What does hope have to do with rejuvenation?

In this podcast, Dr. Rodney and Karen discuss the role of hope in living longer and  healthier lives. In order to do this, you must define hope as the confident expectation that your body is resilient and can heal itself. It is the quality that Karen's father called "bounceback" which allowed him to recover quickly and keep going to almost 102 years of age.

At Stance for Health we focus on having a belief system that allows you to start right now to make small changes that will optimize your health through eliminating negative input into your body.

1.  Input - Eat whole food and drink filtered water
2.  Output - Move consistently every day
3.  Posture - Stay aligned and balanced
4.  Sleep - Focus on getting proper rest consistently
5.  Regeneration - Believe in the ability to bounce back from adversity
6.  Purpose - Find a reason to jump out of bed every morning
7.  Hope - Believe that difficult times will make you stronger

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Transcript

[00:49] Dr. Rodney: Welcome with the Stance for Health Podcast. I have with me today someone that you've probably heard before, and you know who she is. She's my wife, Karen Sebastian-Wirth, but she's also The Hope Lady. And today we're talking about what does hope have to do with longevity?  What does hope have to do with living longer, living healthier, recovering and things like that?

[01:16] Karen: I love that question, and I want to answer it with a story. Last week when we were doing our consistent movement, which we encourage in rejuvenation lifestyle, I went to do a move, and it was way too much, too soon. And I felt immediate pain in my lower back, a common area of issue for me because I had been recovering from scoliosis, and I'm doing great, but it was a flare up that made me want to just stop completely. I wanted to stop exercising. I wanted to go, oh, my goodness, this hurts, and sit down. Now, here's what I want to tell you about the role of hope as we age is that I have to believe that no matter what my age is, and I'm going to reveal that soon, but I'm up there a little bit. And here's the thing. Many people my age are sitting and would use that as an excuse not to continue to exercise and to move the way that we did. Yes, I am past, “retirement” age. And so what I love about what happened is that I am spoiled. I live with the best chiropractor on the planet, in my opinion, and I pretty much get adjustments on demand. So he immediately gave me an adjustment, continued to do so. I came to the office and used our laser and continued to move, even though I didn't give it the same enthusiasm that I had before. And within four days, I was completely recovered from that injury, if you want to even call it that. It's that sense of awareness that you have muscles. And that pain that I had in my lower back was completely gone.

[03:08] Dr. Rodney: When should I start doing something like what you just said? When can I engage that attitude? Right now, at this very second.

[03:15] Karen: At this very second. What I want to challenge for you today is that you might have a sense that at a certain age is when you've got to start being really careful and stop moving and, oh, my goodness, if you happen to fall, it's the end of the world. Instead of saying I can recover, hope says that I have resilience. Hope says that I am what my dad used to call himself up into over 100 years of age. I'd call him every day and say, how are you doing, Daddy? And he'd go, well, I woke up feeling pretty good, but then right now, not so good. But I'm the bounce back kid. That's the quality I'm talking about. That hope that says my body can heal itself.

[04:02] Dr. Rodney: Do you want to talk much about the simple things that somebody can do.

[04:07] Dr. Rodney: That maybe they don't want to have all the different things that you do? They don't want to engage every way that you do with health. What are some simple things that you think that we all could do that would help contribute to the bounce back kid?

[04:21] Karen: I love that. Thanks. That question, let's simplify it. Most people think they have to do all or nothing. And Stance for Health is really about that. Take your Stance for Health, for being healthy is not complicated as our byline. So eat whole foods, not the store intake. Unprocessed food, real food, pure water. Just start with one of those two.

[04:46] Dr. Rodney: I think what I'm hearing you say is, let's try to be as additive free or chemical free as we can. Perfect.

[04:52] Karen: Said perfectly well. Output, movement, stretch. If something's hurting, it's your brain, your neuron saying, hey, you've been sitting too long. Take posture.

[05:03] Dr. Rodney: That's so funny you say that. We actually had a health partner today text us and say, hey, where'd you guys get that vibe plate? She called it a shaker a shaker flight.

[05:16] Karen: Machine.

[05:16] Dr. Rodney: But that's the thing is, could it be a misunderstanding that we have to be marathon level, extreme level athletes in order to be healthy and to bounce back? Don't you think the answer is an absolute no, and that that's just a big, huge lie to sell things.

[05:34] Karen: We actually have research that shows that that can diminish your lifespan. And what we need to look at is health span versus lifespan, because that's what I love about the Blue Zones, is that the people that live there have a longer health span for their long life. And that's really what we're talking about.

[05:58] Dr. Rodney: Does that suggest the quality of their life right up until the finish?

[06:04] Karen: Absolutely. Without disability, without being on all kinds of meds, and without being burdened to their family. And the most important part is your belief system. What do you believe for yourself? Do you believe that this is possible for you? Then we want to help you. We want to take your hand, walk side by side with you in what we're calling a rejuvenation lifestyle, because that is a renewing going back. And I think I'm a poster child for that doc, because in the six and a half, almost seven years that I've known you, I have actually de aged. I feel younger now, I have more energy. And it is such a livable lifestyle. It is not out of reach. We've made those changes, and I can't imagine living any other way.

[07:07] Dr. Rodney: I'm thinking about people having access to a chiropractor. You're basically almost 24/7, right?

[07:13] Karen: Yeah.

[07:15] Dr. Rodney: I hear you saying, make sure I'm hearing this right. Is that even though the people listening.

[07:20] Speaker A: To this today may not have that.

[07:22] Dr. Rodney: Kind of access to they can find one, though they can walk alongside of them. But basically what you're saying is, let's say that somebody comes in and of course, I'm talking about Stance Chiropractic. We're here four out of the seven days per week. If somebody wanted to put the pedal to the metal and they wanted to only get chiropractic yes. That's all they wanted to get. You're saying that that alone before we started doing everything else that we do, as they call an add on. You're saying that chiropractic was making that much of a difference?

[07:58] Karen: Absolutely. Because all the messages in your body are getting to the proper organs, and it's something that gives you that alignment that you can't do for yourself. But then you add to that the activities for balance, the neurons, everything that is working there, along with the belief system, that you can fully recover.

[08:24] Dr. Rodney: So there's these fancy words that sometimes we can use, that things in your body start to get sticky, like they start getting stuck together. You start not moving as well. As a result of that, is that something that you're suggesting has improved, too? Is that what you mean?

[08:44] Karen: Without a doubt. Without a doubt. The commonality of falling for me was I fell pretty much once a quarter or broke a toe or something. It was like once a quarter in my life. Really didn't like that would happen. Yes. And that lack of it's, the fancy word I'll use, it is called proprioception.

[09:06] Dr. Rodney: You can't see my face right now, but my jaw is hitting the floor. You might have heard my jaw hit the floor, actually. I didn't know that about Karen.

[09:13] Karen: Yes.

[09:14] Dr. Rodney: The hope lady.

[09:15] Karen: Well, and I would just joke about it, but it was actually something that has been corrected now, and it's rare for me to fall.

[09:26] Dr. Rodney: So your performance level is something beyond painless motion. You're not just aligned, you're in painless motion. You're actually able to move more than just standing up, changing position. Right. It's not like you've been static and now you're deciding to move. You're actually at some level of performance. Do you want to talk about that, what level you're performing at right now?

[09:49] Karen: Well, one of the longevity hacks is to do squats, do stretches on the floor, and make sure you can get up on your own unassisted, because that's what happens in Japan. With the Blues owners, the Okinawans, everything's down low. And so it's adding those things in such a standing on one leg while brushing my teeth and doing squats while brushing my teeth. So you just incorporate those into your life.

[10:18] Dr. Rodney: And I don't know if any of you knew this or not, but she can actually do planks and she does a form of pushups. She's not just doing squats, she's doing butt kickers. This is such an enjoyable discussion there, Karen, Hope lady. When we actually start de-aging, and let's say we started today, how soon would you expect to see results?

[10:41] Karen: That is such a good question. I think that my goal really wasn't to DH. My goal was simply to keep up with you. So what happened is that I modified what I was already doing. It wasn't that I wasn't doing anything, but I wasn't doing it consistently. And so what I think happened is it was so gradual that I didn't even recognize that the shift had happened. And especially when we incorporated the neurological rehab and I took over that part and the consistent use of the eye muscles with movement, and I just fell in love with that because it really does make a difference.

[11:25] Dr. Rodney: And you're the one that's telling everybody, alignment, balance and core control.

[11:30] Karen: Exactly. Those ABCs, I really love ABCs and lining everything up with that and organizing it that way. Because alignment is something you need to go to a chiropractor for. But the balance part and the core control, you can do that simply when you take a break, you can stand up and crunch your ABS, do an isometric, hold it for a few seconds. There's so much that you can do. And it still goes back, though, to that basic belief system. Are you over the hill? No, there is no hill. You're just going to continue to climb it at your own pace, doing what you can every day. If you don't do it that one day, do it the next one, and you will see a transformation.

[12:18] Dr. Rodney: That's so good.

[12:20] Speaker A: So what we've done is we've gone.

[12:23] Dr. Rodney: From a place of you are the Hope lady. You embody hope, right? You talk about hope. You have written three books about hope, about caregivers, about mourning, and of course, the first one was Prodigals story of our oldest daughter. And so hope infused in health. If you haven't heard anything today, haven't you heard hope here? I mean, that's really been our goal today. It's just like, hey, you know what? There's a few things you can do.

[12:52] Karen: And Hope says it's better than if it didn't happen. As we wrap up this episode, I am so excited to see a reversal of ageism. Ageism is the belief that at a certain point and each person determined when you were just over the hill and you just had to accept that there was going to be decline and disability and things were not going to go well. And what do you expect at fill in the blank.

[13:20] Dr. Rodney: That's what I was going to ask you. What are some telltale signs that you might be thinking that way?

[13:25] Karen: That statement? Well, I'm doing pretty good for and I've heard that for 50, 60. That's what I did not hear from my dad until almost the very end.

[13:37] Dr. Rodney: Right.

[13:37] Karen: A month before his moved to heaven.

[13:39] Dr. Rodney: Yeah, that's when I heard it too.

[13:40] Karen: Yeah, that was for the first time. So to me that's huge. But the research you've been doing some research, Doc, and tell us a little bit about that.

[13:50] Dr. Rodney: I was just thinking the other day, well, I wonder what would happen if somebody is there anybody else out there thinking about what would be some simple things that you could do to improve the quality of life for people in nursing facilities, you know, extended care, these types of places. And guess what? There's some research out there and the two things that we're talking about today are the things that they actually implemented and found an increased quality of life and sense of wellbeing. They were having do stretches and they were getting compliance or participation with supplementation. Wow.

[14:28] Karen: And it makes a difference.

[14:29] Dr. Rodney: That and movement. Movement, yeah, they get consistent movement, like chair exercises and things like that. Yes, they got results.

[14:36] Karen: Let's give them activities to do. Let's give them better nutrition. Let's give them supplements. Let's give them a sense of purpose.

[14:44] Dr. Rodney: I think, isn't it? What we're really saying is that suffering and the other one is quality of life. If your quality of life increases, the opposite of that should be true, is that you should have less suffering and that is a way to ease people's suffering. But quality of life is wellness. Isn't that our approach? Isn't that what we want to do?

[15:11] Karen: Absolutely.

[15:12] Dr. Rodney: That's our focus.

[15:13] Karen: That's our focus. That's hope that your body can recover and that you can de age and increase not only your lifespan, but also your health spend. Your level of health, your level of activity, your level of joy in living and being able to do what only you can do. Absolutely. I love that.

[15:37] Dr. Rodney: And even if you're in a facility like that, if you're functioning better, you're contributing to a sense of community, then who knows how many people will have then hope. More hope too. And it seems like it would snowball. Right?

[15:50] Karen: I would pray that that would happen because we need to do something and that's what we're about with our rejuvenation lifestyle. This has been fun.

[16:00] Dr. Rodney: Tell me again in terms of infusing hope, what is the difference between health span and lifespan?

[16:09] Karen: Health span is believing that you're going to increase in health DH as you get older instead of decline and end up in that kind of facility like you've talked about.

[16:25] Dr. Rodney: Okay, well, that seems like that's a really good place to stop and we will have another episode of Stands for Health podcast coming up, but we also want to talk again about health topics next time we get together.

[16:40] Karen: Well, actually, if you want to hear more about joining Rejuvenation Lifestyle Boot camp that's going to be coming up in a few months, send us a DM and we'll get you all the information so you can become part of a Facebook group and we can walk alongside you.

[16:58] Dr. Rodney: Sounds good. We want to help you take your stance for our health. Talk to you soon.

[17:05] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us at Stance for Health podcast, where getting healthy and staying that way are not as complicated.

[17:12] Dr. Rodney: As you might think.

[17:14] Speaker A: Subscribe now and discover steps and small changes that can increase your energy and open the door to vibrant health and longevity. If this podcast has been helpful, please write a review. We'll see you next time.