what are the things that just might do nothing, or possibly slow it down. It’s very simple, although it’s not easy for people to give up the foods they don’t like; it’s actually very simple to do. The foods that cause the most inflammation and interfere with people’s health and ability to heal the most are usually the most commonly eaten foods – meat, dairy, processed foods, and oils. I know in America, that’s most people’s diet, right? It’s put a burger on a processed wheat bun with some cheese, right. And it’s been cooked in oils or you’ve got oils on the French fries. So many people, their entire diet comes from that. I actually was a vegetarian, but the majority of my food had dairy in it. So even though I didn’t eat meat it was because of all the dairy I ate. A lot of my clients even don’t eat dairy, but they’re on like a paleo kind of plan and they’re eating a lot of meat and that made them sick. We get rid of the meat, and then all the other parts of it actually get better. So the meat and the dairy are very inflammatory. Oils – olive and avocado oil are omega-9s, they’re inflammatory directly, but most other oils are. Unless omega-3 like flax or chia. Then, like I said, the processed foods. So anything that has an expiration date that’s more than a couple of days usually has chemicals in it. All the aisles with the processed food, like the cereal aisle, the snack food aisle, anything that has the word healthy on the box, you know it’s not healthy, all of that. So, that’s a lot of what people’s diet is and that’s why they’re sick. Every day it’s kind of like – well, I talked about like the cut example. You get a cut on your hand and you get a scab. Well, every time you eat one of those foods it’s like scratching the scab off. So, even though your body is trying to heal every day, you’re not allowing it, right. Then the other part of it is eating enough of the foods that allow your body to repair itself. What I have found is that the foods that supply the nutrition you need the most are going to be, one, foods that have the highest concentration of vitamins and minerals, right. The highest concentration of vitamins and minerals and other phytonutrients and antioxidants comes from cruciferous vegetables and dark leafy greens, so kale, broccoli. I have a teacher that says only kale can save us now! So those foods, which most people any of, they use kale to like decorate the buffet, it’s not actually one of the things you choose to eat. Those foods are so nutrient-dense you can replenish the depleted supply of those phytonutrients fast if you concentrate on eating a lot of those foods in their raw form. Omega-3 fatty acids are directly anti-inflammatory and they also allow your cells to function and communicate better. So, people who are omega-3 deficient, they can’t heal as quickly from anything because their cells are slow, they can’t communicate properly, and they can’t eliminate inflammation because their low in omega-3. Most people don’t eat any omega-3s. Then water intake. Actually, water is a key component in all of the different reactions that have to take place in the body for your cells to repair themselves. So, people can eat the perfect diet but if they’re having 30 ounces of water a day, they’re going to hit a plateau and not be able to keep healing. That’s one constantly I see. People are drinking soda all day, energy drinks, and coffee, but there’s no water or very little water. So, those are the things I find hold people back the most. What I’ve actually done is, for most people, they go that sounds terrible, I hate water; I don’t know what to do with this omega-3. Like flax and chia seeds and greens are gross. So, what I’ve figured out is while most people won’t get the quantities I want to sitting there with a fork, I’ve designed these green smoothie recipes that allow people to do it and they get the results that way. So, you take a blender and you fill it three-quarters of the way with like kale, spinach, chard – some good dark leafy greens. Then you put in a handful to a half a cup of like flax and chia seeds in there. Then you put the water in to the level of the greens so you’ve got your water. And then the rest of the way, 25 percent, you put your favorite fruits in flavor. It’s just enough fruit to actually make it taste like fruit instead of making – most people will go making a green smoothie and it’s all fruit with like a handful – like anoint or just like a little bit of green. It’s the opposite, just enough fruit to make it taste good. You blend that up, and if you can drink that by the end of the day, you’re going to get an enormous dose of all the foods your body needs to heal itself. So, a lot of times that’s how people who are not ready to give up the burger and fries at least have the smoothie so your body can start the repair process. So how much people do of those things depends on what they’re trying to do and how fast they’re trying to get better. But the more of those foods you eat, and the less of the inflammatory foods you eat, the healthier you’ll be, the faster you’ll heal. So, it’s very simple. It’s hard for some people to put into place, but simple in terms of what they eat.

22:18
Dr. Maya Novak:
Oh, this is fantastic. So, I would like to ask you about omega-3 a bit more.

22:25
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Sure.

22:25
Dr. Maya Novak:
Because of anti-inflammatory, and with injuries, there is a lot of pain and inflammation, swelling, and everything. Now, usually the first thought about omega-3, because of all the media and everything, is oh, then I have to take fish oil supplements.

22:42
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Yes.

22:42
Dr. Maya Novak:
So, what is your opinion about that? In your experience, is it okay that we take fish oil supplements for example?

22:50
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Well, everything I teach is from results, not opinion. Just to make it clear. Because everyone with a mouth has an opinion, and opinions don’t really help anyone out, but I can tell you what my experience is. So, initially, when I started doing this a long time ago I was using fish oil for the omega-3. Now, fish oil does work. It is an omega-3 source. You don’t want to eat cooked fish because omega-3 is very heat sensitive, and then cooked fish also has other issues. It’s got omega-6, saturated fat, and other things. So, pure fish oil. The problem is, most people who use fish oil, one, they’re not actually getting a benefit because they’re taking capsules, right, capsules sitting in their cabinet. If you took – now realize fish oil is fat from a fish’s body – if you took a dead fish and put it in your cabinet, how long would you let it sit and there and still eat it, right? It rots really fast. So if you’re taking a fish oil supplement that sitting in your cabinet, you’re eating rotten fish fat and there’s no proven health benefits to rotten fish fat. So that doesn’t work. What I found was necessary to use fish oil as a supplement was to use a liquid fish oil. You have to use a high-grade supplement and you buy that liquid fish oil. Now, most people start getting like a PTSD from their mom trying to give them cod liver as a kid, you know, but that’s the stuff, right. So you use the liquid fish oil that you have to keep refrigerated. It has to be one of those companies that put it in a lightproof heatproof vacuum-sealed whatever. And then you drink it, and they have to drink like at least a quarter of a cup a day of this stuff. So, it’s gross, but it does work. And I did use to encourage people to do that, and they didn’t like having to that, but it did work to bring inflammation down. But it has to be taken that way for it to work. And you’ll know when it goes bad because you’ll open the bottle and go ugh, right. So that did work. It does work for inflammation. There were some issues though. One is it’s a direct source of DHA and EPA which are good for brain health and immunity. But it bypasses EPA, which is really important for brain function and other things as well. Which they’ve learned more recently that actually need all of the different components of omega-3s and not just DHA and EPA. So the other problem is because it bypasses it, your body has no ability to regulate it. So, you’re just getting a huge dose of EPA and DHA and that can bring inflammation down, but it can also do other things. So, one of the things I saw in people is omega-3s are a natural blood thinner, which is good. We want a blood thinner; we don’t want blood clots, right. But, some people were getting really bad bruising in their body. I worked with someone who had like a blood vessel that kept bleeding in her eye. It’s very blood thinning. Also now, there’s a problem with – while they are saying that these supplements don’t have mercury, the FDA has studied fish for pollution and contaminants, and what they’ve found is every fish ever taken from any ocean on the planet has shown that the fish fat was contaminated with pollution – from air pollutions from factories and things like that. So, you’re still going to get that. The fish can’t eliminate it, it stays in their fat. So, there’s the potential for contamination either from mercury or other pollution. So all of that combined, it wasn’t ideal and so we started looking into other plant versions that can do that. What we’ve found is chia seeds and flax seeds actually work really well. They’re a source of ALA. The body can convert that ALA into EPA and DHA. It can regulate it a bit more, and people are getting the same benefits. They’re getting that slighter amount of blood thinning. I don’t see people getting all the bruising they did from the fish oil. The inflammation’s coming down rapidly. People have tested their omega-3 levels and it shows that it’s going up. So it works really well and once we saw that flaxseed are like $2 a pound. That bottle of fish oil was like forty bucks a bottle, right. So, it’s cheaper. You don’t have to worry about contamination, and it works just as well. So we’ve really switched over to do doing it that way. You can also by cold-pressed flaxseed oil. You have to make sure it’s cold-pressed and refrigerated because omega-3s are sensitive to heat and all that. That works for people as well, and that’s the only oil I really recommend for people. But it just works and what matters to me is the results. I care about results more than anything, and it works really well. Now, there are some beliefs that you can’t convert omega-3s efficiently. Some people have heard that you can’t convert flax and chia into DHA and EPA efficiently. And that is true if you are eating high sources of omega-6 from eggs and meat because the enzyme that breaks down flax and chia seeds, that breaks down the ALA, that enzyme converts to the inflammatory pathway. So, for people who eat a lot of meat and fish and oils, they will have less conversion. But if you eliminate those foods, your body will easily and quickly be able to convert that ALA, and you’ll get the benefits of the ALA as well. So that’s why we really do. There are some people who still choose to do fish oil. It will work for inflammation. But I really think the optimal way to go is through the plant-based products for all of those reasons.

27:42
Dr. Maya Novak:
Oh, fabulous. This is so knowledge-packed and also with advice that is tangible and that everybody can do. Now, one thing that I would like to mention, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s a really good idea to blend or just break down the flaxseeds because otherwise, they go directly through our body.

28:03
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Sure, absolutely. So, if you’re putting the flax or chia seeds like into a really good high-end blender, like Vita-Mix, that’s going to break down all the seeds in your green smoothie and you don’t have to worry about anything. If you have a weaker blender, then a coffee grinder – you can just grind them up before serving. Don’t buy them pre-ground because, again, omega-3s are sensitive. As soon as they’re exposed to air, they start to break down. So don’t expose them to air until you’re ready to consume them. So, you grind up that handful to half a cup you’re going to use in your smoothie and then dump them in and then blend them that way. Or people sometimes will do something like chia pudding, where once it’s soaked them up in the chia pudding you can chew them, but you’ve got to chew it, right? So yes, they do need to be broken down in some way for you to absorb them. That’s absolutely right.

28:46
Dr. Maya Novak:
So, when I was recovering from my fractured ankle, my talus bone, I got really surprised looks on my surgeon’s face and on my PT’s face because there was basically no swelling, no pain. Back then, yes, I did some – I was plant-based but I went even more into what you also described into smoothies and green leafy vegetables, more of that. Can we talk a bit about pain and what kind of role the diet has in treating, reversing, or maybe just easing the pain, whether it’s acute pains or just after the injury, or if we are talking here about chronic pain?

29:31
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Well, the pain response is going to be the same when you get an injury no matter what. So I don’t believe that I feel pain differently than other people. If I broke my ankle, it probably would hurt as much as anyone else breaking their ankle. The benefit is how quickly you can heal from the injury and have the pain go away, right. So that’s where the benefit’s going to be. Whether it’s an acute injury or a chronic injury, if you can eliminate that inflammation and it can repair it, you will be in less pain quickly. I’ve had people who’ve had arthritis for 30 years, who within a week feel the pain is almost gone. They can’t believe it, right. And it’s not because their ability to feel pain has changed. It’s because the inflammation has gone away and it’s causing less pain. You kind of reminded me, I actually sprained my ankle when I was pregnant with my second son who’s seven, and it was one of the worst pains I ever felt. I really – I mean I went off curb sideways and it swelled up and it hurt so bad that I’m like, all right, I’m going to end up in a bandage or limping around for a couple of weeks. The next day, I woke up and it was normal. So, I was like, all right. So even as a physician, I am still sometimes astounded by what happens where it just – because my old programming kicks in that, all right, this is going to take a couple of weeks, and then the next day I have a normal ankle when it was excruciating the day before – and I have a high pain tolerance. I mean I’ve broken my back in a car accident. I’ve undergone all these medical procedures. It was bad, and then normal. So I don’t think that we can really attenuate our experience of pain, but people have no idea how quickly they could actually recover just by nourishing their bodies properly. Now, my body’s been nourished well for 15 years, so I probably heal much faster than someone who’s going to just start adding these nutrients now, but everyone has the ability to create that for themselves.

31:23
Dr. Maya Novak:
Yes, and I love that you mentioned that we all feel pain. Because, yes, when I said that, it wasn’t at the beginning. I mean when I had the accident, the rock-climbing accident, it was painful. I was begging for morphine that week when I was waiting for the surgery. So it was not at all that I did not feel any pain or anything.

31:34
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Yes.

31:34
Dr. Maya Novak:
But later on, a few weeks, a few months after that, it was a different kind of story than with what doctors many times will see, a lot of swelling, a lot of pain, a lot of everything. Now, what else is important to know about inflammation? We talk about diet, and is it important that we make a quick change? So, when we’ve injured ourselves is it good that we go, as soon as possible, to as many greens and fruits and other goodness as fast as possible? Or is it okay if we just add a bit and hope that, finger’s crossed, that this will be enough?

32:26
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
I would say yes to both of those. It really depends on your goals. So, optimally, yes, if you’re trying to heal from an injury then make the majority of what you eat come from foods that will heal you, right. But, some people are just so addicted to toxic food they become kind of all or nothing. They go if I have to give this and just eat that, you want me to eat kale salad and not my burger? Screw it, I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t, right. They go into this I can’t, they get overwhelmed, and they quit before they start. So, if you feel so addicted to these other things that you just don’t feel ready to – and also when people are in pain they’re looking for any kind of comfort they can find and food is a fast way to get a high, right. You get a dopamine high. When you’re asking you for morphine, they’re flooding you with dopamine. And when you have enough dopamine, it’s not that you don’t feel pain anymore, you just stop caring about the pain. That’s what opiates do. They don’t eliminate the pain. You just kind of notice it but don’t care, you’re floating and everything’s fine. Well, you can get dopamine from toxic foods, which is why people get so addicted. So you eat enough ice-cream, you eat enough cheeseburgers, you feel high momentarily, and that momentarily distracts you from that pain. So it’s like you’re going to take away the person’s opiates and then put them on the food that does not give them opiates and then they feel a greater experience of pain and distress and lose that comfort. So if that’s you, then I would recommend adding what you’re missing. I give away my smoothie recipes for free. If people go to smoothieshred.com, there’s free recipes. Start making those recipes in your blender, and even if you don’t change your diet, just start drinking them, right. Start adding those to your diet. What people find is they start feeling a lot better and then they naturally start to crave better foods. But if you tell someone they can’t eat stuff, then they’re just no, no, and shut down. So I say fine, if you’re going to eat that crap, at least give your body some ability to repair, right? And so we start there. So all paths are good, except for doing nothing, right? So you find your way. Some people, they’ve got such devastatingly bad gut function because they’ve never eaten fiber. And their body doesn’t know what do with fiber, that if they switch too quickly into eating - my Rapid Recovery Plan, which is all healing foods and eating tons of leafy greens and cruciferous - they get bloated and they get constipated, and they say, weird, I thought fiber makes you ‘go’? I’m Iike, yeah, only if your gut can contract, but if your gut muscles are weak because they don’t usually get fiber, you might have to wait for your gut to heal. So for some people, they have to go more slowly, or they have to work with me directly so I can kind of design their program and find a way to make it [inaudible]. That’s why I like to leave it open. You don’t have to do it one way or another. The only time I’m pushy is if somebody has life-threatening issues.
Right before we got on the line, I was just working with someone in Malaysia who has stage 5 kidney failure. She has 7% of her kidney left, so I didn’t give her options. I said listen, you could add what you’re missing, it’s not going to save your kidney, it’s not. I have helped people reserve end-stage kidney failure, get off the transplant list and get their kidney function back, which is supposed to be impossible but it works. I have published cases on this, right, it works. But they have to only eat the healing foods and when they do, that kidney function comes back in days, right. But if they eat anything that’s not one of those healing nutrients, they either get worse or if it’s plant-based they’ll stabilize, if they eat meat or dairy or processed foods they continue to get work. So she has no choice if she wants to get her kidney function back. She has to be on only healing foods or it’s not going to work. But for most people who are not about to lose an organ, there is some room to kind of introduce it and work your way up there to get to the goal in the time that you can make yourself successful.

36:21
Dr. Maya Novak:
We'll continue in just a moment. I wanted to quickly jump in for two things. First, thank you for tuning in. And second, I’m sure you have at least one friend, colleague, or family member who would very much appreciate this episode. So share it with them and help us spread the word. Now let’s continue…

36:42
Dr. Maya Novak:
Oh, it makes sense, absolutely. Now, we talked quite a lot about diet, but I would like to ask you about something else in regards to inflammation because when you injure yourself, and especially when we talk about serious injuries, it’s not the easiest thing emotionally or mentally. There is stress. There is emotional stress and mental stress. Can these also be inflammatory?

37:08
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
100 percent. One hundred percent, yes. This is actually why I wrote my most recent book. My first, that was Goodbye Lupus and it’s all about the nutrition that I used to heal myself from lupus. So even though I treat a lot of diseases, I’m always known as Goodbye Lupus because that was the original story for myself. There’s been thousands of people all over the world who have literally just read that book, who have gone to my classes, and just did what I said with their nutrition and they got their health back, right. But then there’s these other people who don’t and a lot of the time it’s because they’re not doing the nutrition 100 percent or doing it right. But there are some people that even when they’re doing the nutrition right, they’ll still struggle to get their health back. And every time, what I’ve found is those people have a lot of stress – either from their job or relationships, depression, anxiety, trauma – trauma is huge, right. And so it really goes back to what I saw as a medical student that people who are emotionally in a good place healed faster from anything, whether it was tumors or an injury on their ankle, they healed better if they were happy. And then people are depressed, they have wounds that should be closing and they don’t, right. So, I’ve seen that, but now there’s been more studies that have actually looked at that in terms of the blood. What they’ve found is people who are depressed, anxious, experience trauma, or who just like somebody’s died, of loss - they have an explosion in their inflammatory markers in their bloodstream that can look just like an autoimmune disease. It makes sense then why a lot of people first develop autoimmune disease or chronic pain when they experience loss or trauma or high amounts of work stress – all of those things, right. But suddenly they get sick because they have now dramatically triggered inflammation. What happens when you have chronically increased inflammation is it will change your gene expression, right; we’re looking at your DNA. And so if you have any genes for chronic illness, it will cause the expression of those genes. So that’s why those kinds of experiences in life can then trigger lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, other people have developed cancer or all these other things, that started some kind of emotional distress or trauma. That works with acute injuries too. Acute injuries are things that just happen, that if your stress is high, if you’re depressed, if you’re anxious, if you’re upset because you can’t work or you can’t run that marathon because you broke your ankle and rock climb or whatever you’re doing, right. If you experience that kind of stress, it will slow down your cells' ability to heal because now your cells not only have to try to heal that acute injury, they have to heal all the new inflammation that’s coming from your distress. So, absolutely the more peaceful and happy you can be, the faster you’ll recover. My book Goodbye Autoimmune Disease – it’s funny, I didn’t originally think about this when I was starting to write it. I originally wrote it to show all my case studies in reversing many different autoimmune diseases. They’re still there, there’s dozens of case studies. But the first two-thirds of the book is me addressing all the different emotional things that I’ve seen come up in my past decade of disease reversal that have either slowed down or stopped people’s ability to recover. So I look at anxiety, depression, trauma, self-sabotage because of poor self-esteem – I help people with all of that, and gratefully, I am an expert in trauma and psychiatry because I chose that first. So even though my practice is centered around changing people’s health through diet and lifestyle, most of what I do working with people is help them overcome what’s here and here, so that they can then embrace the diet and lifestyle and make it work for them, right. Because if you can’t just follow those simple six steps for healing that I have done, eat this and eat this, it’s not because you physically can’t most of the time, it’s because you’ve got addictions to food, you’ve got emotional trauma, you’re feeding your emotions, all of that kind of stuff. And so the solution to that is to find a path for acceptance, gratitude, happiness, even while you’re in pain and sick. So that is a huge thing that my Rapid Recovery Group – I work with people every day for six weeks – yes, I look at their nutrition every day and I optimize their nutrition. But I also look at their sleep, their moods, their self-care, their relationships, everything, and in that group we have healed them. We’ve worked with people on their marriage, on their relationship with their parents, on what’s going on with their work, the fact that they don’t prioritize themselves because I have to heal those issues for the nutrition to then just work on the disease and the pain rather than the nutrition trying to heal their job issue and the disease. So, it’s enormous. And I’ve just great feedback on that book. People will tell me that they’re reading it multiple times and highlighting it. My mom said she cried through it. I went oh mom! She goes the first book was good, but oh my god, you know. So people don’t realize how much their emotional health impacts their daily needs, so we have to heal that as well. There’s many things you can do – meditation, gratitude, and focus – as well as just daily self-care. Do you do some kind of yoga or do you take a nice long bath? Like what do you do to just nurture yourself that has nothing to do with being productive in this world, right? Not cleaning your kitchen floor, but laying in a bathtub with essentials oils and candles. What do you do for bliss? In my group, I require people to do things that just make them happy with no other purpose and people fight on that. They will drink smoothies all day! But don’t tell them that they have to go have fun! They are like I don’t see the point. Well, that’s why you’re sick because you don’t see the point to having fun. I don’t think we were born to drink smoothies, suffer, and work. We’re born to enjoy this life and live with purpose and passion. The cool thing is that if you can become happy and grateful while you’re in pain, then healing is just a bonus. And once you become happy and grateful, you actually heal faster. So it’s all tied up and connected together.

43:04
Dr. Maya Novak:
Thank you for sharing this because this is such an important part of healing from an injury or any disease.

43:11
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Yes.

43:11
Dr. Maya Novak:
It’s not just, okay, here I have three foods or whatever that I have to eat. But when we ignore the rest – a lot of us – so the emotional stress and what is happening and the relationships and everything. I love that you have this experience as well that it’s not just health and healing, but also our marriage is saved and life improves in general. So, yes, thank you for sharing this.

43:39
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Everyone tells me when they graduate from my group, or Rapid Recovery with me; they always say this sentence “I’m just not the same person anymore”.

43:47
Dr. Maya Novak:
Mhm.

43:48
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Like my life is just as stressful, but I don’t feel the stress anymore. I’ve had people who have anxiety their whole life, had it disappear in six weeks. No more anxiety because they’ve learned for the first time in their life what it’s like to actually take care of themselves fully. Not just eat healthy or eat optimally, if you’re doing Rapid Recovery, but to actually nourish your spirit as well. We need that. We are spiritual, emotional beings and we have to take care of all of that.

44:17
Dr. Maya Novak:
True. Absolutely. At the beginning when you were sharing your story and when you shared about lupus and you’re healing, you mentioned that it was actually – so lupus is usually that it’s not curable.

44:34
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Yes.

44:35
Dr. Maya Novak:
So that you actually cannot do anything. I would love to talk a bit more about this because sometimes with some injuries or potentially what could happen as a result of injury in the future, such as osteoarthritis, for example, that there is nothing that we can actually do, so finger’s crossed, or this is it. For the rest of your life, you’re going to be taking medication. You are a medical doctor, so you have that traditional training in western medicine, but you also have such a strong experience – a personal experience that if someone says that something is incurable or that it’s not going to happen, that doesn’t really mean that this is the ultimate truth.

45:19
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Absolutely, and most people tell me I’m the only doctor they have that says they’ll get better.

45:26
Dr. Maya Novak:
Mm.

45:27
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
And I don’t even say I think, I say you’ll get better. You will. And I say the reason for that is I’m the only doctor that’s actually helped somebody like them get better. So, in my practice and my world, it is the norm that people get better. If people do what I tell them to do, they get better. There’s no like, oh, five percent get better or the results not typical, no. If you do what I tell you to do for your lifestyle and for your diet, you will have improvements in your health. It’s biologically impossible not to. You can’t give your cells these things that they use to repair themselves and not have repair happen. It just doesn’t happen. But in the general medical world, it’s not so. So, I’ve said many times before that if your doctor says that you can’t cure your disease, all that means is that doctor has never cured that disease. That’s all means, right. In my world, yes, you can get better. Absolutely your pain can get better. Yes, your labs will get better because that’s my experience. It wasn’t my experience before. Nothing’s ever been as powerful as nutrition and lifestyle to reversing disease and pain - ever. There’s no medicine I’ve ever prescribed that’s ever been able to have that kind of impact, and not only reduce pain and suffer but eliminate it completely. So that’s the first thing to understand is that western medicine, it’s brilliant. I love it. I’m glad I’m a doctor. It is absolutely brilliant. There is so much we can do, right. I am not anti-physicians. At the same time, we have to understand its limitations. I’m a western-trained doctor and what we studied was medicines and procedures. That’s what we studied. I remember having to learn 800 meds a semester, memorize them, because back then we didn’t have iPhones or anything, so I actually had to store it here or carry like eight-pound books in my pockets, right. So, we had to memorize 800 drugs a semester, what they do, the side-effects, the interactions, I mean it was a lot, it’s oh – it’s was a lot, right. So that’s what we’re trying to do. So when you ask your doctor can diet help, if they say no, all that means is they don’t know. And I just – oh, I pray for the day that doctors will just say I don’t know because I think right now with the knowledge we have and with the published research and data we have, I personally think it’s malpractice to say that diet won’t help somebody. Because we are told to pledge ourselves to, first of all, do no harm, and when you tell someone that a diet will not help them with their recovery from anything, you are doing harm because you are shutting off their ability to get the information they need. What they need to say is, I don’t know, I don’t have experience with that. Then the patient will be able to find someone who does have that experience, right. So the woman who I was just talking in Malaysia, her doctor and nutritionist were telling her not to eat raw foods, to cook them instead, to not eat all the chia seeds I said and all this other stuff, and told her to eat eggs and fish. And so she started listening to them and she said she’s had kidney failure for 20 years. She said when she started following my program on her own from reading my book, for the first time in 20 years her kidneys got better. They improve 60 points on her creatinine. In her entire life, they’ve only ever gotten worse. But when she started doing that, they got better for the first time. And then she listened to her doctors and now she’s got 7% of her kidney function left, right. And I wish she’d met with me sooner, but we can’t go back in time. But when she asked me that I said, all I can tell you is don’t listen to them. She was but why would they tell me that? And I said because they don’t know what they’re talking about, and I don’t mean to be condescending or dismissive, but when it comes to nutrition I know what they know because I’ve been trained through western medicine and they don’t know what they’re talking about. Because the same person telling her to eat eggs is the same person telling her there’s no way to cure your disease and you will end up on dialysis. So, do you want to listen to the nutrition advice of someone who’s saying no matter what you do you’re going to be on dialysis? Or do you want to listen to the nutrition advice from someone who’s actually gotten people off the kidney transplant list through nutrition? At this point in my career, I don’t need to be defensive because my results speak for themselves, but you have to just realize that you’re getting advice from people who have their own experience, right. If you go to a chiropractor, he’s going to adjust your back. If you go to an acupuncturist, they’re going to give you needles. And if you go to a doctor, they’re going to give you medicine, right. You don’t want to ask a doctor for nutrition advice. I always say that and people laugh because I’m a doctor. But I always say never get nutrition advice from a doctor, right, unless they’re a doctor who’s experienced in disease reversal, and I mean experienced in it. I’m very excited that nowadays there are more and more doctors that are learning this. Hallelujah. And they’re studying it and they’re reading about it. But many of them still don’t have experience in yet. And so sometimes, someone will come to me and say my doctor is plant-based, but they said I should do this or that which is opposed to what I said, and I’ve actually found out from one of those doctors that she actually hasn’t reversed diseases yet. She’s just still learning. So why are you arguing with me? So, you want to make sure that you ask the person giving you advice have you ever reversed my illness with that advice? And if yes, great. And if no, get advice from somebody else that actually has that experience. That’s the most important thing because everybody with a mouth has an opinion. You go online and there’s going to be someone who says no, you need protein to heal disease. No, actually no, that’s not true. It’s been disproven. But it’s like you can find every opinion online but that doesn’t mean it’s a valid opinion that’s coming from someone with real experience in completely reversing whatever it is you have. It’s very confusing nowadays. On the one hand, I’m happy for the internet because most people find me that way, right. Although I do get lots of doctor referrals now. A decade ago, every doctor said no way. Now, a third of my practice is doctors who don’t want to take meds and they’re doing my program instead. But the internet is allowing people to find the right information, but it’s also confusing. Intentionally, because all those industries that are threatened by this information are putting out their own articles to try to make it seem like it’s murky. Or maybe you can heal with meat instead or something like that. So it’s very confusing for people and that’s why I always say go right to the results. Go right to the results. If some people get better and some people get worse, there’s something wrong with the program, right. Versus like no, everyone who does this is going to get a positive result. So, it’s very difficult and that’s why I always take opportunities like this because you never know that’s listening that that was the aha moment that saved their life. That’s why I came with you as well, thank you.

52:07
Dr. Maya Novak:
Well, thank you for being here. This is just amazing and I completely agree with you that it’s a jungle out there.

52:15
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Yes.

52:16
Dr. Maya Novak:
It’s a big confusion and I love the internet for the same reason, but many times it’s before you find that gold, that diamond, you have to go through a lot of – I’m not going to say what – but yes, it’s a jungle out there, yes.

52:31
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Absolutely. It’s very difficult. It’s very difficult for people and most people I see, they’ve been searching for a while. They’ve tried other things first. This person I saw yesterday, she was trying to heal her autoimmune disease and she went onto to keto eating all animal products and animal fat. She got drastically worse and almost killed herself. And then she found me and started going on my plan, and all her numbers got better, and her pain started getting better, so she made an appointment. She was like, okay, this is real. But so many people, I’ve found they’ve tried so many other things. Who wouldn’t prefer to eat bacon than kale? Of course, of course, they’re going to try that first, right. Or they’ll go to like a plant-based diet by they’re mostly eating cooked foods and lots of potatoes and beans. And they like well, I got a bit better but I’m not getting a full recovery, and then I started on your smoothies and my god, my pain got better for the first time. I could bend my knees again, right. So there’s a spectrum of using nutrition for disease, and I think that there are benefits to many of them. So for people to understand – the way I’ve been describing it lately is to understand that there’s diseases causing diets, like the standard American diet, the ketogenic diet. If you’re eating tons of animal fats and meat, you are causing inflammation and disease in the body parts as you eat all of that – cancers, bad. Then there’s a spectrum of diets that improve people’s health in some way. So, for example, the paleo diet – a lot of people do experience improvements because paleo tells people to stop eating dairy and to stop eating processed foods. For many people, including myself, that is a huge part of why they’re sick. It’s because they’re addicted to cheese and chips, right. So, if you eliminate those things – and they tell them to eat free-range meat, which is slightly less inflammatory, it’s not anti-inflammatory but it’s less inflammatory. So, they make these changes and for some people, they feel a lot better. But then for other people, especially people who tend to eat a lot of meat, they actually get worse. And why is that? It’s because the people who feel better, it’s in spite of the meat not because of it, and because they’re eating tons of vegetables, they got rid of the dairy and the processed food, right. I’ve had people who have been on paleo plans, even one woman who is a healthcare provider who has put her patients on paleo for decades, and now she’s got hypothyroid disease and arthritis. She watched my free classes, and she said she was kind of mad about it because paleo people are really anti-vegan for some reason there’s just like… and she got angry and vegan’s bad, but secretly tried it and her pain got better. She made an appointment with me and she goes I’m so embarrassed and I feel bad because I put all those people on this plan and now I know that it actually is not anti-inflammatory. She said she got MRIs done and it showed inflammation in her joints, and she goes I don’t inflammation, I eat anti-inflammatory. Then she learned from me, and she went oh my god, I’m not anti-inflammatory. I’m just less inflammatory than other people. It wasn’t until she got rid of the meat and did it my way that the inflammation came down. And I told her you know what, it’s okay, you still gave people something better than what they were on. It’s a pathway, but the next step would be to eat a plant-based diet and you get of meat. You get rid of processed oils. You get rid of the butter and the coconut oil too because coconut oil is saturated fat and raises people’s cholesterol. Suddenly people find, oh, they are a lot better. And then what I teach is really the most aggressive optimal way to 100 percent anti-inflammatory, right. You’re focusing on flax, chia, high water, and the cruciferous vegetables. That is the most anti-inflammatory foods on the planet. So as long as you’re moving on that pathway, you’re going to get more and more results. That’s why you see so much clutter in the jungle when you go well, this person liked paleo and they said they’re better. But then when I’ve taken a deep dive and talked to even famous authors who’ve done paleo and had disease reversal, it turned out it wasn’t a 100 percent disease reversal, it was just better managed. I’m like well, what about if you did it my way and then we get you through the rest of it, it’s a work in progress, right. I think any step people take in that direction is going to be beneficial, but just keep in mind that there is optimal. There’s a difference between better and optimal. What I really teach – and nobody wants to come to me first if they have a possibility that they could still eat burgers, why do that – but people who really are looking for the optimal way to eat, that’s going to be how you do it.

56:50
Dr. Maya Novak:
Yes. This is fantastic. I love that you said there is a difference between less inflammatory or anti-inflammatory, it’s completely different.

57:00
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Mhm.

57:00
Dr. Maya Novak:
Now, I would like to ask you something different then. This is when there is either a chronic disease or a serious injury and the recovery is really long, sometimes we start losing hope. And I don’t know how it was when you had that diagnosis and those years when you were doing your best or trying to do something with lupus. What would you say to someone who is perhaps losing hope about their recovery right now?

57:33
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Hopelessness is the diagnostic criteria for depression. So if somebody doesn’t have hope, I’m going to work on that. It’s interesting, nowadays I don’t really have to defend myself much because any time someone says something negative about me online, there is like 100 people who go no, no, it worked for me, it worked for me. But when there is a criticism, it’ll often be something like you shouldn’t spread false hope for people.

58:01
Dr. Maya Novak:
Mm.

58:01
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
My answer is always there’s no such thing as false hope. Hope is essential. We will not do anything if we don’t have hope for it happening, right. We’re not going to get up and do our hair and our make-up and look cute to go out dancing if we don’t have some hope that we’re going to get noticed by that other person that we’re looking to date, right. We have to have some hope. When people have given up, what do they do? They’re just like sweatpants, forget it, right. Whatever it is that your goal is, whether it’s dating or it’s disease reversal or having less pain, hope is vital to action-taking. If you have no hope, you’re not going to take action because why? You don’t want to torture yourself. Why drink a green smoothie if you can have a milkshake if it’s not going to work. You might as well have the milkshake, right. So hope is absolutely essential and so that would be something that I would work with the person on, that it’s okay to fall down. We just have to get up again. The example I always give is watching my two sons grow up, which is an extraordinary gift because I was told I could never have children, that it would kill me. So, I really – I have such gratitude for getting to be a mom. You learn a lot watching a child develop and grow and one of the things that I think is a great example of continuing forward is watching a toddler try to learn how to walk. When they first stand up, they fall constantly, right, constantly. And yet they just keep getting up again. You see them start to just kind of adjust themselves. They adjust the plan, right. So, they lean too far forward and they fall on the face, cry a couple of seconds and sit back up, and get up again and lean back a bit. Uh, they fall on the butt. Get up again and try it, you know. And they’re starting to waiver to try to find their center. That is what all of us need to remember when we’re trying to change our lives in any way. Whether you’re trying to change your career, whether you’re trying to heal your disease or get rid of your pain. When things go wrong, you can’t just quit, right. If your kid like got up and fell over and said forget it, I’m crawling for life, right, you’d see a grown-up crawling by at the office. Huh, tried walking, didn’t work, quit, right. When you fall down what you need to do is not repeat the same thing again, right. If you fall on your face don’t get up and do the same motion, you’ll fall on your face again. You need to have a game plan. So this is one of the huge things that I require. Like in my Rapid Recovery Plans, I work with people every day for 46 weeks. You have to talk to me every day for 46 weeks, oh the drama, right. But, what is essential is every day, whatever happens to be your struggle of the day; you have to make a game plan to not continue that struggle tomorrow. So, if the struggle was I didn’t get all my water in, the game plan can’t be I’ll try harder. That’s just a way to beat yourself up emotionally. I failed because I didn’t try hard enough, no. The game plan should be I’ll carry a water bottle with me wherever I go. The game plan should be I’ll start my day with a glass of water. The game plan should be a five-gallon jug to carry around, right. The game plan has to be specific so that you can take that action and then see if you get a different result. If the next day it works out, perfect, continue that game plan. If it doesn’t work the next day and you fall down again, try a new game plan. So that’s number one of the things when people say that they’re not the same person. The reason their stresses go away is that instead of taking failure to lead to hopelessness, they take failure to go right into planning. That way it’s not, I failed, I’ll never get better. It’s I failed, game plan. I always tell them, I say listen, you want to use the emotional part of your brain to celebrate. The emotional part of your brain is I got my water in today, woohoo. I saw a great movie today. I saw a rainbow. I saw a squirrel run by my window. Whatever it is - think of as much you can celebrate on a daily basis and let yourself get emotional and cry tears of gratitude. And when things go wrong, don’t get emotional, go to game plans. Go to the front of your brain where you do math problems or you figure out directions, that’s where you put your problems. If you can get in that habit of thinking about problems in terms of just adjusting plans, and thinking about successes as emotional, that switches people’s mentality so that they can continue to take action even when things don’t work out. Because the problem is people take action, they fall down, they cry, and they never get up again, that’s hopelessness. So I always tell them to remember the target, all right. You fell down; it’s okay to cry for a bit. When I was sick – I was doggedly optimistic my whole life. I mean like I said, I came from Holocaust survivors. So even on my worst day, even on chemotherapy, I had a better than my life than my family who was in a concentration camp – sadly, you know. At least I was in my bed throwing up and not behind wires starving to death because there was no food given, right. So I always felt very grateful for my life, even when I was sick. But when I got the blood clots, I had some mini strokes. I collapsed in a clinic when I was in my 20s in medical school. I cried for a couple of weeks because for me at that moment, one, I didn’t know there was any better way besides medicines, of course. And I was okay with living my life with chronic disease. I knew I wasn’t going to live as a long a life as other people. I knew it would end up disabled one day from my arthritis. But I had accepted that and I was still grateful for my life. But when I had the mini strokes and realized that I could lose this, I was devastated because I knew – I’ve never been athletic – if I was in a wheelchair, as long as I had this, I could make the impact on the world that I wanted to do because I always had my brain. But at the thought that I could lose my brain, I had nothing. And so that was terrifying and for a couple of weeks, I cried. I let myself mourn, and I think we do need to mourn. We do need to cry when we fall down because we have to mourn. We’re not robots, right. I cried. I got emotional support from the people that I knew would give me the right kind of emotional support. And then I came back to that place of peace and gratitude. Like okay, I have to inject myself in the belly with blood thinners for the rest of my life, but I didn’t have a major stroke. I recovered. I’m going to be a doctor in just another year and I’m going to live my dream of becoming a doctor. How many people in this world get to live their dreams? I’m the luckiest person on the planet. And I was back to happy and excited again. And that’s when I met my husband who wanted to marry me sick anyway because he just loved my spirit. So I think it has to be all those things. We fall, we cry, and then we game plan how am I going to change this? Don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again, right. But how do I just create a game plan to improve this a bit more? Maybe what I’m doing isn’t working. You know, when people tell me they’ve been on diet for six months or a year and they’re not better, that diet’s not working. My patients, and my nutrition clients, they’re better in a matter of weeks, we can see some improvement. So don’t keep doing the same thing.

1:04:45
Dr. Maya Novak:
Not keep waiting for years and years and years - change.

1:04:49
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Yeah. It’s not working, so don’t get hopeless, just go to the next level. If you’re doing diets, what’s the next level? Do you want to go full forward? Do you just take a step forward from what you’re doing? But we always have to keep getting up and moving forward. There’s people who love you, who need you in this world. You can’t give up. And my experience both personally and through people I’ve worked with, is when you can overcome the pain, when you take that control back and do what it takes to heal, on the other side of the pain there’s often the gift you were meant to give this world, right. You’ve experienced that, right. You hurt your ankle and now here you are trying to interview people to help bring healing to other people, right. You wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t get hurt, right? [chuckles]

1:05:31
Dr. Maya Novak:
No! [laughs]

1:05:32
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
I wouldn’t be doing this had I not almost died from lupus for all those years. So, when I was sick I didn’t get it, you know. Sometimes people would say, like, oh God has a plan for you, and sometimes I’d get frustrated. Come on, why is that the school bully is healthy and I’m sick? I’m nice. I don’t even kill bugs, why am I? You know, it didn’t make sense, but now it does. Now, I can see it. But we can’t see why or what we’re going to do with it until we’re on the other side of it, right. So, there’s a gift and you just have to remember that, that there is something besides pain that’s going to happen for your life, and you can’t give up. You have to find something to hold onto. You have to find what you’re grateful for, and then you also do have to keep doing game plans. You have to keep adjusting it and don’t keep repeating it so that you can ultimately get there. And if you need more help emotionally, you need to get it. Get to psychotherapy. Get help so that you can push through the hopelessness and get better because that is – depression is inflammatory, and giving up is deadly. So you have to find a way to keep going.

1:06:34
Dr. Maya Novak:
Fabulous advice. Oh my goodness, we talked about so many things and I loved, loved this interview. Now, I do have questions for you that I ask every speaker. Like I said, we’ve talked about so many things, but if you chose one thing, what would you say that your number one advice is for someone who is healing their injury? What is your number advice?

1:07:04
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Not everything we just in the past hour? Well, I think if you’re trying to take your first step in recovery, I would say add what you’re missing to your diet. That would be my number one thing. Like I said, you can go to smoothieshred.com and get free recipes. I give away my protocol and my smoothies for free as a public service because I think good health should be a right. It shouldn’t be something only people who can pay for it should get. So, start by adding what you’re missing. If you feel overwhelmed by all of the other advice, start there, get what you’re missing. And getting what you’re missing through your nutrition, but also get what you’re missing from your sleep, get enough sleep. If you need emotional support, if you need more self-care or self-nurturing, fill in your life with what you’re missing first. And then as you start to feel better, you can then take the steps of removing the things that are toxic, whether it’s habits or people or burgers.

1:08:05
Dr. Maya Novak:
Great. Well, for the last questions, it’s a bit of an out of the box question.

1:08:10
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
All right, I’m ready, out of the box! [chuckles]

1:08:11
Dr. Maya Novak:
Yes, so my last question is… [chuckles]

1:08:13
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
I’m out of the box all day! I live out of the box! Okay.

1:08:16
Dr. Maya Novak:
So imagine that you have been injured right now.

1:08:21
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Okay.

1:08:21
Dr. Maya Novak:
You know that the recovery is going to take you a while and it’s not going to be always super easy and perhaps it’s even going to be a year or more. But you have a choice to choose one of two gifts or one of two options. Now, gift number one is that you go through your recovery and do all the necessary work that is going to help you to heal in the best possible way, and then when you are done you have this gift of not injuring yourself in the future, this gift number one. Gift number two…

1:08:59
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
So like Wolverine, like he can…

1:09:01
Dr. Maya Novak:
Yes, exactly.

1:09:03
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Heal completely from anything and never sick again.

1:09:05
Dr. Maya Novak:
Exactly.

1:09:06
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
Okay, got it. All right. Gift one, Wolverine. Got it.

1:09:08
Dr. Maya Novak:
Yeah. Or gift number two is that you can back in time and prevent the accident from happening but then you take your chances and perhaps another accident is waiting around the corner. So my question here is what would you choose and why?

1:09:25
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
I would what just – what happened. Wolverine, right. So as I had said before, the journey I’ve been on has created the gifts I have now. So, I think I probably still would’ve become a doctor in all the things I’ve done. I still could’ve helped a lot of people had I never been sick myself. But I’m happy with how things are. And I actually have said many times I’m grateful to lupus and the reason I’m grateful is because I’m what I’m able to now. I spent 12 years sick, but I’ve spent 15 healing people and I will for the rest of life, and I kind of am disease proof in many ways. Is that I can’t ever get sick? No. But I heal very fast, and that is because know how to take good care of myself. I’m not afraid of getting sick, I’m not afraid of getting injured, because I know what I can do. And I can be sick and injured and still have a beautiful life because I’ve done it before. So, no, I would much rather have been through everything I’ve been through and be able to have the life I have now, hands down, 100 percent.

1:10:27
Dr. Maya Novak:
Fabulous. I love this. Dr. Goldman, where can people find more about you?

1:10:33
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
That’s easy. So, I’m pretty much everywhere online because I have to be, so goodbyelupus.com. Like I said, I help people with many different kinds of illnesses, but that’s just what I’m known for because that was my first best-selling book. So, goodbyelupus.com. My books, Goodbye Lupus and Goodbye Autoimmune Disease are on Amazon. But I’m also Goodbye Lupus on Facebook, on Instagram. My Facebook and Instagram is also put on Twitter, and that’s @VeganMedicalDoc. I don’t directly do Twitter, but for people who live in that space, it is all like automatically posted to Twitter as well. Most of the people who super active nowadays are actually on Instagram. I actually recently joined Instagram last year under the pressure of people. So, I’m super active and actually, I think my account is so busy. The person who was cutting my boys’ hair yesterday follows me online and she goes, you have so much activity. Like every post, there’s so many comments and you answer them, and... So I really do my best. I do all of it myself because I really do personally want to connect with people and help them as much as I can, and nobody else could answer what I would say. So sometimes, it takes me a little time, but I do answer personally. If people want to work with directly, goodbyelupus.com, you can just go right there and book an appointment or do Rapid Recovery or anything like that. Then the other website I’d give people would be smoothieshred.com and that is the website that my husband created where you can free recipes, you can join a free Facebook community, and also it does have access to other websites there too. So we try together to give out as much free information as we can. And any of my social media I will announce it. Usually every one to two months I go online and food classes, teaching my entire nutrition protocol in detail for free. It’s about 10 hours of classes plus live Q&A’s. I stay on the line usually past midnight with people just answering their questions. I’m constantly doing stuff like that. So if you follow me on social media, then you’ll get notified whenever I do those, and we have like 5,000 or more people sign-up for every round of classes from all over the world, and it’s just the coolest thing ever. So, you can find me all over those places and I would love that people send me messages. I love to hear from people as well.

1:12:43
Dr. Maya Novak:
Oh, goodness. That was amazing. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your knowledge and helping people to change their health and then their lives. Thank you so much, Dr. Goldner.

1:12:55
Dr. Brooke Goldner:
You’re so welcome, and thanks for inviting me so I could be a part of your community as well.

1:13:00
Dr. Maya Novak:
Thank you for tuning into today’s episode with Dr. Brooke Goldner. If you haven’t done it yet, subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you’re using to tune in, and share it with your loved ones – yes, I’m thanking you in advance with a cherry on top. To access show notes, links, and transcript of today’s episode go to mayanovak.com/podcast. To learn more about The Mindful Injury Recovery Method visit my website mayanovak.com and find my book Heal Beyond Expectations on Amazon. Until next time – keep evolving, blooming, and healing.