Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

We need to recalibrate them by taking our foot off of the gas and applying it to the brake.

And that is our parasympathetic nervous system that occurs through the vagus nerve.

And the ways in which we do that are the things that we think of in terms of being like wellness.

We think about massage.

We think about acupuncture.

We think about sauna.

But there's other things too.

Connection to other people, right?

Our relationships, quiet time, meditation.

These are opportunities that we have to basically get out of the sympathetic cycle and put ourselves into a place of safety and comfort, which is what our body needs to heal and restore itself.

So it's an extra layer of evidence that's required in order to get there, Jonathan.

Unfortunately, there haven't been enough pioneers in the academic world out there examining this, the question of how the mind affects the body.

But there are some.

So one of the things that I discuss in my book is my relationship with one of my mentors, Professor Douglas Drosman out of the University of North Carolina.

And he's been studying this stuff since the 1980s.

He was way ahead of the curve.

And what he's shown us is that stress or exposure to trauma is clearly associated with the manifestation of disease, including irritable bowel syndrome, including inflammatory bowel disease, and others.

But the problem is, like, again, if you have 130 health conditions, we don't have research on the vast majority of them to examine the connection between stress levels and that.

There's no doubt.

There's no doubt that this is real and that this affects you long-term.