Happy new year gang. This is my first recording of 2024. My name is Dr. Mark Smith. This is the Good Living Doc show and I am the Good Living Doc. GoodLivingDoc.com. You can find all of my podcasts on my website, as well as every major podcast platform. This is episode 11.
As you’re listening, please keep in mind that I’m not your medical doctor so please don’t take anything I say as personal medical advice. Never try to diagnose, treat, or cure any symptoms or disease in yourself or anyone else based solely on what I say here. And if you do decide to change your life in any way based on the information you obtain on the Good Living Doc show, please do so with the guidance of a trained and licensed health professional.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the last 10 episodes trying to convince you…or at least entertain the concept in your mind…that the body is intelligent, and that the body is a self-healing, self-regulating system. And a couple of weeks ago, one of my patients asked me a pretty common question. Her question was, “If the body’s so smart, why do I have to keep doing this?”
And what a great question that is because…let’s call this lady “Lisa.” Lisa has reached a victory here with that question…because eventually, when you live your life in the mainstream medical model of health care where the body is weak, sick, and stupid and your health problems are inherited and there’s nothing you can do about them…and your only avenue for any kind of quality of life is to control your diseases and symptoms as long as you possibly can…and that disease and pain and misery is just normal and there’s nothing you can do about it…
…and you begin to entertain the idea that there could possibly be another way…that there might be some things that you can do to make your body healthier, to reverse disease, to get out of pain, and to live better…that’s what this show is about…good living…I am the Good Living Doc…thanks for showing up.
But when you’re making that transition, and you’re learning this new concept, you eventually start asking questions. Because with the disease care model, there are no questions. No one ever asks the question that Lisa asked, which is “why?” No one in the disease care model asks why.
We Need to Start Asking Why?
Why is my body doing this? Why is this a problem? Why is this happening? Why do I feel this way? No one asks those questions. No one answers those questions. Because in the disease care model, the body is weak, sick, and stupid…and that’s it. That’s the end of it. So your only option then is to control your symptoms and diseases as long as you can and live as best you can.
But when you are taking this concept of an intelligent body that knows what it’s doing, that knows how to help you, that knows how to heal, that knows how to regulate itself, and you start learning these new concepts…eventually you look at yourself and you go. “Well, is wellness happening to me? Am I reaching wellness? And if not, why not? And if I am reaching wellness, if I am getting closer to wellness, why do I have to keep doing these things?” That was her question to me. Why do I have to keep doing this?
This is the first victory that people have when they’re making this change in their mind. They begin to ask why. So, congratulations, Lisa! You’ve conquered the first step, which is becoming curious and open your mind, and being open to these new concepts. And I’m going to answer her question right now.
When the body is weak, sick, and stupid…when you go to the doctor or you have a problem…you get diagnosed…you get a diagnosis and you get a treatment. The treatment is for the diagnosis. The treatment is for the symptom. The treatment is for the disease. But the disease and the symptom is an effect. There’s a reason why those things happen. It’s not just because you’ve got some faulty genes. But that’s what we’ve been taught to believe…that the body is weak, sick, and stupid, and this is just what happens.
When we’re told these things by all these very smart people, these people that we trust to help us and do the right things for us…these people that go to school for years and years and they spend lifetimes in these professions…when they tell us that this is our option, we believe them. We have to, right? Because they’re the people who look to for the answers.
But if the body is intelligent, there has to be other things that we can do. One of my first episodes is called Deficiency and Toxicity, because the only two things that move a cell…or move your body…away from wellness, is deficiency and toxicity.
Deficiency and Toxicity are What Cause Chronic Disease
Within our genetic makeup is the instructions for our needs as humans. Our genetic structure is what determines what we need as far as our nutrient intake, our exercise, how we’re supposed to move our bodies, how we’re supposed to rest and for how long, what kind of social construct we’re supposed to have in our lives, how our bodies are supposed to deal with stress.
When we’re not providing the things that we are genetically designed to need, the result of that is deficiency and toxicity. We’re not giving our bodies what they need nutritionally, for instance, because our genetic makeup determines…say, that we need Vitamin D from the sun, and we’re not giving ourselves Vitamin D, we have a deficiency.
If we’re constantly taking in food that is manufactured…that is not created by the Earth…that is not created by nature…that is foreign to our bodies…full of chemicals and preservatives, and pesticides, and herbicides…all the junk in foods in wrappers, bags, and boxes…we create a toxicity.
Deficiency and toxicity are the things that start to cause our bodies to move away from wellness. So here is where the disconnect lies from where Lisa is right now and where we eventually want her to go…because she still sees…
I don’t want this to come across like I’m saying anything negative about her. I’m celebrating her because she’s…this is the journey. This is the path that we all go down. We all reach these milestones…and she’s reached one, and so I’m patting her on the back. This is an amazing thing. I’m just using her situation as an example, but she still sees doing these good things for herself as treatment.
She’s still trying to treat herself. She’s still trying to treat her pain and her symptoms and her issues…whatever it is that she’s suffering from. She still thinks that these wellness measures are treatments.
Wellness Measures vs. Disease / Symptom Treatment
Chiropractic is not a treatment. Chiropractic fills a movement deficiency. Its purpose is to adjust areas of the spine that are fixated, or not moving properly, or are misaligned…in order to restore movement. So, we’re restoring a movement deficiency in the spine.
When you’re filling a deficiency or you’re purifying a toxicity, that’s not a treatment. That is a wellness measure and those are the things that are good for us…those are the things we’re supposed to do on a regular basis…like exercise and like eating a salad.
When you exercise, you’re filling a movement deficiency if you have one. If you don’t exercise, you have a movement deficiency. If you start to exercise, you are filling that deficiency with movement. That’s a good thing. That’s a wellness measure. You are providing your body with what it genetically needs.
If you have a Vitamin D deficiency and it’s causing you to have a disease, and you take Vitamin D and your disease goes away, that Vitamin D is not a treatment. It is a wellness measure. You filled a deficiency and that’s why you’re better. That is a wellness measure. It is not a treatment. See that difference?
If you have high blood pressure and you take a blood pressure pill to lower it, that’s a treatment. Because you didn’t become healthier for that, you didn’t fill a deficiency for that. High blood pressure is not caused by a lack of blood pressure medication. Headaches aren’t caused by a lack of anti-inflammatories or pain relievers. See what I’m saying?
Our genetic makeup has determined that the human body needs iron in order to be healthy. So we have to ingest iron. If we don’t, if we lack iron and we become anemic, that’s a deficiency. That’s an iron deficiency. So that deficiency can cause disease…can cause real problems with the body.
If we start to ingest iron, we start to eat more iron rich foods and we fill our iron deficiency and our disease goes away, that’s not a treatment. Iron is not a treatment. Iron is a genetic necessity. So we filled the deficiency. That’s a wellness measure. The fact that we gave our body something that it needs to function correctly…that’s a wellness measure.
Drugs are treatments. Surgeries are treatments. They do not restore wellness to the body, even though they might change symptoms, or they might alter a disease or the signs of a disease. They are not wellness measures. You’re not more well because of them.
Please don’t stop taking your drugs because of what I’m saying here. But “why” is a question that takes us down a different road. And it’s a question we all need to ask when it comes to our bodies.
But there’s a difference between treatment and wellness measures. Let me repeat…wellness measures fill deficiencies and purify toxicities.
Let’s say you eat a lot of sugar and you have some health problems because of sugar. If you eliminate sugar, is that a treatment? It’s not. It’s a wellness measure. You’re purifying a toxicity. If you have a sugar toxicity…eating too much sugar…and you stop it…that’s not a treatment. It’s a wellness measure. See?
If you’re not getting enough rest at night, and you have anxiety during the day because of it…because of the effects that a lack of sleep gives people…and yes anxiety can be a result of that…if you decide to start sleeping better, you start to go to bed earlier, you start to get better sleep…that’s not a treatment for anxiety. It’s a wellness measure. You’re filling a deficiency. You’re filling a deficiency of rest.
I hope that I’m making that clear. It’s an important distinction to make because a lot of people see wellness measures as treatments and they don’t continue to do them because they consider them treatments.
Just like this lady. She wants to know why she still needs to be adjusted if her body is so smart. Why do I keep having to be adjusted? Adjusting is not a treatment. Adjusting is a wellness measure. That’s a bridge that a lot of people have to make. But I applaud Lisa for the step that she took and she’ll get there. If you continue down this road, you’ll get there.
Humans are Animals Living in Captivity
We all learned in elementary school about the animal kingdom, right? We learned about mammals and we learned about vertebrates and invertebrates, and the different classifications of animals. Humans are mammals. We’re animals. We are part of the animal kingdom. We don’t think that we’re animals. We’re not animals like deer and horses. We have big brains and we have all this technology and we’ve created these societies that are very convenient and more advanced…and we don’t have to grow our own food anymore. We live in concrete jungles and we have skyscrapers…heck, we’re going to space. So we don’t consider ourselves animals, but our bodies are…at their base….we’re animals.
For the majority of human existence, we lived as hunter-gatherers. We lived like other animals. We lived in the wild. We had to go down to the stream for water. We had to forage our own food. We had to hunt. We had to build our own shelter. We lived in villages and anthropologists will tell us that humans who lived like that had very little of the diseases that we suffer from today.
And even hunter-gatherer societies now, that are present in New Guinea and Alaska…places like that…and Australia and Africa. Anthropologists also tell us that people who live in these societies do not suffer from the kinds of diseases that we suffer from.
What we’ve done in our modern society is take ourselves out of our natural habitat and put us into an unnatural habitat. We’ve removed nature from our lives. Our lives aren’t natural any more.
Wild animals are forced to live naturally. They have no choice but to find their own food, find their own shelter, protect themselves from predators. They have to live on their own, in nature, under the sun, in fresh air, and all the things that go along with that. And the people who study those things will tell us that animals who live like that do not have the kinds of diseases that animals that live in captivity have…like our dogs and cats.
So we’ve taken humans out of nature and moved them into…I don’t know what you’d call it…like a zoo?. We’re in captivity now. Because we don’t, forage for food. We’ve taken our society where we used to pull things from trees and eat them, and we drank natural clean water, and we hunted animals, and the only thing there was to eat was from nature.
Now we have grocery stores full of food that’s been manufactured.It’s made in a laboratory and full of all kinds of chemicals that are not in nature…not out there naturally in our food. We don’t find these chemicals in apples and oranges and bananas and broccoli. And so we’re taking all this nutrient dense food, taking it away from us, and we’ve decided to eat this manufactured food and fast food, and this food that does not grow on trees and does not grow from the earth and that we can’t hunt down. All this stuff, full of chemicals…corn and soy…that’s what it’s made from…corn and soy and chemicals.
And obviously we don’t have and kind of exercise like we used to have. I think I read some study that said that if humans wanted to get the same amount of daily exercise as our hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, we would have to walk 10 miles a day to get the same exercise that they got naturally. Because what did they have to do? They had to walk down to the stream for their water. That might have been a couple miles. They had to build their own shelters…they had to repair their own shelters. They had to make their own clothes. They had to climb trees for food. They had to hunt down food. They had to pull food from the earth. They had to toil the earth. They had to spread seeds. They did all these things naturally. Their daily lives was activity, and many people who live in modern life don’t get any of that.
Many people get up in the morning, they go to work, they sit all day, they come home, they sit all night, they go to bed and there’s no physical activity at all.
So now we’re eating all this unnatural, manufactured food, we’re not getting any exercise, those kinds of things start screwing around with our hormones so we don’t sleep well, we need chemicals to wake up in the morning, we need chemicals to go to sleep, and guess what? Humans are getting sick.
What have we done with our domesticated animals…dogs and cats? We’ve taken them out of the wild, we’ve taken them out of their natural habitat. We’ve brought them into where we live and we start giving them manufactured food made from corn and soy and chemicals, feeding them a diet that is also not genetically congruent to their bodies, trapping them inside so they can’t run, they can’t exercise, and guess what? Now these animals are getting diseases like humans. They’re getting heart disease, cancer, joint problems, skin problems, and everything under the sun…because they’re living like we are.
Our Habitat Creates Deficiency and Toxicity
We have created an unnatural world…and people say, “Well, our genes have changed.” No they haven’t. Our genes have not changed from our hunter-gatherer ancestors from eons ago. Our genetic code, our genome, is the same. So the requirements that we have, as far as nutrition and exercise and rest and stress management and social construct, is the same as it was back then. Our needs are the same.
And we simply just don’t provide those things any more because we’re living in a zoo…we’re living in captivity. We’re not living our natural lives. I mean, does anybody want to go out to the forest to live? No, I don’t want to go out to the forest to live…I’m not advocating that. I’m just simply trying to get the concept across that these natural things that grow from the earth are what are supposed to nourish our bodies.
Our genome requires it, and when we don’t provide it, when we’re not living a genetically congruent life, we create deficiencies and toxicities. When we have deficiencies and toxicities, we start to create disease. Our bodies start to have problems. They have to adapt. They have to adapt to the fact that they’re not getting the right nutrients or that they’re getting toxic amounts of some chemicals. They have to change in order to protect us and that change leads to disease and disease leads to symptoms.
We have changed our habitat as human beings in our advancement, and our habitat…our environment…is what we need to restore in order to restore wellness. Humans right now…as humans living in captivity, we have created physical and psychological sickness because of this incongruent life that we live.
Animals living in captivity do the same thing. It’s our habitat that has changed, not our genes. Our requirements are still the same.
You know, whenever we discover a species that’s going extinct…we’ll find suddenly that this species that has lived for thousands and thousands of years in harmony with the earth and in health and suddenly in a couple of decades, this species is becoming extinct…but what do we do? What’s our response?
Do we just assume it’s a genetic thing? Like their genes have changed? “Sorry, species. You know, your genes are weak, sick, and stupid, and it’s just the way it is. Sorry.” Or do we run in with all kinds of drugs and surgery and try to save this species with pharmaceuticals and chemicals?
What do we do? We try to restore the habitat. We try to restore that species back to its natural habitat because it’s almost 100% of the time because the habitat has changed. Not because the genes changed. It’s because the habitat changed and the species starts to die out. That’s what’s happening with human beings.
Our habitat is so far away from our natural genetically required environment that it is making us sick. And so this is what we have to do. We have to restore our habitat. Again, I’m not moving to the woods. I don’t want to move to the woods. I enjoy modern day conveniences, but we have to get back to eating food from the earth, exercising naturally through natural functional body movement. We have to start getting enough sleep. We have to start reducing our amounts of stress. We have to start healing our social construct…our social interactions with people…our families…our friendships…our dealings with other people.
We all have to start eating better. I mean, that’s where we need to start. We need to start eating whole food. We need to start eating food from the earth. If the food that you’re eating has an ingredient list, it’s not natural. It didn’t come from nature. There’s no ingredient list on an apple.
Ingredient lists come on wrappers, bags, and boxes. Those are the manufactured foods full of chemicals, corn, soy, and everything else we’re trying to avoid.
We need to get back to moving. Our government used to recommend an hour of exercise a day, an hour of moderate to vigorous exercise a day. And then when people weren’t doing that, they lowered it to 30 minutes a day. And now, recently, in the last few years, the recommendation now is just get up. Just do something. Get up and do something with your body. Quit sitting there and get some activity. That’s the recommendation now.
We need to try and live life as naturally as we can in captivity, and food is where it begins. The two easiest places to start…the two best places to start is what we’re eating and how we’re moving. We’ve already addressed this in a few episodes and we’re going to address it again.
I’m sorry, gang. My office is about 40 feet from train tracks, so if you hear some rumbling in the background or a train whistle, that’s why. Every time a train goes by I pause to try to let the train go by, but if you start hearing some rumbling as I’m talking, my apologies.
Takeaway Point – Our Genes are NOT our problem
My point of this entire podcast is that there is a reason why our bodies are falling apart. It’s not just a genetic thing. It’s not just inherent disease and bad luck and just inevitable misery that we all have to endure. We’re all going to get sick at some point in our lives. That’s inevitable. We can’t avoid that, but there is plenty that we can do to reverse our misery. And it starts and ends with deficiency and toxicity. Those are the things that we can control.
When we start filling deficiencies and we start purifying toxicities, our bodies start to get back to a state that I keep saying that we should be in, which is a self healing, self regulating system.
But treatment and wellness are different things. Doing healthy things for yourself is not a treatment and at least some portion of your income should be dedicated to doing healthy things because insurance pays for sickness care. Insurance very rarely pays for wellness care…or for very much wellness care.
When you go outside the medical system and you’re getting away from pharmaceuticals and surgery, your insurance is going to be less and less probable to pay. And so, the things that we have to do to keep ourselves healthy, like going to the gym, your insurance isn’t going to pay for a gym membership.
I can attest 100%, insurance for chiropractic is terrible. Getting a massage…you know, the things that restore the body are things that your insurance is not going to pay for, so those are the kinds of things unfortunately we have to reach in our pockets for.
It’s like going to the dentist. One guy told me earlier today…I mean, he’s getting it. He gets it. He’s like…he said…”Well, you don’t just brush your teeth once and then say…well, why do I have to keep doing that.” And I laughed and I said “You’re exactly right.” I mean, this person gets it, but this guy has been a patient of mine for years and this is a journey.
Like I said, it’s a journey. It’s changing of the mindset. It’s a journey that we all undertake. Whatever milestone you’re hitting is a victory, even if you’re not there yet. So be patient with yourself. Keep asking questions, keep asking why. Keep researching. Keep reading. It’s worth it.
If I asked every person I know to list the top five most important things in life, I guarantee…I can’t think that there would be any people who would not put health in that top five. It is so important. If you lose it, it’s the most important thing in life. It consumes you when you lose it. So we have to do everything that we can to keep it as long as we can.
And there are things that we can do. The body is not weak, sick, and stupid. It’s an intelligent, self-regulating, self-healing system. Our job is to fill the deficiencies and purify the toxicities. What are those? That’s what we’re talking about on this show. I’m going to stop there with that whole line of thought.
Tip of the Day – 7 Kinds of Pain You Should Not Ignore
Let’s move on to the Good Living Doc tip of the day. Episode 11 tip of the day. I want to talk to you about pain that you should not ignore. Pain is something that many people either live with or they ignore or they try to treat away. Pain is a warning signal. Pain is your brain trying to get your attention. Pain is not something you should ignore at least if it’s chronic. If it’s a pain you continually live with or continually comes back or is something that continually gets in the way of your quality of life. That is not something you should drug away or ignore. It is something you have to pay attention to, but these are the kinds of pain that are an emergency. That’s what I want to talk about today.
These kinds of pain are pain that should take you to the emergency room right away. You should not try and drug this kind of pain away. You should not try and ignore this pain. You should not wait and see. I wrote an article about this so I’m just going to read off the article that I wrote.
Medical care should not be delayed if you experience the following…
1. An intense headache that occurs suddenly.
2. Weakness in the arms or legs that’s getting worse.
3. Localized pain in one leg accompanied by swelling, redness, and / or warmth.
4. Neck pain paired with slurred speech, weakness of numbness in the limbs, dizziness, double vision, or nausea.
5. Sudden and severe lower back pain paired with bladder or bowel difficulties.
6. Dull pain in the lower back that’s worsening and is accompanied by a fever and / or nausea.
7. Back or neck pain after an accident or injury along with sudden weakness, tingling, or numbness in the arms and legs.
That is not something you should just go home and sleep on…none of those. And if you have any of those symptoms, go to the ER and let them check you.
Okay gang, that’s it for episode 11 of the Good Living Doc show. My name is Dr. Mark Smith. I am the Good Living Doc. Goodlivingdoc.com. As I said before, all of my podcasts are on my website, and if you would rather read these episodes instead of listening to them or you’re somewhere where you can’t listen, there are transcripts of each one on the website. They are tedious, they take me forever, so please…if you want to read these, go read the transcripts because I put a lot of effort and work into writing every word that I say on these shows.
If you are so inclined and you like what I’m saying, please share my podcast on your social media. I appreciate every person you tell about this show. People continue to contact me that I’ve never heard of telling me that they’re listening to my show and they’re enjoying it. So if you have people who you think will benefit, please send this information along. Send them my link or a link to one of your favorite episodes.
Okay, thanks a lot gang. I appreciate it. All right, until next time, I appreciate you. Take care.
