How Stress, Grief, & Trauma Secretly Destroy Your Health

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Years ago, when my mom was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, she knew she had to change her diet, take supplements, and support her body physically. But there was something deeper holding her back from healing, something no doctor had ever addressed. She realized that she had spent her whole life as a people pleaser, carrying guilt and stress and emotional wounds she'd never processed.

And it wasn't until she began releasing those patterns, healing from the inside out, that her body could truly fully heal and recover. And science now confirms what my mom's story proves: unresolved emotions like grief, anger, fear, and trauma can disrupt your immune system, inflame your body, and even trigger disease. Today, I'm going to show I'm Dr. Josh Axe.

And today, I'm going to show you how emotional wounds can turn into physical illness and how ancient wisdom and biblical truth and cutting-edge research all point to the same path for healing. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show.

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So modern science now confirms what ancient healing systems have known for centuries, that our emotions can directly impact our physical body and overall health. And when you're stressed, here's the first thing that happens. Your cortisol spikes. Okay? That stress hormone cortisol goes up. What that does is it starts to also cause insulin to spike.

Now, when that happens, your immune system gets weaker, your digestive tract starts to inflame, your hormones get disrupted. And as I mentioned, insulin goes up, so your blood sugar raises, and that causes major health issues for really everyone.

And so, I've seen this for many years in practicing almost 20 years with patients, that almost everybody is conscious of knowing that poor diet is causing physical health issues, lack of exercise, maybe toxins also impacting health, and even genetics. All those are contributors to your health.

A bigger contributor to your overall health, the thing that makes the single biggest impact, is if somebody is going through emotional trauma. And sometimes that emotional trauma is happening every single day because you have a childhood memory or you're living with shame and guilt or unforgiveness, and that is contributing to your health problem.

You know, I had a— I've had so many patients with issues like inflammatory bowel disease, and I had one patient in particular, one of my first patients, who had ulcerative colitis. And they were coming in and we got them on a really clean diet. And then one time they went and they had pizza and, you know, too much ice cream and a major flare. You know, they felt like a wreck for, for a few days.

We got them back on the diet and they were feeling great again, um, and seeing great improvements. And then they had came in again and I said, oh, I said, you know, did you, um, did you, you know, have too much gluten or, or dairy? And they said, no, I haven't had any sort of, uh, you know, I've been eating perfectly. Literally they said, I've been eating the best I've eaten in my whole life.

And I asked a few more questions and it turned out they were just went through a breakup, major emotional turmoil, and that's why they were having those symptoms. So what can cause you to have a major inflammatory reaction or develop a disease like cancer and others isn't just diet. In fact, what can impact your body in an even bigger way is emotional stress.

In fact, there are studies now showing that stress is linked to high blood pressure, autoimmune conditions, cancer progression, heart disease, digestive disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes. So the medical studies prove this as well. And there are so many people today who are only addressing half of the equation.

And this might be why, maybe you've done some diet and some supplements and some lifestyle changes and you improved by 50%, but you never experienced a full breakthrough in your health because there's still some emotional turmoil and mindset issues that are making you sick. There's a study that came out that said around 80% of doctors' visits are stress-related. So there is a stress component.

To 80% of medical conditions today. And I know when I first opened my practice in Nashville, Tennessee, I'd have patients come in and I would ask them oftentimes, hey, what did your other doctor have you do? And I remember one time a patient said to me, my doctor told me to reduce stress. And I said, that's great advice. What are they having you do for stress?

They said, well, they didn't tell me what to do. They just told me I need to reduce stress. And this is so common with so many people. I think a lot of people know I need to reduce stress. But we don't know what to do for it. And so I'm going to get into that today as well. But I want to dive a little bit more into how emotions are impacting our physical health.

If you're sad or lonely, here's another thing that happens. You might crave sugar or eat more of it. We know it's sort of the classic movie scene where there's a bad breakup and the person in the breakup eats a tub of ice cream and a full pizza themselves. Here's the other thing. Sugar affects your microbiome, spikes your blood sugar, disrupts your insulin, and leads to systemic inflammation.

And that one emotional pattern can lead to a cascade of numerous other health problems. And there's support for this.

There's a 2022 study published in the Frontiers journal, and it found that psychological stress triggers immune dysregulation, which is a contributing factor in cancer, in autoimmune disease, also in issues like, of course, part of autoimmune disease there under that umbrella could be lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Another study published in the Psychosomatic Medicine journal found that long-term emotional suppression Is associated with an increased risk of early mortality and with cancer. People in the top 25% of emotional suppression had a 35% higher risk of death from all causes and a 70% higher risk of death from cancer to those who expressed emotions more freely. So it's not just you feeling emotions.

We should be releasing our emotions. We should be sharing. Today, so many people go into loneliness mode or sort of keep it to themselves and let it fester. It's like letting just a disease build and build and build rather than going and healing the area. And I want you to think about that. If you suppress your emotions, ask yourself that question.

Do you kind of suppress your emotions and not let them out? Well, your chance of cancer is 70% higher. And most of us understand the fact that sugar, parasites, different sort of infections, those can cause disease and build things like cancer in our body. But so can negative emotions like resentment, unforgiveness, loneliness, guilt, and shame.

Those things also build up disease within our internal organ systems. And there are practices that focus on healing these that we'll get into as well. But it's just important to understand that health is so much connected to our physical and mental and emotional state. You know, there's a 2015 meta-analysis.

So this is many studies that were brought in together, and we looked at loneliness in particular, and they found found that social isolation and living alone, these were associated, associated with a 26% to 32% increased risk of premature death. In fact, they say that sitting is the new smoking. You know what was actually even worse than sitting and being sedentary? Loneliness.

It was that bad for our overall physical health. And so there are numerous, numerous studies showing that our mindset, our relationships, our emotional health is critical For health and healing.

Now, I want to dive into a form of medicine that really looks to take care of this head on, and it's called German New Medicine, and it views diseases as a meaningful response to unresolved emotional trauma. And it's a system of pseudomedicine developed by Dr. Reichard Hamer, a German physician.

And the belief here is, is that every disease originates from an unexpected emotional shock or event called a biological conflict, or known as work-hammer syndrome. And physical illness is not a mistake or a flaw, but a smart adaptation the body makes to protect itself. But oftentimes, once you get out of that initial protection, you don't want to stay protected.

You want to open things up so they can heal and get better. It's like this. Have you ever had a sports injury? I'll give you an example from myself. I injured my back.

Okay.

Had a major back injury and my body, my muscles stiffened up. My body created inflammation around the area, fluid to protect itself. So my body started a healing process to protect itself. Okay. And my body started bracing. Now, after I made it through that time of healing, here's the thing. My body stayed tight and constricted.

However, in working with a lot of other practitioners, one of the things that I was taught was, listen, your body is It's overprotecting itself now. It's sort of in this protective state, and that's actually doing your body harm. Now, we need to get it to stop protecting itself and let it know it's safe, it's secure, it can move. You can be more fluid.

You can get back to playing basketball and pickleball and lifting weights and swimming and all the things you want to do, but your body is having a hard time doing it because it still thinks it needs to be protected. So we need to take little steps over time doing certain types of exercises to show your body it's safe. And secure. The same thing happens with people.

You have a childhood trauma where somebody takes advantage of you as a child, and maybe there's physical abuse or sexual or some sort of verbal abuse that happens. And so now in relationships, you don't get close to other people. You don't open yourself up to fully be loved. You keep secrets. You don't practice vulnerability. And so then your relationships suffer, right?

Well, these same things happen emotionally where we've had trauma happen when we were younger typically, and we hold onto that trauma still today, stay in protective mode. By the way, when your body is in a state of protection, it can't heal. Your body operates on a spectrum. Your body is in a fight or flight state. So what is your body doing when you are fighting or you are flying?

You're protecting yourself, okay? When you're in a fight or flight state, you're not in the rest or digest state. That's when you are healing, regenerating, you're living in a state of peace and joy.

Yeah.

And your healing is optimal. So for a lot of people today, the reason why you might be struggling with infertility, autoimmune disease, a cancer diagnosis is because you've had something happen in the past, some sort of trauma, and you've never got out of protection mode. You've lived in a state of protection so that area of your body can't heal.

In Chinese medicine, they believe this is a major factor in what we call qi stagnation, and that's a main cause of cancer and disease, where blood and oxygen Stop getting into the area because your body puts up walls and says, listen, I don't want to let anything get in or out of here. This is part of the protective mechanism.

And so the area just stays inflamed and swamp-like rather than a living river where things should be flowing in and out constantly. Again, nutrients, oxygen, blood. That stops happening and the area just gets really restricted. So, so, so we need to, in order to heal, open ourselves up and focus on healing the area of injury.

And the area of injury for a lot of us, it's not a knee, it's not a low back, it's our heart, it's our soul, it's our spirit. And focusing on healing those areas. And it's believed that whatever organ system is sick, or organ systems, it's due to unresolved trauma. And different unresolved traumas affect different organ systems.

And by the way, this has been believed in Chinese medicine for thousands of years, but German New Medicine has a different approach to it, which we'll get into. Here's examples that German New Medicine looks at.

Breast cancer.

Breast cancer. Why does a woman get breast cancer? Well, it's due to, according to German New Medicine, a nest worry conflict. So nest, think about that sort of nest and a mother, a mother bird over her, over her kids. This is worry over your children in your home. Okay.

And if you are constantly worrying about your kids and your home and your safety and your security, those sort of things, and you live in that state constantly, that's the root cause of breast cancer according to German New Medicine. Colitis is stemmed from a territorial anger conflict. Okay?

You feel like somebody's encroaching on your area and your space, and that's making you angry and frustrated. Skin conditions like eczema may reflect a separation conflict, such as a feeling of being cut off from someone you love. I mean, this can happen to kids when you have multiple kids, not one kid, but 2 and 3.

Maybe a mom has to go back to work or a child gets put in daycare or there's a second child and a third. Full attention and now not able to give the full attention to the child. So these sort of conditions can start to crop up based on those issues. Here's a few others. Lung cancer may be linked to a conflict of a death fright conflict where you're fearing death in your future.

Irritable bowel disease is indigestible anger that's experienced. And so we see different conditions are due to different emotions that are being stored in these different organ systems. There are 2 phases of disease. Number one, Conflict active, which can be things like stress, insomnia, and anxiety. And number 2, post-conflict healing, which includes symptoms like fatigue and inflammation.

In phase 1, this is where you're experiencing stress and insomnia and anxiety and worry around whatever conflict is taking place. And then in post-conflict, you may be experiencing fatigue, Inflammation and other symptoms. And knowing what emotional trauma occurred as well helps shift the body into healing. And, and, and this is really where it starts.

This starts in all forms of healing, knowing what happened. When did the injury occur? Okay. That's the first thing you wanna do. So, uh, I'll, I'll share this for myself. I had a lot of, uh, um, mindset and emotional issues myself because I had a teacher my freshman year of high school tell me I couldn't be a doctor.

And then I also had a doctor diagnose me with ADHD and he told me I had a learning disorder. So I had a lot of emotional issues around that and I was able to fully heal from that because I went back and said, okay, when did these occur? And think about it for yourself. Was there a teacher? Was there a pastor? Was there a parent? Was there a coach?

Was there a random person, a peer who said something to you?

Okay.

And it caused this Emotional trauma. Okay. You wanna pinpoint what was that emotional trauma? When did it occur? When did this whole thing start for me? Okay. That's very important. Now, I wanna walk you through kind of what this might look like for a lot of people in terms of this healing process.

Once a conflict is resolved, like a reconciliation after being betrayed, this is when physical healing And symptoms like pain, fever, or fatigue often begin. And then once you know when that trauma occurred, you want to focus on resolving that conflict. Okay? It might be you need to go and forgive somebody. It might be you need to go and forgive yourself.

It might need to be where you need to just recognize it happened and recognize, you know what? I'm going to see this in a positive light. What did I learn from this experience? That has allowed me to go stronger? And how can I use that to become more Christlike, more virtuous? How can I use this for the good of others? Right?

I think that that's one of the most important things we can use is use our pain for purpose. And if you view your pain still, this thing you've had happen in the past, and you still see yourself as the victim versus the hero that's overcome something, and now you're using that for good to help others, ask yourself that question.

Think about that trauma you have in your life, that trauma that still bothers you today. Do you still see yourself as the victim? If you do, you are not healed. Versus if you see yourself as the hero, I'm an overcomer. Hey, I learned from that lesson. I'm now better for it. That person was a hurt— you know, hurt people hurt people.

And you have a level of sympathy and empathy for that person that even maybe hurt you. Again, and some of these things are very difficult, and the greater the The injury or the harm that was done to you, sometimes the harder it is to overcome. But it's important because if you don't do it, you can't fully heal. And so you really want to, number one, recognize what was that issue and trauma.

Number two, pinpoint the people involved, yourself involved, practice forgiveness, let go of shame and guilt with it. And then see yourself as the hero, not the victim anymore, and give it over to God. Give it to him. And then And now focus on moving on. Okay? And open yourself. Say, God, I'm opening myself up to healing. Okay? And then your body can start to heal.

Once that conflict is resolved, like a reconciliation after being betrayed, as an example of that, now physical healing can start to begin. And listen, you might have a little bit of pain or fever or fatigue at the beginning of even the healing symptoms, but over time your body will start to heal and get better and better and better.

Now, one of the biggest things that keeps us from healing is avoidance. Okay? Sort of avoiding it. And most people, what happens is you've been hurt at some point and you sort of shove it under the rug and your sometimes mind creates walls around it because you feel like it's too painful to bring back up.

But sometimes you have to create more pain in that temporary moment, in that short term, in order to experience full healing in the long term. It's like this, you know, my wife had an ACL surgery on her knee many, many years ago.

And, you know, starting— I want to say it was 3 days after surgery— she had to start bending and moving her knee as much as possible so that ACL reconstruction could be its optimal. And that's painful. But if she wouldn't have done that and she would have stayed in protection mode, her knee would have degenerated, more arthritis. It would have never gained back full function.

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You know, one other area of German New Medicine that's really powerful is they encourage to explore their life story and emotional triggers instead of focusing only on lab results or their diagnosis. Okay, so here's what this looks like. You've been diagnosed with autoimmune disease. Let's call it Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Okay? And what you tend to look at is, what are my TPO?

What are my antibodies? What are my T3 and T4 levels? Right? You're looking at these thyroid hormones. You're looking at the diagnosis of Hashimoto's. Because you're focused in on that. What German New Medicine says is don't focus on those things. What you should be focusing on is your life story and emotional triggers. Okay? How's your relationship with your mom?

What are the biggest things from your past that still bother you today? What triggers you emotionally? Write those things down. Now, go and focus on healing those areas. And when you heal those areas emotionally, your lab results— those will get better. So you don't focus on the lab results. That's not, that's not gonna help you heal. You focus on healing the emotional trauma.

I mean, I, I think about this like doing a micronutrient test. You know, I do micronutrient tests with patients and, uh, and basically looking what are all the nutrients they're deficient in. Okay, we got vitamin C here. Let's go and address that. Let's get more, uh, let, let's have you eat more, uh, grapefruit and kiwis and broccoli, right? These vitamin C rich foods.

Let's do some of that in order to boost your immune system, right? So you wanna be able to know what that issue is so So improving your diet, that's a big part of it. But the other big part, as we've been talking about, is addressing that emotional trauma. Now, I want to cover, according to German New Medicine, some of the biggest triggers that cause people to be sick. Here's a few.

One, receiving news that was difficult to take in, digest, or comprehend. I had this happen about a year and a half ago when my father-in-law passed away. I mean, when I was told over the phone that I went on a 1-day trip. I'd seen him the day before. I was hanging out with him every day. And I was told that over the phone. I remember it was sort of, you know, almost hard.

It was hard for me to accept, right? And that was an example of that for me personally. So what is that for you? Was there something that happened where you got a piece of news that was difficult to digest or even comprehend? Here's another one, a loss or separation. This could be a divorce. It could be a death. It could be a child moving away from home. You know, it could be any of those things.

A job loss, income loss. So those are examples too. A personal attack, such as an offending remark or physical abuse. A life-threatening situation, like an accident or medical emergency. Again, somebody saying something, again, going back to a personal attack, somebody says, You're not smart enough, you are not pretty enough, you're, you're, you're, you're over, you're fat.

You know, if somebody's saying something harmful to you, and even if they didn't say it directly, they made you feel that way, right? These are all things that hurt us. And if we don't go back to that memory, uh, and remember it and let it go and allow God to heal our hearts, it will continue to build disease in our body. And, and here's an example of how this works.

According to one study, people living with an autoimmune disease Are nearly twice as likely to suffer from a mood problem like depression, anxiety, or bipolar. The risk of mood disorders is 87% to 97% higher in people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and Graves' disease.

Okay, so, so if you have a mood disorder— and here's how it happens a lot of times— somebody said something negative to you about you. Okay? It could be that, hey, you know, you're not working hard enough, or, gosh, you're so dumb. Why did you do that? And then here's what happens. That gives you a level of depression.

Now, here's the other thing that happens, and it's believed in autoimmune disease. Autoimmune disease is where your body starts attacking itself. Okay? So Hashimoto's thyroiditis is where your body is attacking its own thyroid tissue. Maybe it's recognizing it being similar to gluten. Okay? But that's sort of happening. Your body's attacking itself.

But emotionally, what happens with people with autoimmune disease is they're emotionally attacking themselves, and that's what's causing their body to then physically attack itself. So do you ever do anything like this to yourself? You say, why did you do that? That was so dumb. I shouldn't have said that. Have you ever done anything like that where you're very hard on yourself?

And oftentimes this stems from your parents were very hard on you, your parents were critical. I have somebody, a close friend of mine, and his mom was incredibly overcritical and judgmental of him. I mean, everything he did, she critiqued. Fatigued, and, and he was always wanting her approval. So now he's constantly hard on himself and beating himself up.

And then he also developed psoriasis, an autoimmune disorder. Okay, so, so this happens in a lot of people. When we look at why did you develop this specific disease, it's rarely genetic. Typically it's emotional.

Now I want to walk you through what German New Medicine says in terms of how to physically heal from this trauma, and I've hit on some of it, but I want to walk you through the whole process. Number 1, reflect on the emotional shock that occurred before your symptoms started. Okay? So what was that thing that you believe really kicked off your— that past trauma that still bothers you today?

Journal and pray about it and experience the process again. So I want you to sort of visualize and pray through and say, God, bring this to me. What is this thing that's bothering me today? Write it down and journal all about it. Okay? And then seek reconciliation or release of that conflict through therapy, Or spiritual healing. Okay? Seek reconciliation, forgive, let go, release.

See yourself as the hero in the story, the overcomer. Write down how could that be used for your good? How could God use that for good? Write those things down. There's also inner child work therapy or prayer to help resolve stored emotional trauma and removing fear around your diagnosis, which helps stop the ongoing stress response. All These are important parts of that healing process.

So again, what German New Medicine does is it says every disease condition, for the most part, there is an emotional component. Now listen, there are a few diseases out there here and there where let's say you were drinking lead or asbestos or were in a major car accident, right?

These are traumas that may not have as much of an emotional component, but 80% plus, the majority of our chronic Chronic conditions like cancer and autoimmune disease and hormone imbalances, the greatest tie to those according to German New Medicine is our emotional state and things like childhood trauma. So going and healing those is so important. Listen, this is something you shouldn't skip.

It's something you should go after. And I get the best results with patients when we go after both, when we focus on that physical healing with diet and lifestyle and supplementation and all those issues.

Yeah.

And we focus on building and fostering this healthy mindset and emotions at the same time. So you really want to do both simultaneously. I also want to mention, once you feel like you've been able to address and identify that past trauma, okay, so it's like detoxification, right? We want to detox and eliminate that painful trauma, painful emotions, bad sort of mind patterns.

And then we also want to support our emotions. By living the way God designed us to live. And there are 4 emotions I want to talk about before I get into the Chinese medicine and the biblical mindset with this on how to heal your emotions. So hormonally, you want to focus on supporting 4 hormones in your body: oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin.

Now, oxytocin today, I believe, is the hormone we are most deficient in, in terms of supporting. It's known as the love hormone or the connection hormone. You're going to get oxytocin. Actually, it's released in the highest levels when a mom is breastfeeding a newborn child.

In fact, I've heard my wife and my sister were talking about this recently where they were talking about sort of this euphoric state, just this deep connection they feel when breastfeeding and nursing. So it's there. The other time you're feeling the most is during sexual intercourse.

Okay, so there's this sort of hormones being released of oxytocin where you're feeling Being deeply emotionally connected to the other person. Also socializing, physical touch. So it's deep intimate conversations with people where you feel like you're really connecting. It's hugging, it's high-fiving, it's petting and hugging your animals, helping and serving others as well.

This is where you're going to get the greatest levels of oxytocin release. And these are all things we're greatly deficient in, especially coming out of COVID and a lot of the other things politically where it's like, Like, you can't, you know, like hugging coworkers. And I mean, I know, you know, in my clinical practice, we encourage hugging.

I used to have one of my staff members and she was like the chief hug officer. I was walking around and because I knew that hugging and encouragement and putting your hand on someone's shoulder, looking them in the eyes and connecting with them deeply and giving them a word of encouragement is so important to healing and health.

So oxytocin, this hormone about healthy, quality physical touch and connecting with others relationally is the biggest hormone we want to start supporting in order to heal our hearts and our emotions. The other one is dopamine.

Now, unfortunately, today via social media, especially like Instagram and Facebook, and TikTok is the worst of them on this, but this sort of scroll— scrolling, doom scrolling constantly. Dopamine is connected to the reward channels in your brain. It's your reward chemical. If you ever see a slot machine, somebody sitting at a slot machine, It's basically achieving a goal.

And so, for you, when you like something or someone likes what you do, that's sort of like, oh, there's a mini goal there. You also get more dopamine when you eat certain types of food, like things that are very sugary, completing a task, like checking a task off your list, that's dopamine. And then sometimes certain self-care activities.

So listen, dopamine is a good hormone, but a lot of us are getting too much dopamine in an unhealthy way. And not enough oxytocin. Okay? Because dopamine is more connected to— listen, oxytocin tends to be where you're connecting with people. Dopamine is where you're connecting with a thing or a task. Okay? We need more oxytocin.

Number 3 hormone you need to start healing your, your health and your emotions and your full body is endorphins. These are natural painkillers. This is tied to movement, especially exercise, listening to music you love, watching a positive movie, and laughing. Endorphins are released.

This is where you get this runner's high, that feeling where if you're just laughing and you feel that overwhelming sense of emotion, endorphins. So it's really movement and having fun. That's how you're going to have those. And then serotonin. These are known as the mood stabilizers. This is where a lot of people take antidepressants or SSRIs, these serotonin drugs that people take.

These are the mood stabilizers. Your greatest way to get serotonin is sunshine. So the more sun you get, the more serotonin you get. Mindfulness— so spending time in prayer, meditation, reading a spiritual growth book, attending a Bible study, but just going deep spiritually— that boosts serotonin.

Being with nature— so just hiking and walking, being in the mountains, snow skiing, on the water— that helps boost serotonin as well. So those are the biggest serotonin boosters that you can have. But most of us, again, Again, too much dopamine, not enough oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins. And you can do it by connecting with people, connecting with nature, and through having fun.

And so here's what Chinese medicine believes is that different emotions impact and cause disease in different organ systems. Very similar, a little bit different, but similar to German New Medicine. And so Chinese medicine looks at 5 different organ systems of the body, and it knows that different emotions impact different organ systems, both for the positive or the negative.

And the first thing I reference in Chinese medicine is focusing on healing Healing the body emotionally and practically. So, if somebody is dealing with— here's an example. If somebody is dealing with major digestive distress, the practitioner is going to say, hey, are you dealing with some emotional distress? Is it worry? What are you worried about?

And the person says, well, I realized I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my work. I'm worried about this. And they'll say, okay, well, that's causing digestive issues. And they're bringing an awareness there. To, to the worry. Now, a lot of Chinese medicine practitioners may not go beyond that in giving recommendations, but some do.

There's a Chinese medicine practitioner, an acupuncturist that I work with, and he does recommend in his practice things you can start to go to do to heal, heal from worry and get over worry. And for him, he's a, uh, he's Jewish, and so he recommends going to the Bible and meditating on certain Bible verses like Joshua 1:9, where God It says, be strong and courageous. Don't worry.

I'll be with you wherever you go. So there's some advice there in that. But overall, again, it's very practical in terms of being aware of the emotion you experience and start to create healthy lifestyle habits and practices to deal with that emotion. Now, the next thing in Chinese medicine that's typically used for healing your body even emotionally is acupuncture.

This involves inserting a very They stick a very thin needle into a meridian point, which different areas of the body are connected to different organs, and that allows blood flow and energy and oxygen to flow to that area. And that can sometimes help people more quickly resolve their grief, anger, and anxiety is the way that works. Herbal medicine is often used in Chinese medicine as well.

So if somebody has a digestive issue like we talked about, they might recommend you drinking ginger herbal tea daily or taking an herb like astragalus or adding more cardamom to your food and fennel, and that's going to help the digestive tract. And so they're going to recommend that as well. And then they're going to recommend dietary therapy. So not just herbals and herbal teas, but also foods.

And so it might be, again, doing more root vegetables like sweet potatoes and pumpkin and butternut squash in order to ground and help heal the digestive system. And then they also recommend a lot of breathing, energy movement, being outside barefoot with something called qigong.

Today we call it things like box breathing, but they created a system for breathing In order to move oxygen throughout your body and help your body release emotions that were stuck. And so Chinese medicine had really an incredible 5-part system there for helping people heal from chronic disease.

And so they took on the emotions not only from the emotional standpoint, as in German New Medicine, but helped try and focus on addressing and be conscious of the emotion, fostering positive emotions to combat it, and then other therapies as well in order to heal.

Now, there was a 2019 There's an interesting meta-analysis in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, and it found that acupuncture significantly reduced depression symptoms, likely through vagus nerve stimulation, reduced cortisol levels, and anti-inflammatory effects, and releasing neurotransmitters like serotonin and noradrenaline.

And so we see that Chinese medicine acupuncture is helpful against this. And there's also studies showing that qigong, this type of breathing, supports relaxation. And improved symptoms related to depression, anxiety, addiction, and PTSD. And so, when it comes to Chinese medicine, this is a practice that again is looking at the whole body and helping it heal from an emotional standpoint.

I will say that there are other techniques that maybe typically go deeper into the root cause of the emotion and helping heal that specifically, but overall as a practice, it is something that is very that does help bring awareness and as a whole can help heal people dealing with emotional, mental, and spiritual issues.

Now, finally, I want to go through biblical medicine, and this is healing through faith, forgiveness, and community. And I want to say what German New Medicine does really well is it helps address those childhood traumas. It brings them to the surface. I think that's so important. Chinese medicine does such a great job with sort of the specific lifestyle practices.

But what the Bible does better than both is it says, okay, Okay. Jesus is your healer. Okay. The Bible is good medicine and it has great practical advice on healing your body physically, mentally, and spiritually. And I think it's important.

One of the things that happens a lot of times in these sort of Eastern medicines and practices, it does a good job of emptying yourself, but not always a good job of helping you fill yourself with the greatest thing. And that's the Spirit of God and focusing on Hope and love and joy. And so filling your cup with those things, and, and the Bible does that better than anything.

You know, biblical medicine is rooted in the idea that spiritual health is the foundation, the greatest foundation for your physical health. And the Bible speaks of healing through faith, prayer, community, gratitude, and the renewing of our minds. You know, Proverbs 17:22 says this, a cheerful heart A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Think of that.

A cheerful heart. What is a cheerful heart? Praising, gratitude, thankfulness, right? A cheerful heart, being cheerful and grateful and joyful. It's good medicine, right? It's good medicine. And so the Bible shares some of these things we need to do in order to start to heal our emotions.

And I would say that these are more powerful than any other form of medicine when it comes to biblical medicine and meditating on the word of God and asking Jesus to physically heal you. Here's how it works. So many of us today live with sin, bitterness, shame, guilt, unforgiveness, and unhealed wounds.

And these are, and they have spiritual roots that take up place and start to breed physical illness in our body. And healing comes through confession, prayer, faith, communion, and surrender to God's will. The Bible teaches us that faith can restore your health. You know, Mark 5:34 says, your faith has made you well.

There's a woman there who is bleeding for many, many years, and she simply touches Jesus and she's healed. And Jesus said to her, your faith has made you well. Jesus says this constantly throughout the Bible when you read the New Testament. He says, it's your faith that has made you well. Faith in what? Faith in Jesus. Faith that he can heal you.

That perfect person that died for you, that loves you unconditionally. Faith in him that he loves you, that he cares for you, that he can heal you. That faith will heal you. So it's belief in God's healing power that has been shown to reduce stress hormones and improve outcomes, even in scientific studies. And prayer and worship create neurochemical shifts that also calm your nervous system.

So I do think there's some things that happen. We know via a placebo effect, a scientific effect of what happens when you believe and have faith. But I believe there's something supernatural that happens there as well. You can take back control of your metabolism, your energy, and your hormones naturally.

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You know, one of the areas of healing, and I would call it sort of a spiritual detoxification that the Bible talks about, is forgiveness and confession. You know, Ephesians 4:26-27 says this, in your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold. I mean, he's saying it's so important here.

That if you're living in anger and any sort of bad, any sort of negative emotion or vice, do not let the sun go down while you're still angry. Okay? Don't even let the sun go down. Go and resolve it right now. What most people do is we don't confess and we just take whatever we have, we shove it under the rug.

And not only do we let the sun go down, we let the sun go down down for 10, 20, 30 years and live with these unhealthy emotions over and over and over again. The Bible is clear and urgent in its call to resolve this now. Matthew 6:14-15 says, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. You know, unforgiveness is one of the most damaging things to our health. In fact, in Chinese medicine even, they believe that forgiveness is tied to 2 things. It's a sort of anger and resentment and bitterness towards another person, to something they did, not even currently, but in the past.

So that's going to affect your liver and your immune system. And it's probably the greatest driver of cancer emotionally is unforgiveness, according to— according to that form of medicine. Now, again, the Bible is clear and it talks about forgiveness constantly throughout the Bible and other emotional burdens like guilt and shame and bitterness and how they affect our health.

And in the New Testament, I believe in James, it says, you know, go and confess your sins unto the Lord and also confess them sometimes to elders and to other people you can trust, right? So we're called to confess, we're called to forgive. If you hold onto sins, Without forgiveness. Without forgiveness, it builds disease in your body.

And studies show that forgiveness reduces cortisol, inflammation, and even improves your immune system markers. So there are studies showing the healing power of forgiveness. And so I'd encourage you, think about— and one thing you might do is just take time and write down, who do I need to forgive? Maybe it's yourself even, maybe it's God, but who do you need to forgive?

Not that God needs forgiveness, But sometimes we blame God for things that he didn't do. And so just recognizing that. So who do you need to forgive? What do you need to confess? What are the things you've been doing wrong? And what are some of the vices and just negative, maybe mindsets you've been carrying as well? Write those things down and then confess those to the Lord. Okay?

Spend some time and confess, and then repentance of saying, God, I'm so sorry. That I've done these things wrong. Help heal my heart. Okay? Uh, this is what the Bible teaches us to do. Um, and then once you do this spiritual detox and you confess and you repent, then it's time to fill yourself with the new, with purpose, with hope, with love, with joy.

You know, things like meaning, belonging, and trust in God's plan are seen as critical for emotional resilience in the Bible. And then once you forgive and confess and repent, repent and change your ways in being obedient to God, then the next step is filling yourself with faith, hope, and joy, with the virtues. Okay? Also living with purpose and hope and more community.

You know, meaning and belonging and trusting God's plan are seen as critical for emotional resilience. You know, and also I would say this, seeing yourself in the right light, the way God sees you with that type of identity, that you were a sinner, but now you're a saint, you're redeemed. God has called you to do great and mighty things. Okay?

And so seeing yourself in the right light with a God-given identity, knowing you're the child of God, it's so critical to see yourself in the right light. And even seeing yourself as you go through hard times, the book of James also says, take joy, my brothers, when you face trials of any kind, because the testing of your faith helps you develop perseverance.

So even when you're— remember we talked about earlier, when you live in a victim You stay sick versus when you see yourself and know, okay, I'm an overcomer. I'm becoming a hero in that story. Now you wanna be honest with yourself. Okay? Hey, I saw myself as a victim. Now I wanna see myself as a hero.

Um, and, and, and, and, and, and thinking about how God can use whatever you've gone through for good, starting to focus on it in a different perspective and more of a positive light, no matter how much harm was done. That's incredibly healing. So James says, listen, when you are tested, don't have a victim mindset. Have a conquer mindset, knowing that you are getting stronger.

You're becoming more resilient, greater perseverance when you go through hard times. That's the mind of sort of that hero that you want to have. So there's a mindset there, a biblical mindset you want to have as you go through trials in life. You know, it's so easy when we're having a really hard time in life, when we're Yeah. Let's say maybe you think you could lose your job.

There's a couple ways to go through this in thinking you could be let go. One, you could live in a state of worry and thinking, I'm a victim, this is unfair, and living in that state. Now listen, it's okay to have those feelings and to live there for maybe a moment, but it's not going to help you to live there longer. It's going to hurt you versus thinking, you know what?

I'm going to keep working hard. I'm going to keep honoring God. You know what? God probably has a better job opportunity for me. Me. This isn't the best place for me to work. I can probably contribute more somewhere else, right? So it's having that sort of mindset when you go through trials. It's a form of biblical medicine.

You know, when I had my spinal infection and I couldn't walk for the year and I was so, so sick, I had to take those thoughts of feeling like I might never walk again or I might never fully heal, and I had to flip it and I'd say, you know what, I'm going to be more spiritually resilient. I'm going to be more I'm going to be more physically resilient.

I'm going to use this time to connect with my family. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to praise God through the storm. Right? And so it's hard to do, but we're called to do it and it will lead to the best outcome. A few other things the Bible talks about that are medicine for us. One is community connection with others. Community-based worship is a great thing as well.

So, but, but just attending church, Church every week, once a week, twice a week, more than that, but just going and connecting with other people and praising God together, learning together, serving others together. This community-based connection is key, a key form of biblical medicine. And then living in a state of gratitude and praise.

We know in studies it actually boosts serotonin and reduces inflammation. And think about what James says in the book of James. He says, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. When you are going through a trial, consider it pure joy, gratitude, praise. God, thank you that I can go through this hard trial so I can become more like you as I go through it.

You know, I remember when we were first having COVID. Do you guys remember back to that first couple years, 2020, 2021, when all the lockdowns were happening and all of the crazy things the government and the CDC were recommending?

And I remember feeling discouraged for a moment thinking, gosh, I can't believe that people are so blind and that we don't understand that people are not seeing that what we need through this is just to live through God's design by eating healthy and spending time in the sun. And like, I was discouraged.

I don't know how many of you guys were discouraged as we went through the first couple years of COVID And then I was with a pastor and we were talking about something. This was very early on in the pandemic. And I said to him, I said, you know what? I've just been a little bit disappointed in the way some people have acted. And we were talking about some of the challenges.

And he said something to me like, you know, Josh, one of the things I've had a change of heart is, and he said, I felt like God told me this, is that I should take joy in this trial right now because as a leader, a leader gets to shine in times of trial. He said, Josh, you know, you're a leader and this is now your time to shine and make the biggest difference.

He said, if there was no Civil War, I don't know how many people would know who Abraham Lincoln was. He said, so when you are going through a hard time or there's a challenge in front of you, he's like, this is a time where you get to shine and make the biggest difference during challenges. You get to make the biggest change possible. And I really had a shift in mindset around that.

I said, you know what? This COVID issue, this is not something to be depressed about. It's something to see as a challenge where I can, where I can do the greatest good. Okay, so there's a mindset there, a biblical mindset when we're going through any challenge in life.

You know, there's a study published in the Journal of American Medical Association, and this was done on 74,000 women, and they found that women who attended religious services more than once a week had a 33% lower risk of dying from all-cause mortality. Think about Just going to church once a week for women, 33% less mortality and better longevity.

People who attend religious services are significantly less likely to die from deaths of despair, including suicide, overdose, and alcohol poisoning, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. And another health review in a psychology journal found that prayer and spiritual practices significantly improved immune system health, stress levels, and and even pain tolerance.

This is believed to be linked to the positive emotions and social connections. And many studies suggest that prayer and meditation can activate relaxation pathways, lowering cortisol and helping your body heal at a higher level.

Even just doing 10 minutes a day, according to one study, 10 minutes a day of prayer and meditation significantly reduced stress in college students and helped them foster more gratitude, hope, and positive emotions. So we know that science proves this. We don't need science to prove it, but we know it does. And here are some actions to take in terms of biblical medicine.

Number 1, practice daily prayer and scripture meditation. Focus on a single verse or truth and just chew on it, pray on it, think about it. Okay? You know, this is something my mom did with cancer. We had about 20 Bible verses and my mom said them over and over and over again. Do that for yourself. Think about that.

If you are a spiritual, religious person or not, Go and look up 10 Bible verses about healing and say them 3 times a day, every day. And then also believe and see and know that you're going to be healed and ask Jesus to heal you and see what happens. So practice daily healing. Number 2, participate in weekly communion and fellowship with others going to church.

You can even practice communion at home with your family, taking some bread, some blood, and knowing that was Jesus' body And his blood given for you. Number 3, confess your burdens and your unforgiveness to a trusted pastor or mentor, uh, somebody that you trust there. Forgive, release your burdens. We're called to do that in the Bible.

And then again, forgive and release those who have hurt you and release that bitterness. Um, and then believe that healing is possible. Have faith. Says in Proverbs 18:21, the tongue has the power of life And I want to share with you, due to my father-in-law passing, I mean, these are things that are very personal to me that I've experienced myself.

So one, I've counseled people in healing, thousands of patients in using not just diet to help them heal, but also the Bible and spiritual focuses and German New Medicine and Chinese medicine, but focusing on those emotional roots to heal. It works. It is incredibly powerful for everybody, not some people. For everyone, it makes a big difference in their healing.

I experienced this myself when I lost my father-in-law about a year and a half ago. I had to go through a healing process of forgiving. I even had to forgive myself. I'm going to be honest about something and vulnerable.

I thought my father-in-law had a heart attack and I thought to myself, I should have done more in terms of diet with him and urging him to do certain things more, and I didn't do it. So I had to forgive myself. And I had to go through a grieving healing process and I had to go through some of the moments. I had to forgive myself for some things. I needed to spend some time in prayer.

And then also eating certain things and exercising and doing certain things to also help me relieve grief and stress and a number of things. But this is a process I just went through. I actually had had during my time afterwards. I had some physical ailments that, uh, from soon after he had passed, and I had them for about a year, and then they went away about a year after his passing.

Um, but, uh, but again, these are things that I just personally went through.

And so I want to encourage you, um, if you've dealt with any childhood trauma, if you have any negative emotions, or that where you worry a lot, or you get angry a lot, or you're fearful a lot, or you have something in the past that still bothers you today, go and address those issues head-on using German New Medicine, that Chinese medicine we talked about, and the most powerful one, that biblical medicine to heal, to overcome the trauma, the grief, the fear, the bitterness.

Because we know medically it suppresses your immune system, it disrupts your gut, it triggers inflammation, autoimmunity. And if you use these tools, it can help you heal. Hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember, each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can Physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Also, a big thank you to all of you that are subscribed. That's what the number one thing you can do to support the show here is be a subscriber so you don't miss out. You know, I've actually had a few of my videos over the past few years shadow banned. Okay. I had one I just recorded that I thought was going to be one of our biggest podcasts ever, and YouTube shadow banned it. Okay.

So if you're not subscribed, you may not have You can have these episodes actually show up in your YouTube feed or in your inbox. So just make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss out on the content. And also, thank you, all of you that are sharing this content. You know, there are so many people that are hurting out there mentally and emotionally.

They don't know that these are the root cause of their disease. So thanks so much for sharing this as well. And I can't wait to see you on the next episode.