It’s the ordinary things that we do on a daily basis that have an extraordinary effect on our health.”

– Dr. Frank Lipman

 

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ABOUT THIS EPISODE

When it comes to health, Dr. Frank Lipman keeps it real and simple. A widely recognized trailblazer in functional and integrative medicine and a New York Times bestselling author of five books, he joins us to provide expert advice that seamlessly combines the best of traditional Western medicine with age-old healing techniques from the East.

Dr. Lipman shares how to create a plan for true wellbeing that isn’t pricey, inaccessible or impossibly strict and regimented. Together, we discuss approachable ways we can boost our immunity, prolong our health, and achieve lifelong vitality. He teaches us how by shifting our focus to long-term healthy habits and listening to the wisdom held in our bodies, we can increase our chance of avoiding illness in the first place, and in turn, create greater resilience and overall health.

 

SHOW NOTES

Dr. Frank Lipman Website | Dr. Frank Lipman Instagram | How To Be Well: The 6 Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life | THE WELL

 

 

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Episode Transcription

Dr. Frank Lipman:
It’s the ordinary things that we do on a daily basis that have an extraordinary effect on our health.

Vanessa Cornell:
Welcome to The NUSHU Podcast. I’m your host, Vanessa Cornell. I invite you with love into this space to learn and grow with me. And for a brief moment of the day, come home to yourself.

If you are a wellness junkie, a health junkie, someone truly committed to living the healthiest and most fulfilled life possible. This episode with Dr. Frank Lipman is for you. Dr. Lipman is a functional medicine doctor and New York Times bestselling author of five books, most recently on the topic of sleep. He will walk us through how to create a plan for true well being that isn’t pricey, inaccessible, or impossibly strict or regimented. He will show us that we can learn so much from both Western medicine and Western medicine. And that shifting our focus to long term healthy habits, listening to the wisdom held in our bodies can help us increase our chance of avoiding illness in the first place, and create greater resilience and overall health generally, and also specifically relating to COVID. Mostly though, I love this conversation, because Frank is a beautiful soul. In the commoditized world of health and wellness, it is a breath of fresh air to speak to someone so deeply committed to helping people and keeping it real and simple. The truth is many of the most important things you can do to help your health and well being are free. And this conversation with Frank will help you lean into those things. Thank you for tuning in. So Dr. Lipman, tell us about your path as a doctor. And what led you to this approach.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
I grew up in South Africa during apartheid. That was in the 50s and 60s 70s. And I went to medical school there, apartheid, which sort of reminds me that I’m living through something very similar now in America. But during apartheid, everything was separate. Blacks and Whites had to live in separate areas that are going to separate schools, separate hospitals, and I went to medical school in South Africa. My training was mainly in black hospitals because I preferred to work. Therefore, I’m not exactly sure why but I learned more, it was much more interesting for me. And I actually got exposed to traditional healers, Sangomas early on in my career. Even in the hospitals, when we couldn’t help a patient, the family used to call in the Sangoma, the traditional healer. And noticed early on that there was obviously something apart from what I got trained in. And then when I finished my training in 1979 1980, I went to work in the bush for 18 months. And once again, I had the experience of working with Sangomas and seeing how they worked. And once again, I saw when we couldn’t help patients, they were helping, already had an open mind or realize there was something else. And then my wife, and I didn’t want to live in South Africa, and with a project so we ran away to America. And here we are.

I had to do three years in internal medicine to get a license in New York, got a job in New York in the South Bronx, which is a burden area. And after about two weeks of doing my residency, I realized that medicine was very different. In South Africa, we didn’t have the money to do all tests, we had to take a really good history. We had to examine a patient you had to get to know someone, and then you would decide on a treatment in America, there was no time to talk to people. You just had all the blood tests, you did an X ray did an EKG and then you had to go study up for the next morning, we presented the professor, and there was no interaction with patients. That wasn’t of interest to me. So I said to my wife, this is not what I want to do. And there happened to be an acupuncture clinic in Lincoln hospital doing acupuncture detox, for heroin and crack addicts, which was an epidemic in the 80s. This was 1984 in the South Bronx of New York, and I decided to go check it out. And I walked into the clinic and I walked into a room of about 50 people and saw people quietly with needles in their ears. And that was actually very helpful for people sitting calmly. And these were the same type of people in the wards that were pulling out their IVs and shouting and screaming. So that was sort of my first introduction in America of another way of treating people. And then it’s a whole long story short, made short by realizing in the hospital, we are treating acutely ill patients. Crisis care is wonderful for acute pneumonia and heart attacks and people who are acutely ill and at the acupuncture clinic, we’re seeing people who couldn’t poop and had headaches and they were tired. And I saw then in the mid 80s, that the future of medicine would be some combination of the two because different types of things. And we’re treating different types of problems. So it just made perfect sense that the best medicine would be some combination of the two, and then got into nutrition, and then acupuncture and meditation and yoga. And that’s been my journey to try and combine the two.

Vanessa Cornell:
I love the phrase, you use crisis management. Sometimes people really think of medicine only in terms of crisis management, but what you practice is so much more.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
People unfortunately think doctors can take care of most of their problems. The reality is what we get trained in our hospitals and in western medicine, is what I say is crisis care. If you’re acutely ill, if you’re having a heart attack, and it’s medic attack, pneumonia, that’s when Western medicine is appropriate. But for most problems people have today, Western medicine isn’t really appropriate, because they have a pill. So you have a symptom, you take a pill to suppress the symptom, only tools or medications and surgery, so you either cut the part out, or you just suppress the symptoms. So it’s not a particularly sophisticated system for chronic conditions for acute conditions. And maybe four can set the stage. There are certainly I’m not saying where’s the medicines bed, I’m saying it’s a set number of conditions that it’s helpful for.

Vanessa Cornell:
So let’s talk about the not acute and the not crisis, because you wrote a book, How To Be Well: The 6 Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life. Eat, sleep, move, protect, unwind, and connect. And when I look at those words, what I’m struck with is, how accessible they are, how available they are. Maybe on the eat, there are food deserts and their issues with the supply chain. And that’s a whole other topic that’s actually important and interesting. But when I look at the other ones, those are really accessible to everyone, and things that people can do for themselves to optimize their health. And so let’s talk about them. Let’s talk about food. What is your bottom line approach to food and nutrition?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
Just before we start the point that I make in the book, which is just to confirm what you’re saying is, it’s the ordinary things that we do on a daily basis that have an extraordinary effect on our health. And when we forget that we just think it’s only medicine that’s going to help us and that’s why I wrote the book, and the tips on the simple things that one can do. So when it comes to food, my basic philosophy is eat as close to nature as possible. Food that gets altered is a problem. Food that gets injected with hormones or chemicals is a problem. And I don’t think there’s one right diet for everyone. Some people do well on a vegetarian diet. Some people do well on a paleo diet. So there’s no one right diet, you got to work out what works for you. But there’s a wonderful American philosopher and farmer Wendell Berry, who most Americans have not heard of, who says, We are fed by the food industry that pays no attention to our health and treated by the health industry pays no attention to our food. So the problem with food today is it’s become complicated, because the food industry puts out food that is generally unhealthy. So our default choices are unhealthy. What we call organic fruits and vegetables should just be normal because putting pesticides and chemicals on fruits and vegetables should not be the norm. Even the way I grew up in South Africa, you would eat the local fruits and vegetables. The meats hadn’t been injected with all of them as you were eating food. That wasn’t altered, so it was easier today. Philosophically, you can say eat as close to nature as possible, but it is a little bit more difficult. Just because how do you get these foods, the healthier foods and fortunately tend to be more expensive. grass fed meat, for instance, is more expensive than injected meat because we have a food system and agricultural system that’s rotten because it’s not serving the public. The government subsidizes all the wrong crops. That government subsidizes these concentrated animal farming operations factory farm so the food system needs to change because it is harder to eat healthily. And I think that’s criminal.

Vanessa Cornell:
Yeah, I definitely think that this one is the most challenging one. You can say get enough sleep and everybody can attempt to get enough sleep. But for some people getting access to food, close to nature, fresh fruits and vegetables is not a possibility.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
It puts the poor people in this position where they have to buy the crap that big food makes because it’s cheap.

Vanessa Cornell:
So let’s talk about the other ones that really are quite accessible. Let’s talk about sleep and unwind together because I’d like you to explain the difference between sleep and unwind.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
It’s good that you combine them in a way, because probably the commonest problems people have with sleep is because they can’t unwind. Just once again, the way we set up our lives, we work so hard, and we expect to just stop and go to sleep. And it doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to get yourself ready for sleep. We’re sitting all day and the artificial lights and we’re not getting enough natural light that’s going to affect your sleep, we have artificial light late on into the night, and that tricks your body because your body expects to have dark at night. And then your melatonin, which is your sleep hormone doesn’t get produced because we have all these artificial lights. So the way we live our lives, apart from all the stress is also not helping the way we sleep. But stress probably is the most important factor when it comes to sleep and learning to calm down your nervous system, or learning to unwind or chill out is really important not only for your sleep, but for your health in general.

Vanessa Cornell:
How do you do it, personally?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
Meditate most mornings, it’s become much more habitual over the last couple of years was always a struggle. Now I probably say I meditate six days a week, on average, I try to do it every day. So it’s become more of a habit. And I find that’s probably been the best thing that I’ve ever done for my health. I love to walk in nature on the beach, I listen to music alive, I’ll make a big point of chilling. I’m a big fan of relaxing.

Vanessa Cornell:
Yeah, me too. I’m very protective of my sleep. It’s hard for many of us. We are not programmed to allow ourselves to relax and enjoy and just stare out the window. I find even in myself, when I have a moment to relax. I’m looking for my phone.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
That’s a problem. Yeah. And that’s the way our culture is set up. What’s interesting about this pandemic, I think most people are sort of enjoying the quiet time, and realizing how much they enjoy spending more time with their family, going for a walk in nature, not working so hard. It’s been an interesting twist for some people have really realized that there is maybe a better way. And I’m going to try to find more balance moving forward now, which I think is great.

Vanessa Cornell:
Yeah. And I think that for a lot of people, it’s an interruption in their mindless routine that they fallen into. And so I think there’s going to be a lot of innovation and creativity that comes out of this time too. Are you concerned about a collective fear, stress isolation, in terms of mental health and physical health, because we know the body and the mind are are not disconnected. In the midst of this pandemic.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
Of course, I think there’s a pandemic of fear, as well as a pandemic of COVID-19. And then there’s loneliness, which is, in a way, it’s connected. That’s a separate issue. Our medical system is a fear based system to start with, we scare the sh*t out of people, we aren’t aware of the words we use and how important relationships are. And beliefs are. Another thing I learned in South Africa, important beliefs are. And the Dalai Lama talks about how important the belief for the patient, the belief, or the practitioner, and the karma, the relationship between the two. So I think beliefs where you’re headed is important. And we do have a fear based system. Dealing with fear and acknowledging that we scared is important. And once again, mindfulness meditation is important here, speaking to friends, or therapists, important exercise, and journaling, there’s so many ways we can deal with a fear. But first, you got to acknowledge that it’s an issue and it is a major issue. The loneliness is a little bit more complicated, but is really important, as I put in the book, a whole section on Connect, because we had been tending in that direction anyway. But now it’s harder to connect in some ways, but you got to make an effort, whether it’s five zoom or phones or you know, the more and more studies coming out how lonely people don’t live as long lonely people tend to be more unhealthy. So loneliness is a huge issue, a harder one to deal with, as in this culture. You know, when I grew up, you’re sort of surrounded, the family was all around the community was it was a much more old school way of living where loneliness was generally not a major issue. It’s a much more of an issue in the way we live today. There’s gonna be repercussions of the consequences of the fear and the loneliness.

Vanessa Cornell:
Yeah, I had asked you before we started about during the pandemic having to adjust Your practice and doing things remotely. And I would love to hear your thoughts on how not just the remote access to doctors but how the pandemic might shift the medical establishment how people access medicine, and how medicine is practiced in this country?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
I’m not exactly sure but I do you think more people and doctors as well have realized that a lot of medicine can be done with telemedicine. I mean, a lot of what I do is really teaching people and partnering them and trying to motivate them and inspire them to make changes. I mean, I’ve realized a lot of what I can do can be done remotely. I mean, I’ve been doing telemedicine and been loving it. And I think for a lot of people not having to spend half an hour an hour getting to the doctor, waiting in a waiting room, the whole fear factor of going to a doctor can be eliminated. So I think there is going to be a shift. I think even doctors are realizing that I’m hoping there’ll be much bigger shifts, there’ll be a shift in the way we think about health. Because what we’ve realized with COVID-19, that the comorbidities are the people who have not done particularly well have been the people with what I would call sugar disregulation or metabolic ill health people with diabetes, hypertension, obesity. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for people to realize an important diet is and what they put into their bodies. So I’m hoping on a biggest shift than just the shift towards telemedicine, although I’m sure there will be a shift towards telemedicine.

Vanessa Cornell:
Yeah. How can we use clues from the appearance of our tongue? How our stool looks as ways of measuring and determining health? How can we optimize our digestion based on some of the ways that our bodies are speaking to us?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
Symptoms are pointers of your body to tell you something is off balance. So in western medicine, you get taught if you have heartburn, he has Nexium to suppress a heartburn you got a headache, yes, Tylenol to get rid of the headache. It’s the metaphor I always use. If you’re driving your car, and the oil light goes on, you don’t put a bandaid over the oil light, you see why the oil light goes on. In Chinese medicine, we were taught to look at the body differently to see symptoms as a pointer to some imbalance. Working out the particular imbalance may be difficult, but I think learning about your body’s clues are important and making adjustments. If you feel sh*tty after drinking alcohol or eating a certain food, you got to listen to that. Whether you want to keep a diary or not. I think it’s important to try work out patterns of what’s going on and adjust accordingly. I mean in Chinese medicine, the digestive system is earth element, the center. When that goes off, everything goes off. So I work a lot with digestion. And if someone isn’t pooping properly, or they’re getting bloated to easily record too much gas, these are all symptoms that need to be addressed is a great pneumonic that we use it’s actually in the book. It’s a five R’s, or they teach the four R’s, remove, replace, re inoculate, repair and rest. So let’s just go through each one of those first thing is removed, you’ve got to remove what could be triggering the problem. So you go on some type of elimination diet so you remove the common foods that could trigger it. Gluten, dairy, corn sugar are the common ones. Sometimes you got to remove some imbalance in the gut microbiome. They’re all the bugs in your gut you many there may be yeast, there may be some bad bacteria.

Everyone knows about SIBO now, so you need to remove that. The second R is replace sometimes you don’t have enough digestive juices, enzymes or hydrochloric acid. So simple things like apple cider vinegar, or Swedish bitters can be helpful just to help digestion. The third R is re inoculate that sometimes you need some good bacteria. So you can eat prebiotic foods or eat probiotic foods or fermented foods. prebiotic foods often talk about the stalks in the STEM, don’t cut off the end of the broccoli or the asparagus eat them because those are the fiber that your body doesn’t digest and they feed the good bacteria in your gut. So that would be re inoculate, repair sometimes you need to repair the damaged gut lining we won’t get into that because that’s a bit more complicated. Probably should work with a doctor with it for that and functional medicine doctor. Although bone broth is some of the you can drink that could be helpful. And then the final art is race you need to rest the digestive system on a big fan of intimate and fasting of at least resting your digestive system for a good 12 hours overnight. It is all in the book.

Vanessa Cornell:
Thank you. Which of the things that you recommend do you see the most resistance to in the people that you work with?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
I think everyone’s different. But if I had to generalize, I would say sleep is the issue that people don’t take seriously enough, people are aware that what they eat is important. People are becoming more aware of sugar and processed foods, and may not be aware of vegetable oil and the harm that vegetable oils cause everyone knows about exercise, everyone knows about stress, and they need to relax, sleep is probably the part or that one factor that most people don’t take seriously enough, although that’s changing, hopefully more books about it and more media coverage about it will change.

Vanessa Cornell:
You can get an A plus at eating well, you can get an A plus at exercising, but somehow, people feel like it’s a badge of honor to sleep less, not more, the sort of societal reward and praise goes in the opposite direction. Another question, how can I make myself start to like meditation?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
I get that question all the time. Because meditation is difficult for all of us. It took me years and years, the easiest way to get into meditation is do something like yoga, which is a moving meditation or Tai Chi. So the quickest way to quiet the mind is to move the body, finding something that you enjoy and focusing your attention, it could be cooking, it could be knitting, it could be washing the dishes, finding something where you can be completely focused, something that’s creative, you’re going to get many other effects of meditation, by doing that, going for a walk in nature, can be a meditation. So find something that you enjoy and learn to just be very mindful and present at that particular time. Sitting on a cushion is not the only way to meditate, learning just to be completely present. Wherever you are, you can learn meditation, if you’ve got a little kid just learned to be present with your kids. In a way it’s mind control. And that takes years and practice meditation is a practice. I’m 65 years old, have I’ve only gotten into it more seriously, in the last year or two. The point of if you don’t enjoy it is if you’re not going to enjoy something, just don’t do it. You want to really have something that’s sustainable, you really need to enjoy doing it, find something you enjoy.

Vanessa Cornell:
That’s good advice. A couple more questions on sleep, your recommendations on sleep does it have to be eight hours uninterrupted? Do naps count?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
I’d say between seven to nine hours most people need seven hours is fine. It doesn’t have to be eight. It doesn’t have to be uninterrupted as long as you can get up to pee. But as long as you don’t spend the next hour trying to get back to sleep. So if you’re waking up and then falling back asleep quite easily, that’s not a problem. What’s most important about sleep, it’s really what’s going on during your day that’s going to affect your night. It’s not just about darkening your room, which is important to having a cold room which is important. And a quiet room which is important. What you do during the day is really important. And if you can’t switch off your mind, and you’re not able to relax journaling or was committed, say 15 minutes, a half an hour just thinking about all the sh*t that’s going on in your life and write it down and get rid of it. And then if you can get as much natural light during the day as possible that can really help your sleep. So that’s why I always recommend first thing in the morning to get some natural light. If you can’t go outside for a walk, just sit at the window. Most important is sleep is a rhythm. So it’s important to go to sleep at the same time every night and try to wake up at the same times what I call social jetlag where you go to bed at two o’clock on weekends and try and catch up during the week doesn’t really work for your body’s internal rhythms. And then probably the last thing I want to mention because people have a hard time with letting go this alcohol. Alcohol is a problem because a lot of people drink because it relaxes them at night to fall asleep and it may help you fall asleep but the way alcohol works in your body is you’re going to wake up four or five hours later and you’re going to be wide awake. I’m all for naps. But the important thing was naps are if you nap too late and confect you’re falling asleep and not too long. So let’s say 20 minute nap maybe 25 minute nap early in the afternoon sort of like a siesta is a good idea. If someone This is not my turn but I do like it will have been suggesting is taking a nap or Chino have a cup of coffee like at 130 or two whatever. And then take a nap and when you wake up you like wide awake it’s called the net the chin I don’t know where it came from, but it’s not But I love the idea of that.

Vanessa Cornell:
Thoughts on melatonin, or other supplements?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
Look, I’m a major fan of supplements. I’ve been using them for years and years targeted supplementation, melatonin can help your body get back into rhythm because Melatonin is your primary sleep hormone. And if your Melatonin is out of whack, taking melatonin at night may very well help a rhythm problem with sleep. So I’m all for melatonin. supplements for sleep can be very helpful if you’ve anxious supplements like L-theanine, GABA, valerian root, magnesium can help anything just to calm down the nervous system can be helpful. In my practice, we do a lot of blood tests. And from someone’s history and blood tests, we can determine what’s more important. So we measure vitamin D, and B 12, and red blood cell magnesium, and you measure certain hormones and other markers which will determine what someone takes working with a practitioner who knows or reading appropriate stuff can be helpful. supplements are tricky, because the supplement industry is like little pharma. They want you to buy supplements, and I’ve been there I had my own supplement companies targeted supplementation is incredibly helpful. But our take now is different to what I took maybe 10 years ago. Now I take some immune stuff, but I’m taking stuff that’s more targeted to agent said all depends where you are in your life cycle. And it all depends what your symptoms are. If you’ve got gut stuff, you need to take targeted gut supplements, you need to get from a reliable company because the quality of supply, there’s no regulation. So what’s in that supplement? You don’t really know.

Vanessa Cornell:
Do you have any that you either work with somebody with or have created?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
Sure, I’m Chief Medical Officer at THE WELL. And I helped create a couple of targeted packs from my experience and other practices experience. So we have top of the line products from the well. So we have a gut complex, we have a stress complex, we have an immune complex. So people can go to THE WELL’s website. And we have very targeted supplements.

Vanessa Cornell:
Your thoughts on alcohol generally beyond using it to relax and go to sleep?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
If you’re sitting around a table with friends and family, and you having some wine, I think the benefits you get from that connection from the community, not from the alcohol per se. I completely disagree with this understanding that having a glass of wine a day is good for you. Alcohol is a toxin period. If you’re drinking alcohol, as I said in the context of community, I’m all for that. Now I’m not against toxins or drugs per se, but just use them intelligently.

Vanessa Cornell:
Do you recommend taking a probiotic daily?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
I have for the last 20 years recommended taking a probiotic daily, everyone’s microbiomes are so different. So I use probiotics all the time. But I think what’s probably better than taking a probiotic is eating more prebiotics, eating the foods that feed the good bacteria, and maybe eating probiotic foods that fermented foods. Probiotics Can you can do well with one and it can be harmful for the next person. That’s very tricky. That’s safer to eat more prebiotics.

Vanessa Cornell:
A question about food sensitivities. The question is, why? Is it genetic? Can I heal it and how?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
There may be a genetic component, but a lot of food sensitivities have to do with the imbalance in the gut flora. We talked about the microbiome. And what I see with food sensitivities a lot is once you correct that imbalance, sometimes it’s an overgrowth of bacteria or yeast once you correct that, the food sensitivity gets better. So food sensitivities are frequently a consequence of an imbalance in the gut microbiome. The food like gluten is a little bit different because the gluten in America is basically an altered food and it’s also sprayed with glyphosate. glyphosate is active ingredient in Roundup. It’s also a registered antibiotic. So gets back to our food systems. It’s complicated food sensitivities, but as a general rule, I would say, correct your microbiome and your food sensitivities often get better, and just avoid those altered foods as much as possible.

Vanessa Cornell:
Yeah, there’s a question about advice for recurring Candida and SIBO, leading a very healthy lifestyle and I imagine your suggestion would be the same.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
That’s probably one of the most common problems I see. And that has to do with years and years of eating American food there has been sprayed with glyphosate, taking a lot of antibiotics as a kid, my generation of doctors and parents gave our kids way too many antibiotics, the antibiotics in the meat sweet and over time. This creates this imbalance In the microbiome and you get yeast, you can get CBOE. So you need to work with a practitioner that can actually help treat that because you need to kill the bugs first. And sometimes you even need medication.

Vanessa Cornell:
So you would suggest somebody seeing a practitioner who can help you?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
Definitely, someone who deals with it all the time, because it’s extremely common and tricky.

Vanessa Cornell:
Yeah. What about hormonal birth control? Does that play into it at all?

Dr. Frank Lipman:
It can; birth control can actually make yeast worse. Yes. So sometimes you got to get people off the pill as well. You got to take the context into account.

Vanessa Cornell:
Yeah. So let’s talk about systems. You had mentioned at the beginning, that you grew up in apartheid. And I think we’re realizing more and more that our perception of not having any of the sort of scourges of apartheid, we’re not immune from that that is happening in this country, I want to talk specifically about medicine, it’s been well studied that if you are a black woman in America, your chances of dying in childbirth are two to three times higher than if you’re a white woman. And I think there are many, many other inequities in the medical system. And I’d love your thoughts on specifically the medical system and how it works.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
Very briefly to growing up in South Africa during apartheid, you knew that the political system and the justice system and the economic system, I grew up knowing all the systems were writing. And as I started getting more into medicine, to me, the medical system was just another rotten system, they all these patriarchal systems, you go to the doctor, he knows what’s good for you, he knows more about your body than you do you listen to him, it’s not a partnership. And the medical system you asked about is really a fear based system. So most people are scared to go to the doctor, because the doctor, unfortunately has not been trained to see the importance of how they present information, well, you got cancer, if you don’t do this treatment, you’re going to die. You got Crohn’s disease, if you don’t do this particular treatment, you’re going to have to have your colon taken out. So it is a fear based system without even realizing it. And there’s no reason why it should be. I am hopeful after this crisis, the economic system, the justice system, political system, the food system, all of this hopefully will change with this next generation. The people on the streets, mostly young people are realizing that the system’s not working for the majority of people. So I think the medical system, the medical industrial complex, per se, is just another system that needs to be you know, whether it’s police brutality and fear of the police in South Africa, there was fear of the police and I thought coming to America, the police are there to help you which so I think all these systems are people are realizing here. And this is the first time I’ve seen it. And I’ve been here for 36 years. And it was always strange to me as an immigrant, as an outsider to come here and see that the system was similar to South Africans just wasn’t entrenched in the Lord wasn’t legal. There were so many similarities, and most people didn’t actually see it. I think now, people are realizing it. And hopefully we come out of this with people fighting for a more equitable system in everything. I think the medical system is just one more system that needs to change.

Vanessa Cornell:
On that note, I am hopeful that there’s real change happening and real shifts happening on multiple levels.

Dr. Frank Lipman:
I’m more optimistic now than I’ve ever been to be quite honest. When I see these young, smart, committed women, it’s very impressive. So I think I am extremely optimistic about the next generation, my daughter’s generation, then it’s exciting on some level to see that these shifts are actually I think, going to slowly start happening.

Vanessa Cornell:
Thank you so much for being with us. Stay safe, stay sane.

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, we welcome you to stay close and discover more of our offerings. Check us out on Instagram @nushu or visit nushu.com for more.