Dr. Stephen Lewis of Green Wisdom Health returns to TSPC today to discuss why so many Americans are dealing with stress, anxiety and depression. The links to diet, life style, gut biomes and what we can do about it.

Welcome, folks. Good Wednesday morning. It is Wednesday, September the 11th, 2024. For this is episode 3, 556 of the survival podcast. We're bringing back on one of my favorite people to interview Dr. Steven Lewis of green wisdom health. I don't think he's been with us since about 2019. If I remember right somewhere in that range, and it's good to have him back on today.

We're going to be talking about stress, anxiety, and depression and how, no, it's. Not all in your head. There's a variety of environmental and nutritional stressors that are actually causing stress. when you have stress, then maybe you have anxiety.

And then maybe when you're stressed out and have anxiety. Maybe you get depressed, so you might feel it in your head some, but there are things that you can do to alleviate this and, Dr. Lewis will be with us in just a minute.

Next up today, you know, we're going to talk about stress and one of those things that stresses people out is money and having your money constantly erode. That'll stress you out. Well, you know, I don't ever recommend going in all in on anything, but I'll tell you, I've been recommending alternative investments for as long as I've done this show.

Anyway, with that, let's bring Dr lewis back on to the survival podcast. Steven, man, welcome to the show. Hey, it's good to be back. Can you just start out with, instead of our subject today, kind of your origin story. Before you decided to go to chiropractic school and then kind of go down this whole world of nutrition with those studies, what was your life like before that?

What led you in that direction to choose this as a profession?

Well, my parents always took us to the chiropractor first and then an osteopath or MB. Later, if the chiropractor suggested it, I always thought there should be a very symbiotic relationship between them. And that's mostly true now, but, a chiropractor talked me into being a chiropractor and it's been a really good road, because I couldn't handle the blood and guts.

I admired the medical profession, but I've seen so many people get well. by taking supplements. And I know the FDA says, it can't help a symptom or cure a disease, but still your body has to have the basics just to work with and our food doesn't have it. And that's why I kind of really admire what you're doing.

You're teaching people to grow more nutritious food. And you tell them it's not the soil, it's the microorganism that's, fixing the nitrogen, for example. we're going to talk about microorganisms today and how important that is in your brain health, stress, anxiety, depression, your musculoskeletal health.

early on in my chiropractic career, I was really busy. And I noticed that when I put people on nutrients to stop the musculoskeletal inflammation, Then say well God I see better. I'm not as stressed or my husband's nicer to me Which meant I'm not as irritable it all works together structure function nerve supply nutrition and choosing a happy attitude.

I think right now people are experiencing more anxiety more depression. but they're also dealing with kind of, as you alluded to, like, and probably part of this is like gut inflammation and you're a chiropractor. So I would imagine muscular skeletal issues or something you'd be looking at.

how are all these challenges interconnected? Cause I think people tend to like make these compartmentalized, like anxiety and depressions over here. And that's exactly what pharmaceutical companies want. Cause then they can tell you, right. Take this drug that's on the TV where the mentally, mentally, depressed person is dancing through a field.

And then when your hands twitch, take this other drug to go with that first drug. So that's a great money making formula, but it doesn't seem like For all the drugs we have for these problems now, it seems like there's more cases of the problem than ever before. So that doesn't seem to be working.

Well, you know, before I get into what I think the cause is, I think we should choose to be happy.

We should choose to look at it in a quirky way. just a little over a year ago, I was in hospital and they said, did you get your flu shot? I said, I had a bourbon shot. Did you get your RSV shot? I said, I had another bourbon shot. Did you get your shingle shot? I said, oh, hell no. They said, did you get your COVID shot?

I said, I had two bourbon shots for that. And the nurse that was there trying to save my life at the minute, I had him laughing.

Yeah.

And so that probably helped, you know, everybody. So, you know, hormone imbalances, and I'm going to kind of jump the gun here and tell people I'm way different than I was four or five years ago in a lot of good ways.

If people will look on my website, there's a book called the Pain Relief Nutrition Program. And it gives the top whole food sources to certain nutrients that you need. And, you know, I asked my patients, I said, have you noticed that most of these nutrients come out of meat or animal products?

Not that fruits and vegetables can't be important, but I'm not a, I'm not a fan of grain at all. And for example, rice and wheat, they're already grown nutritionally deficient anyway because of our soil and you cover that real well. But by the time they get through Modifying that, 80 percent of the nutrients are gone once they mill it and process it and then spray, you know, artificial folic acid on it, which makes things even worse.

So, it's hormone imbalance and the pain nutrition, pain relief nutrition program book on the, on the website. I think it's brilliant. Of course, you know, I wrote it.

Hey, this looks brilliant. By the way, I wrote it, but I can say it for you

Well, you know this I'm different.

I've gone a lot more in depth So, you know, we'll start if you'd like with hormone imbalances, right? Well number one from poor eating And that's why I think it's important. I'm not much of a farmer. I can't make very much grow, but I like what you do. What you're teaching people. Yes, I do listen to some of your podcasts and like them.

another thing for hormone imbalance is getting older, which I take great exception to that. you can get old very, very slowly if you choose to. But, you know, your hormones can become imbalanced and it causes pain related symptoms. That's one thing I noticed in my practice is like, well, what's really causing this pain?

And I asked a lady the other day, she said, well, my, my right hip is hurting. It feels like it's 92. I said, well, your left hip doesn't hurt. How old is that? They never think about it. It's like, well, you misaligned your car. So it tears up the ball joints and whatever.

That's a good point from the musculoskeletal structure.

You know, you can put really great tires, expensive tires on a car. If your caster or camber is out, it's going to tear the tire up. And first turn around and say, Firestone or Kelly or whatever stole me, or Michelin stole me a junk tire. No, you put your good tire on a car that was misaligned, you're going to have problems.

Well, another way to decrease stress and be happier, and I was in court one time testifying for a sweet little lady that was in a car wreck, and she had, you know, three very degenerated, Discs and vertebrae and she was 67 and I said, well, don't you think this is just because she's old had nothing to do with her?

Car wreck and I said, well, I put my mother's x ray up when she was 62 I said she was in a horrible car wreck 30 40 years ago. Her neck looks real beautiful. The judge says dr Lewis take it down. If you do that again, I'm gonna hold you in contempt of court. So the insurance company attorney They never tell you that's he's representing an insurance company.

He said, okay now dr Lewis now that we've disregarded your mother's x rays

Yeah,

you can't, don't you think this is just old age? And I said, well, the vertebra above and below the degeneration are the same age. How do you explain that? And they gave the lady 51, 000 for her rec.

So

you have to learn to think outside the box.

And I think we have been. Programmed. If you want to know how I feel, listen to George Carlin. So hormone imbalances, which creates neurotransmitter imbalances, what we call the happy hormones. and I don't think, you know, and I'm not an MD, I'm a DC, but I don't think that stress, anxiety, and depression is Paxil, Prozac, or Wellbutrin deficiency.

Agreed. Agreed. I think that that's, you know, I say it all the time kind of to break it down to going across the board with that, a headache is not an aspirin deficiency.

Exactly.

And it, oh, oh, well then maybe none of this other shit, like you said, is a Paxil deficiency or an Osambic deficiency or whatever.

Somehow humans existed without all of these chemicals for the, you know, for hundreds of thousands of years and if not longer. We're not really sure. Those are our best estimates that modern humans are somewhere now in the neighborhood of 300 to 400, 000 years we've been on this planet. And we made it without Ozambic and Pax Lobet and, It, things to lower our A1C and somehow we actually were actually pretty healthy before, you know, the onset of all this modern food supply and modern living,

The humans, have not needed chiropractors as long, well, they didn't wear the shoes we wear, they didn't sleep in the type of beds we did. They were walking around or sleeping most of the time, one or the other. We live much more natural lives. I don't think my sixth great grandfather in back spent a lot of time sitting in an office chair like I'm in right now.

Or, or, or lean forward looking at the phone for several hours a day. You know,