Simple habits. Root-cause answers.
Lasting health.

Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation and myth when it comes to CBD. Most people only have a vague idea of what it is, and they immediately have it connected with marijuana.

So they're thinking about stoners, smoking pot to get high. Only a few people realize that CBD is different than that. But they're still pretty unsure about what all the fuss is about it. So on today's episode, we're going to discuss the potential health benefits of industrial hemp-derived cannabidiol, or CBD.

It has a rich history, and understanding this plant and how it affects our body could offer amazing potential health benefits.

Let's dive in.

Almost every day in clinical practice, I get to teach patients about the role their digestive system plays in the bigger picture of their health. Of course, when a patient comes in with a typical digestive complaint, like bloating, heartburn, constipation, or diarrhea, that connection is obvious. But when the person is coming in with skin problems, fatigue, stubborn weight issues, depression, or brain fog, they are often surprised that our discussion quickly turns to the state of affairs in their guts.

In this week's podcast episode, I dive into a very critical condition called SIBO. SIBO stands for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. Recent research has concluded that up to 80% of cases of Irritable Bowel Syndrome are caused by this overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine, so we’re talking about 35 million Americans who are dealing with this phenomenon. You might even know a few of these folks ;)

We've all got too much good to do in this world to be sidelined by gut issues. If you deal with this (or know someone who does), hopefully this episode gives you the information you need to get some answers.

In this inspiring episode, we delve into overcoming fatigue and explore effective strategies to regain vitality and live life to the fullest. Join us as we uncover the underlying causes of fatigue, discuss its physical and mental impact, and provide practical tips and insights for combating exhaustion. From lifestyle changes and self-care practices to nutritional guidance and mental resilience, we equip you with the tools to conquer fatigue and unlock your true potential. Get ready to feel energized and empowered as we embark on a journey toward a revitalized, vibrant life.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a corporate executive, an entrepreneur, or a homeschooling mom.

Even the best in every field are limited by their own visual blinders. To change, we need to surround ourselves with support. We often need friends who can be our cheerleaders or teammates, but most of all, we need a coach who can bring out the best in us. Someone who has walked the road themselves and is now dedicated to helping you see your own path through the growth process.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the coaching industry is booming right now. You’re probably seeing lots of people who are becoming health coaches, relationship coaches, career coaches, high-performance coaches, and life coaches.

All estimates suggest these specialty coaching professions will continue to grow over the next decade.

Welcome to today’s episode of the Simple 7 Lifestyle Podcast. I’m Dr. Jerry Duggar, and I just want to thank you for taking the time to tune in today. It says a lot about you that, when you have free time, you choose to learn about your health and take the initiative to upgrade your education. Congrats to you!

Ask just about anyone what health habits are needed for good health, and I’ll bet 99% of people will say, “Eat a healthy diet and exercise.”

We’ve done a pretty good job at drilling those two habits into people’s heads. (Unfortunately, 99% of those people won’t actually be incorporating those 2 habits into their own lifestyles. Something we’re trying to change around here).

Of course, we talk about 5 other key lifestyle habits in our Simple 7 Lifestyle model, but even if we could get most people to get diet and movement in order, it would create a massive shift in the world.

Today, I want to dive a little deeper into movement and exercise.

Tammie and I have been focusing a lot of energy on the lifestyle habit of conscious breathwork over the past several weeks. We covered lots of information about the power of breath back in episode 5 as well, so go check that out if you want more information. Recently, we met a local breathwork coach who trained us in a specific form of breath practice called SKY Breath.

And so I'm delighted to have with me today Sunita Yalamarty, who is our breathwork coach. I am looking forward to this conversation. She's passionate about empowering people and helping them live their best lives. And so obviously she's going to resonate well with me.

We often think improving our health has to be super complex, but I'm trying to teach my patients that doing really basic things with intention and focus can be powerful.

Enjoy today's episode.

When I first started chiropractic practice nearly 28 years ago, I noticed that there were a lot of people who didn’t really know much about chiropractic. Since then, the average person seems to know quite a bit more about what I do, but I’m still surprised how misunderstood chiropractic remains. It seems there are a bunch of myths surrounding chiropractic care that linger year after year, almost as part of the population's collective unconscious.

To help you understand how chiropractic differs from other types of health care, I wanted to share 10 interesting facts that your friends and neighbors may not know.

One of our favorite ways to build a strong foundation is to establish a set morning and evening routine.

What you do in the first 30 minutes and the last 30 minutes sets you up for a successful and productive day and a restful night.

Your morning routine sets you up for the day, and your evening routine puts the day to rest. Although we may not feel like we have 100% control over these hours at all times, they're certainly more predictable than the rest of our waking hours.

Today I am going to focus on helping you create a morning routine.

One of the most powerful ways our natural environment influences the body is through natural light. Of course, life could not exist on this planet without our sun. The sun’s light is essential to life, and each part of its electromagnetic spectrum plays a role. The latest light wavelengths to gain popular press have been red light and near-infrared light, and for good reason. Currently, over 3,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies highlight the positive impact of these wavelengths.

Our cells have over a dozen mechanisms to transform light energy (photons) into chemical energy (photobiomodulation), and through these processes, we have learned that specific wavelengths of light have predictable effects on our tissues.

In today's episode, we unpack the numerous benefits and how to choose the right laser or LED device.

Every year around this time, the telltale signs of spring emerge and remind us the long winter is over, and we can look forward to getting back to many outdoor activities. If you’re like me, you’re probably noticing that your yard and garden need a bit of attention. After being buried in snow like we’ve had this year in Utah, Tammie and I are excited to clean up outside our home, clean the garage floor of dirt and grime from melting snow and salt from our cars, and put away the snow shovels and snow blower. It’s a nice rite of passage of the seasons.

In this episode, I discuss 3 big myths that keep people from taking time to lower their body's toxic burden. I'll also share the basics of a safe and effective approach to detoxification.

With literally millions of concussions and other brain injuries happening each year in the US alone, we need to know what the latest science tells us to do to keep our brains healthy and recover quickly if we are unfortunate enough to be the victim of brain trauma.

In this episode, Dr. Jason Smith, DC, FABBR, DACBN, FACFN, FABVR, shares great advice and busts a few myths you might be holding onto about concussion and brain injury.

Everybody loves to eat. Eating is awesome! Some of us spend our day thinking about what we’ll eat next, and even though we have enough food at home to last us several weeks, we still buy more every week at the grocery store.

But what if I told you one of the most surprisingly healthy things you could do to live a longer, healthier, happier life was to stop eating?

If you’ve been around the block a few times, you have seen lots of diet fads come and go. Science continually tests different theories and approaches to see what happens when we eat more of this or less of that. But one practice has stood the test of time in just about every culture and corner of the globe: fasting.

Today I'll share the top 12 benefits of fasting and then break down the various approaches to intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating.

Scientific research shows that the quality of one's relationships affects not only mental health and overall life satisfaction but also physical health. Our relationships are really strong predictors of overall longevity and happiness. Simply being in a peaceful relationship with someone can change how you feel about your entire day.

But what is often overlooked is that the quality of our relationships depends on our own sense of self. Our level of self-development affects how we show up in the key relationships we're in. This is especially true in marriage. In this episode, we discuss these concepts with Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, a highly respected and popular clinical therapist, educator, and mental health coach. We discuss how to build a stronger sense of self and move from a validation-based relationship to deeper, more honest intimacy.

I'm super excited to have one of my mentors and teachers, Mr. Brendan Vermeire. And we're gonna be talking about some really cool stuff related to the brain and mental health. That's really his forte. I think this discussion's going to be very enlightening. We'll talk about the state of the mental health provider community and ways we can bring a functional physiology framework to improve patient outcomes.

One of the main areas I focus on with my clients is hormone balance. Many major symptoms of ill health are tied to the function of these critical chemical messengers. Mental clarity, memory, energy, weight control, sleep, happiness, bone strength, digestive function, and sexual health and reproduction are all intimately tied to the balance of this complex symphony.

What is surprising to me is just how many of my patients have serious hormone problems. I’m seeing it in both men and women, and it is starting to show up in teenagers. If it seems like you’re noticing more and more people you know with hormone issues, you are correct.

The hormonal system is very complex, with over 50 hormones and pre-hormones that are interconnected and constantly changing to regulate us in response to our environment. Most of these hormones are secreted in very small amounts. A little goes a long way. Almost all of these hormones function in a negative feedback loop.

In today's episode, we'll discuss the challenges of keeping our hormones balanced and the best approach to keep our hormonal system happy!

Be honest: when was the last time you had one of those days when things just didn’t seem to be going your way and it was really hard to be happy?

On those days, it’s hard to stay focused on what I can actually control, and I find myself wallowing in self-doubt and self-pity. I tend to listen to the inner critic in my head.

One of the Simple 7 Strategies for wellness is to “think well”. It is just as critical to health as diet, sleep, exercise, and stress management tools. So today, I want to give you some important coaching around this topic.

For over 2 decades, I’ve worked in the trenches, sitting knee-to-knee with thousands of people trying to improve their health. People just like you who were frustrated, depressed, demoralized, and ready to give up trying to look and feel better. Because I’m not a medical physician, I hear stories from people who have been bounced around within the traditional allopathic medical/pharmaceutical/insurance complex and are looking for answers the “system” couldn’t provide.

My experience suggests our current model of “health care” doesn't match our needs. It is woefully incomplete and has long been driven by pharmaceutical profits and administrative bureaucracy. It can't even consider non-pharmaceutical interventions to promote health.

I’ve often said that one of the most insidious misnomers in the world today is calling today’s medicine “health care” instead of the more apt term “disease management“. According to the World Health Organization, the definition of health is “the state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Therefore, caring for one’s health must go far beyond the “saving” of lives inside of a gargantuan, complex, and insanely expensive procedure-delivery system.

Today's podcast episode gives you a few questions that you can use to self-evaluate. Are you focused on creating health and wholeness? Or are you more often entrenched in the thinking that pervades the "disease management" model?

Since the dawn of time, the main drivers of death have been traumatic injuries and infection from lack of hygiene and sanitation. Only after modern medicine made significant inroads in lowering death rates from these causes did we even have the luxury to consider the question of human lifespan potential.

Early on in my career, I picked up a fascinating book called “We Live Too Short and Die Too Long” by gerontologist Dr. Walter Bortz. Based on his hypothesis and studies, he estimated the normal human lifespan at 110 to 120 years. Instead, most of the population was aging faster than it should because of modern lifestyles. It’s kind of a Catch-22. Modernity dramatically changed our ability to survive infection and trauma, but the same ambitions to alter the natural world brought with it unintended consequences that foster chronic disease.

Some people have asked, “Do we want to add years to our life, or do we really want to focus on adding life to our years?” But what if that's a false dichotomy? What if there is a way to thread the needle and to do both? I think that there is. I think we can make a conscious effort to extend our lives while increasing the quality and happiness we enjoy.

We all prefer to be happy. Our most important job as an organism is to stay alive. To do that, we evolved to seek positive feelings when we do things that help us survive, and negative emotions when we feel threatened. All mammals have these basic instincts and the wiring necessary to create environments that support this desire.

Viewed through this lens, we are all “self-medicating” all day long. We make decisions geared toward creating more happy brain chemicals than unhappy ones. These chemicals aren’t supposed to be on all the time, but we are wired to remember what worked last time so that we can do it again next time. If a behavior has positive survival value, our brains want to know that. We also want to know which behaviors have negative survival value so we can avoid them.

Over the last 10 years, we have come to understand the brain more than in all the past centuries combined.

The human brain weighs a modest three pounds and consumes energy equivalent to a 15-watt lightbulb. But it also comprises 100 billion nerve cells (neurons) and boasts amazingly complex hard-wiring: 1 trillion neuronal connections. For every neuron, there are 4 supportive cells called “glial” cells, which we used to think were only there to support the neurons, but we now know are basically the brain's immune system.

The Brain’s design and functioning are a biological masterpiece and the source of our mind and identity. Brain research is genuinely a quest to find ourselves.

Nothing is more important to us than our consciousness and cognition. Yet most of us understand little about what keeps our brain healthy or what we can do to prevent injury and premature degeneration.

Last episode, we talked about the general state of affairs in Western civilization as it pertains to brain health, and I promised we’d go a little deeper. Today, I want to outline what I call the 7 Drivers of Broken Brains, the 7 interrelated causes at the root of most mental health and neurological issues plaguing society.

There are an estimated 1.1 billion people on the planet with cognitive or mood problems. 1 in 10 Americans are on antidepressants, and 1 in 10 children are on stimulant medications. Estimates are that 1 in 4 of us will experience at least 1 major depressive episode in our lifetime. Those numbers are staggering! We are clearly missing something really big here. We need a fundamental shift in how we think about our brain, our mind, and our health.

For the past century or so, medical science and “big pharma” have hunted for a single cause of each disease, and that has led us to very little in the way of health. Instead, we have an ever-increasing cocktail of drugs for each of these diseases and more people who are sick and suffering. Nowhere has that approach been more tragic than in the area of mental health. The ever-expanding list of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, and opiate painkillers is literally and figuratively mind-numbing.

What if there was a different way to think about the problem? What if, instead of focusing on a synthetic drug to force the body into a temporary state of function, we focused on the key underlying factors they all had in common and then layered targeted nutritional support on top? That's exactly what the emerging Functional Medicine model is doing, and the results already show real hope for millions who are suffering.

Self-care shouldn’t be an escape from your life.

Many people think that self-care needs to be a scheduled event like a massage or a pedicure. That is one way to practice self-care; another is to reframe how you do certain things throughout your day.

Set your life up in a way that honors, protects, and preserves you so you can show up every day as your best self.

When you commit to yourself first, it will actually help you take better care of your family, your community, your environment, and the world.

When you love yourself first, you will be better able to love others. This is true self-care.

They say that pain is the greatest motivator. Virtually all of my chiropractic patients begin seeing me because they are in pain.

Most have tried pain medications and haven’t found them helpful, or they realize that medication can’t get to the real root of the problem, so they are looking for a better approach to eliminating the pain in their body.

You’ve heard the saying, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” Well, if that is the case, we could add the prequel and say, “if you always think the way you’ve always thought, you’ll always do what you’ve always done.”

So today, let’s think about things a bit differently.

I want to share a case study with you that illustrates a couple of big ideas.

First, we’re going to talk about “new thinking” when it comes to specifically treating pain.

Then we’re going to zoom out and think differently about the big picture of her case and what it can teach all of us.

Did you know that 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy? According to the CDC, more than 1 in 10 Americans currently have diabetes.

Perhaps even more shocking is that 1 in 3 of us has pre-diabetes, and 80% of those people don’t even know they have it.

I’m Dr. Jerry Duggar, and in this episode, we’re going to unpack what is going on here. How we’ve gotten ourselves into this mess and, more importantly, how we can get ourselves back on track. I'll share some telltale signs that your blood sugar is out of balance, as well as my 5 Top Tips to naturally balance your blood sugar and get off the train to "diabetesville"

Most of us spend too much of our lives unhappy. We get caught in the trap of measuring our current status against an idealized version of ourselves, who we think we should be.

Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Tracy have written an amazing book that helps us see the folly of this approach to life. They share that our ideals and goals should motivate us to become better versions of ourselves, but we should measure our success not against our ideal, but against where we’ve come from. This is the essence of the GAP and the GAIN.

Have you ever been to your doctor’s office and had them tell you that your blood results came back perfectly normal, but you were still feeling terrible? What’s going on with that? In this episode, we’re featuring a webinar that Dr. Jerry recently taught all about what’s lurking in our lab tests.

Not sure if you understand what functional medicine is? You’ve probably heard the term but aren’t quite sure what it really is. It's a framework that bridges the gap between conventional Western medicine and everything considered “alternative” medicine. Where traditional medicine relies on symptom treatment, functional medicine focuses on the root causes of the problem. Learn how functional medicine offers natural solutions and treatments focused on finding the root cause of many health issues.

We often lose the powerful strategy of play as we grow into adults. We forget all the great things we learned through having fun, being creative, and playing games as kids. Beyond being a powerful stress reducer, time spent playing activates often-neglected parts of the brain and helps us function more fully as human beings. Making time for recreation, fun, and play daily balances our body, mind, and spirit. It’s time to act like a kid again!

How are you connecting and contributing to your relationships? Are you expressing enough gratitude for the things and people in your life? Today’s topic is all about the habit of loving well. That encompasses all of the relationships we have in our lives.

You know that you need to be doing exercise, but how much do you really need to do in order to get the health benefits? Did you know there are 7 primal movements you need to do every day? And what if you’re pressed for time? In this episode, we’ll talk about ways to maximize your workouts in less than 30 minutes a day. We’re also going to share our favorite power reboot tips for those of you who sit at a desk all day. Today we’re talking about activity, movement, and exercise!

Digestive diseases account for over 100 million doctor visits annually in the US. In a recent study, 61% of individuals reported at least one GI symptom in the past week (heartburn, reflux, abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, and constipation). So many people are developing food sensitivities. What’s going on!? Let’s talk about our digestive system and how it affects our overall health.

Do you assume that eating healthy tastes terrible and always costs more? Do you struggle to know what to believe about nutrition? In today’s episode, we’re going to explore the eat well pillar. This habit seems to be one of the most controversial, causes the most confusion, and brings up so many emotions. Let's discuss the basic principles that almost everyone agrees on. Let’s get on the same page and take proactive steps to improve how we eat and what we eat!

Do you sometimes breathe through your mouth during your daily activities? Do you breathe through your mouth while you sleep? Do you snore? On today’s episode, we’re going to explore some of the amazing things that we’ve learned about one of the most basic functions of our body: our breathing!

We all know that unpleasant feeling when the alarm clock goes off in the morning, and we’re still so tired we can barely imagine facing the day ahead. In that moment, we instinctively know how important sleep is to our health and happiness. In episode 4, we'll look at what happens when we’re sleep-deprived and how it affects our health.

What’s more important than our habits? Really, nothing is more important. Our habits, whether positive or negative, help us evolve into who we eventually become, incrementally, one day at a time. What does it take to adopt new behaviors that help us grow and improve?

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our health? We often start something, then hit a roadblock. We fail and give up. Maybe some time passes, and we might decide to try again, only to end up right back where we started. Eventually, most people give up altogether and accept less than they want. The person who actually succeeds in sustainable change seems to be a part of a small minority. Have you ever wondered why?

Do you ever feel like your health needs an upgrade? You know that you could be doing something better, but you just don’t know where to start? Or maybe you know what you want to do, but you just keep getting stuck. In our season 1 kick-off episode, we’ll be sharing the thoughts and insights that we’ve gained by coaching hundreds of people through the process of changing their health and growing personally. Welcome to episode number 1, starting something new!