Healing with Dr Helena

Today’s Brain Booster is: Quit the cult!
For nearly a century, we’ve all been part of a cult. Every single one of us. 
The common ideology. The daily brainwashing. Blind allegiance to charismatic leaders, like a Smiling Colonel, and a Clown with a round red nose. Unquestioning self-sacrifice to the Golden Arches and the Three Dot Domino.
Every day, millions of people sacrifice their heart, liver, brain, and mental health at the altar of Ultra-Processed Food (UPF) for immediate gratification and convenience.
We engage in behaviours we’d consider completely irrational if we stepped outside the cult, and sensibly assessed what we were doing. But of course, we can’t just step outside the cult. That’s the nature of being in a cult. And maybe we don’t want to step outside, because we like what the cult offers: transient pleasure as a surrogate for meaning. 
To be fair, it’s extremely difficult to break out of the cult. We’re up against a power that has infiltrated every corner of our existence. 
At just one of several cult headquarters, 500 psychologists, chemists, neurobiologists, and technicians, conduct research costing tens of millions of US dollars a year to devise methods to keep us captive.
One room houses a $40 000 machine that simulates a munching mouth for the purpose of testing the perfect break-point for a potato chip. When a chip snaps at exactly 281 grams of pressure per square centimetre, that’s when it hooks us and we can’t stop eating until we've finished the packet.
Another tactic the cult employs is what’s known as ‘vanishing calorie density’. If something dissipates in your mouth very quickly — like cheese puffs — your brain is tricked into thinking that it doesn’t contain any calories and you just keep eating and eating and eating.
It isn’t a personal weakness that you can’t stop at one. Ultra-Processed Foods are designed to be addictive and to override our fullness cues. 
Listen to this week’s podcast episode discover how to break out of the cult and save your brain.

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Today’s Health Headline is: You’ve been duped into eating Ultra-Processed Food. 
By the end of listening to this week’s episode, I’ll bet you discover that something you’re eating — that you thought was healthy — is actually Ultra-Processed and harmful.  And you didn’t have the slightest suspicion. 
That’s because the marketing departments of global food corporations with their billion dollar annual budgets, excel at disguising industrial chemical formulations as health foods.
Tune in to discover how to test if something you’re eating is Ultra-Processed.

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What’s Missing From Modern Medicine is a conversation about UPF. 
What’s missing from modern medicine is doctors explaining why UPFs are damaging to our health so that people can make informed choices about what they’re eating. Most people only associate UPFs with gaining weight. But that’s just the tiniest tip of the iceberg. The damage goes much deeper than carrying excess body fat. This episode delves into the many harms of consuming UPF, including a significant increase in the risk of dementia.

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Today’s Whether question is from Meiti: Can you tell me whether green tea is actually good for our health?
Yes it is — but there’s lots of nuance. 

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Please subscribe to my podcast so that you don’t miss an episode, and email your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
 
For resources and references visit: https://drhelenapopovic.com/podcast/

Today’s Brain Booster is: Look after your eyes to stay sharp and wise.
Maintaining good eyesight, and treating vision loss, can help reduce the risk of developing dementia. Conversely, the greater a person’s vision loss, the greater their risk of dementia.
Fortunately, this does NOT include long and short-sightedness. Needing reading glasses is not a dementia risk.
Even with eye diseases, if you correct the vision loss, the increased likelihood of dementia diminishes significantly — if not disappears entirely — depending on what caused the vision loss in the first place.
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Today’s Health Headline is: Childhood trauma impacts long term health.
Think of childhood as a trek through the years carrying a backpack, which gets filled with mementos of the child’s adventures and life events. If a child experiences severe, repeated stress — such as abuse, neglect, or growing up around addiction — it’s like adding heavy rocks to their backpack every day. 
Living in fear or chaos means a child’s internal alarm system (the fright or flight stress response mediated by our sympathetic nervous system) stays turned on all the time. Instead of returning to normal when things are calm, their body is constantly flooded with stress hormones because they’re continually on edge for the next bad thing to happen. Over time, this persistent high alert state causes physical wear and tear on their brain and body. It changes how their brain develops, weakens their immune system, and leads to chronic inflammation.
By the time the child becomes an adult, carrying that heavy backpack for decades takes a toll. The strain manifests as chronic physical problems like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, or autoimmune issues, and mental health challenges like severe depression or anxiety.
Childhood trauma is NOT something you just ‘get over’. It gets under your skin and physically changes how your brain and body function, which directly impacts your health in adulthood.
But it’s not all bad news. Researchers have discovered a powerful antidote. Tune into this week’s podcast episode to find out what it is.
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What’s Missing From Modern Medicine is asking the right questions. 
I said the same thing last week. Modern medicine is focused on the wrong questions, which is why it’s not stemming the epidemic of chronic diseases.
Instead of doctors asking: So tell me what’s WRONG with you?
Doctors need to be asking: Tell me what HAPPENED to you?
Looking at the bigger picture of a person’s life, and addressing trauma and chronic stress, is absolutely essential to compassionate and effective healthcare. 
There is an undeniable link between adverse life experiences and:
long-term physical and mental diseases
disordered eating
obesity
substance abuse
and dementia.

Sadly, standard medical models operate under severe systemic constraints that preclude addressing the factors that would reverse these conditions. The two main barriers are lack of time (as in ridiculously short doctor appointments) and a glaring deficit in medical school education regarding nervous system regulation. 
The good news is that you don’t have to wait for the entire medical system to change to protect your own nervous system. Begin your healing journey by listening to today’s episode. 
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Today’s Whether question from Wendy prompted today’s Health Headline:
I’d like to know whether childhood trauma can increase the risk of developing dementia later in life?
Yes, adverse childhood experiences significantly increase the risk of developing dementia later in life. Tune in to find out how to turn things around.
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Please subscribe to my podcast so that you don’t miss an episode, and email your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
 
For resources and references visit: https://drhelenapopovic.com/podcast/

Today’s Brain Booster is: Improve your mind by being kind.
Being kind to YOURSELF lowers stress hormones, and lights up the brain’s reward centres to improve brain function and overall well-being. 
The brain’s reward system is a network of brain structures designed to ensure our survival. When we do something beneficial — like exercising, socialising, or practising self-kindness — this network is activated, and releases neurotransmitters that improve the workings of our brain. 
For example, one of the neurotransmitters that plays a key role in the reward system is dopamine. Apart from motivating us to do pleasurable things, dopamine acts as an internal spotlight. It signals to your prefrontal cortex (your decision-making and planning centre) that your current activity is highly valuable. This clears away mental fog, and helps you focus intensely on the task at hand.
Dopamine also instructs the hippocampus (our learning hub) to ‘save this file.’ This means the connections between brain cells are strengthened, which makes it easier to absorb and retain new information. 
So whatever you’re doing, treat yourself with kindness while you’re doing it. 
What does that look like?
Talk to yourself the same way you’d talk to your best friend, and remind yourself that not getting everything right, is simply being human. No one can always be on top of their game. No one always makes the best decisions. And on one executes every plan perfectly. 
But nothing is failure — if we regard it as feedback. 
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Today’s Health Headline is: Disease is a normal response  to an abnormal world. 
Most people have come to regard chronic disease as one of the unfortunate facts of life. High blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, depression, anxiety, digestive disorders, obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer, have become so common that we almost expect them. 
But that does NOT mean there’s anything wrong with our bodies. 
Chronic disease is our body’s normal response to an abnormal world. 
It’s a normal response to the speed and the speed and stress of our lives, air and soil pollution, social disconnection, desk jobs that cut us off from nature, a toxic food environment, and suppression of our emotions.
All those factors conspire to make us sick. Of course our body is going to revolt!
Disease is our body screaming at us to pause, reflect, and re-connect with what’s truly meaningful and brings us a sense of peace and safety.
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What’s Missing From Modern Medicine is asking the right questions. 
Modern medicine is focused on the wrong questions. That’s why it’s coming up with ineffective answers. Instead of asking: 
How do we get rid of this symptom?
Or how do we eliminate this disease?
The compassionate questions we need to be asking are:
What is this symptom inviting me to notice?
Where in my life is my voice saying ‘yes’ but my body is saying ‘no’?
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Today’s Whether Report is from Nadine: I’d like to know whether you can provide a list of resources for dealing with chronic pain.
Yes, I can. You can download the list from drhelenapopovic.com/podcast and scroll down to Resources.
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Please subscribe to my podcast so that you don’t miss an episode, and email your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
 For resources and references visit: https://drhelenapopovic.com/podcast/

Today’s Brain Booster is: Visualise to actualise your healing.
Have you ever imagined something so vividly that your body responded as if it were real?
You imagine your child falling off their bike, and your heart skips a beat.You picture success, and your posture lifts.
You visualise biting into a lemon, and your lips pucker.
Nothing has happened, but your brain activates the same neural circuits that it does when you’re having the experience in real life. Brain scans show that your motor cortex, planning networks, and co-ordination pathways are all active when you visualise moving. 
How is this relevant to healing?
Several studies on stroke patients found that when the person repeatedly visualised moving a paralysed limb, they improved their ability to function, reach, and use the affected limb. The same goes for people unable to move because of chronic pain.
When they visualised, they actualised healing. 
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Today’s Health Headline is: Pain is your friend, not your foe.
There’s an extremely rare genetic condition called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP), in which a person is born completely unable to feel physical pain.
At first glance, it sounds like a super power. ‘Go on, punch me in the face! Bring on the school bully because there’s nothing they can do to hurt me!’
However, it’s actually a life-threatening disorder, because you can have a massive wound on your back and be bleeding to death, and not be aware of it. People with CIP have a genetic mutation that blocks their ability to send an electrical signal to their brain to alert it to harm or damage. This translates into a life of unnoticed severe injuries, silent infections — such as appendicitis — and unrecognised trauma of all kinds. The consequence is that very few people with CIP survive to adulthood. Modern medical monitoring is slowly improving this, but it’s a treacherous way to live.  
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What’s Missing From Modern Medicine is prescribing visualisation instead of sedation. 
The exception, of course, is having surgery. Obviously you need to be put to sleep for an invasive procedure. But a lot of painkillers — especially opioid medications — can make you feel sluggish or sleepy, and they’re highly addictive.  
Medicines like codeine, oxycodone, morphine and tramadol affect the nervous system, slow down brain activity, and cause drowsiness. They’re great for severe acute physical pain, but inappropriate for chronic pain.
I’m also using the word ‘sedation’ as a metaphor for simply trying to eliminate pain without treating the underlying cause. By not exploring the psychological and emotional factors that perpetuate pain, we are sedating ourselves from experiencing a more fulfilling, meaningful, and truly joyful life.
This episode explores the specific details of effective visualisation to retrain your brain to release chronic pain.
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Today’s Whether Report answers the question: I’d like to know whether a bigger brain means a smarter brain?
The short answer is no.
Brain size relates more to body size. Whales and elephants have huge brains but they’re not the smartest animals. Albert Einstein had a smaller-than-average brain. 
Intelligence depends on how WELL your brain cells connect, not on how big your brain is. By intelligence, I’m referring to the nine different intelligences proposed by philosopher Dr Howard Gardner: 
Word smart
Number smart
Picture smart 
Body smart
Music smart
People smart
Self smart
Nature smart
Life smart 
No matter how good we get at all the ‘smarts’, our brain won’t grow out of our skull!
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Please subscribe to my podcast so that you don’t miss an episode, and email your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
 
For resources and references visit: https://drhelenapopovic.com/podcast/

Today’s Brain Booster is: Calm your fear, and pain will disappear.
Last week I did a deep dive into pain, and the key points were that there are two types of pain, classified by their cause:
Physical pain — caused by being punched in the nose (or some other kind of injury).
Neuroplastic pain — caused by an over-protective brain circuit. There’s no physical damage, no broken nose, and no pulled muscle, but your brain generates pain because it thinks you’re under some kind of threat.
Following on from this, I’m going to answer some important whether questions from Peter.
How do I know whether my pain is physical or neuroplastic?
Last week you provided a comprehensive list of conditions — such as fibromyalgia, tension headaches and IBS — that were classified as neuroplastic, because there was no physical damage to a person’s muscles or head. This I can understand. But you also gave chronic neck, shoulder and back pain as examples of neuroplastic pain.
I’ve had chronic lower back pain for more than one year, and an MRI scan showed that I have disc degeneration, as well as a bulging disc. I also get intermittent shoulder pain, but no one can find a cause. Is my shoulder pain neuroplastic, or could the doctors be missing something?
I’d also like to know whether the principles of curing neuroplastic pain, could also reduce my back pain?
The majority of adults who are completely pain-free have what LOOK like severe structural issues on their MRI scans. These are famously referred to as ‘normal abnormalities’.
In other words, as we age, we all start to get grey hair, wrinkles, and disc degeneration.
None of these cause pain.
Grey hair does not cause pain.
Wrinkles do not cause pain.
And degenerative discs do NOT cause pain.
The belief that disc degeneration and herniation DO cause pain is one of the biggest misconceptions in modern medicine.
A massive systematic review published in the American Journal of Neuroradiology highlighted that normal abnormalities on MRI scans are almost ubiquitous findings in healthy pain-free populations. Tune in to learn how to distinguish physical back pain from neuroplastic back pain.
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Today’s Health Headline is: Pain can be modified by our mind.
The most famous example of acute neuroplastic pain is the case of a 29-year-old construction worker who jumped down onto a scaffolding plank and accidentally landed on a long sharp nail that was pointing upwards, and pierced right through his boot. The nail was so long (18 cm or 7 inches) that the tip of the nail could be seen poking out of the top of his heavy boot.
The man was rushed to the emergency department of Leicester Royal Infirmary in the UK, and because he was in so much agony, he had to be sedated and given intravenous opioids so that the medical staff could cut the boot off his foot. When they did so, they were absolutely astounded to find that the nail had passed BETWEEN his toes and his foot was completely unscathed!
There was zero injury to his foot. There wasn’t a drop of blood.
When the man came out of the sedation and was told what had happened, his pain immediately vanished.
Calm the fear, and pain will disappear.
Intense pain can occur without physical injury or actual tissue trauma in any situation where our brain perceives or anticipates danger, be that physical or emotional danger.
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What’s Missing From Modern Medicine is recognising that calming fear can make pain disappear which is today’s Brain Booster, and also Step 3 of the 6-Step Process to retrain your brain to release chronic pain.
Step 1 was Educate before you medicate
Step 2 was — be Curious, not critical
And Step 3 is Calm your fear, and pain will disappear.
Feeling SAFE is absolutely fundamental to all healing.
In Step 3, you’ll gather concrete evidence that there’s nothing to fear, and then use this evidence to self-soothe. Only when your brain is absolutely convinced that you’re safe, will it stop sending pain signals. Listen to this episode for the details.