#260 The psychology of being healthy, and how to not get sick and die, with Matty Lansdown.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

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Please note that while an effort is made to provide an accurate transcription, errors and omissions may be present. No part of this transcription can be referenced or reproduced without permission.

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Matty Lansdown  0:00  
Yes, I'm a nutritionist and yes, I run programmes that help people with nutrition. But what I learned is that, you know, I've never met someone and I've spoken in a bunch of different countries at wellness events and retreats and conferences. I've never met a single person that didn't No, meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds, were a good idea. Everybody has an idea of what they should eat and what they shouldn't eat irrelevant of their class and their education status. I've never met someone that didn't know. And so it's like that deeper layer of like, well, why don't I do it then? That's the real question that needs to be answered and lifestyle comes into that

Agi Keramidas  0:43  
you are listening to personal development mastery podcast, providing those with the desire to grow with the simple, consistent actions needed to master personal development and create the life they yearn for. I am your host,  Agi Keramidas. A few years ago, I found myself unfulfilled and unmotivated like I had lost my sense of purpose and my life was merely passing by. Since then, I've been on a continuous journey of personal development that has transformed every aspect of my life. Now, my mission is to inspire you to grow, stand out and take action towards a purposeful and fulfilling life. In this podcast, I invite myself inside the minds of remarkable entrepreneurs, authors, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, people who share the journey milestones and learnings for you to be inspired to grow. In this episode, you will find practical action points that you can implement right now. So make sure you follow the podcast to get them as soon as they are released. Today's episode is about the psychology of being healthy, and how to not get sick and die. Let's dive right in. 

Agi Keramidas  2:00  
In today's show, I'm delighted to speak with Matty Lansdown. Matty, you are a nutritionist, scientist in the international speaker and health coach, you are also the host of the how to not get sick and die podcast. And with your knowledge and expertise in psychology and nutrition. you facilitate transformational health stories and you're passionate about supporting women to lose weight boosts their energy and to restore their confidence. Matty, welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to speak with you today.

Matty Lansdown  2:32  
Thanks Agi. It's good to hang out again.

Agi Keramidas  2:36  
Same again, for those who who listen now and don't know, I came as a guest on your podcast not so long ago. And we had a very intriguing conversation. And I'm delighted to be on the other end of the microphone now and speak with you and ask you some questions. So let's start the matter with a little bit of your background, your story? Would you like to share some kind of a key defining moment in your journey that maybe shifted you into turning into what you do right now?

Matty Lansdown  3:14  
Yeah, absolutely, there was, it feels like there was a lot of defining moments retrospectively when I look at the journey and have all of these different epiphanies, but sort of just a little bit of background to give context to the Epiphany. So I grew up in the countryside with my mum as a nurse and I went to the hospital as part of my daycare, so to speak, like there was there wasn't any daycare facility at the hospital, I literally just ran around the hospital ward with my mum and the other nurses. It was a small town. And so I spent a lot of time in the hospital and I grew up with a great amount of

Matty Lansdown  3:48  
adoration and respect for the idea of the hospital system and medicine and doctors and nurses. And so I sort of, from that point, from a very small age grew up and grew into a young adult that moved to the city to do study and research in the area of health and wellness and disease and that type of thing and to get a degree and then do some medical research. And I went through a number of different industries where I got different qualifications and, you know, becoming a medical scientist and working in nutrition laboratories and forensic laboratories. And I ended up basically in a cancer hospital as a scientist for seven years. And one of one of the when you said which was the defining moment or that big epiphany. It was about six months into working in the cancer hospital. So up until this point, I'm an extremely passionate, scientific Western medicine thinking advocate believing just young being young and naive, believing that if this is the system that exists, then it must be the best best possible system because I live in Australia. And you know, why would humans create anything that was not helpful? That wasn't even a thought in my mind like even that I did was was just ridiculous and any kind of natural health like naturopaths and Chinese medicine. I just thought that was all ridiculous woowoo nonsense, which is crazy from where I am right where I am right now, wherever podcasts that basically promotes that kind of stuff. But the first big epiphany was about six months into that cancer job when I realised that I was probably going to be in this job for a little while. So I literally thought, Oh, well, I better really start learning about cancer. So I started at the World Health Organisation website for cancer on the cancer page. And literally in the very first paragraph, and I'm pretty sure it was the first sentence it said, 90 to 95% of cancer is caused by diet, lifestyle and tobacco. And so that one sentence just blew my mind. Because I thought, I mean, at the time, it was a new hospital that cost a billion dollars to be built. And I thought, I'm in a billion dollar building that has nothing to do with diet or lifestyle, like, what does that even mean? Like lifestyle, I thought cancer was bad luck. And if you ask anyone on the street, or anyone in the world that's not in any type of medical education, they will also believe the same thing. In fact, the word cancer was voted as the most terrifying English word in the dictionary. Because most people think that like the boogeyman has come down, or the devil has come down from above and said, you are the recipient of this evil news. And so this really, really challenged my entire thinking, because I was like, even the World Health Organisation says that this percentage of cancer is preventable, because it's diet and lifestyle, which is the choices that we make every day. And it said in the next sentence that only five to 7% molecular problems or genetic, bad luck, and most people would think it's almost all bad luck. So that was the first real epiphany for me to go down the rabbit hole, which I never anticipated going down. It was just pure curiosity. And then and maybe my naivety at the early 20s of this question. And I literally asked my professor, I said, Why don't we do diet and lifestyle? Like, why isn't this building full of that? And he laughed and said, Oh, Maddie, if it was that simple, we would have fixed it years ago. And so that this just wasn't I wasn't satisfied with these answers. And I went on my own research journey outside the hospital, where I literally went down the rabbit hole of the capitalist nature of big pharmaceutical companies and the Western world that we live in. And even though countries like America or Australia, England, look really organised on the outside, there's still plenty of capitalist corporate corruption that goes on behind the pretty white glass and the buildings and that type of thing. And so and that led me to understand natural medicine and the history of natural medicine, the history of western medicine, and just how the history of the Earth basically came to be with traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine and Aboriginal medicine, and just applying my scientific thinking to these realms of health. And it was that moment when I was like, Oh, my God, if the system already knows that most of this stuff is preventable, why aren't we doing this? That was the biggest and first epiphany that led me on just a rabbit hole of many more epiphanies.

Agi Keramidas  8:19  
Thank you. That's a truly fascinating way of explaining what happened. And there were many things that came to my mind while you were saying and one is the the focus of Western medicine is not prevention, even though they would like to say that it is the focus is treatment and treatment, not in the sense of curing or eliminating the disease, in most cases, it is a curing or eliminating the symptoms. And there is a big difference between the two because the cause of the symptoms are rarely the same. And when you were saying about the alternative medicine or other other practices, you didn't use the word alternative, it is the word that I'm sharing. Now, I think even the word alternative is put in there deliberately to diminish the value of them. So there is you know, the good treatment, the standard. There are also the alternative treatments like

Agi Keramidas  9:28  
you know, acupuncture or the ones that you may, that you mentioned.

Agi Keramidas  9:36  
So there is a lot of interesting points that you've made already about the corruption in the way that Western medicine and how pharmaceuticals have really monopolised the way that it's treated. Can you let's carry on the story a little bit more sure. What changes did you do I said He's rolled off these epiphanies as you said that you had?

Matty Lansdown  10:05  
Yeah, that's a good question, because and I really liked the point that you made, argue on the idea of the use of the word alternative, because it really, it's kind of funny when you think about it, that Western medicine of all the medical modalities that exist, is the youngest by far, like, it's only 150 years old, maybe a little bit, maybe 170, if we're really pushing it, and everything else is literally in the 1000s of years old. So it's kind of it always makes me laugh that we call we call Western medicine, we don't refer to Western medicine as alternative because it's basically the most alternative. And all the other modalities have a lot in common, are irrelevant of the culture or the race that they came from. So yeah, it's, it's a funny little play on words. And words are very powerful. But yeah, I guess the changes that it led to for me is that all through my 20s, I had the same girlfriend, we had a very, an amazing long term relationship. And she basically was suffering all sorts of health issues. And she was a nurse in the hospital, literally across the road. And, and she ended up having many surgeries and taking lots of drugs and, and lots of the drugs that she was given caused her lots and lots of health problems. So I didn't have many challenges with my health, I had some gut issues, that I just was told that, you know, basically to use different creams and problems, different creams to solve the problem, or whether it be creams or tablets and this type of thing. And in the beginning, I just thought that's the way that medicine works. Until I realised that yes, you're very right. And what you said as well is that it's symptom suppression. Medicine, for the most part is symptom suppression, and not looking at the cause and changing the cause. And so I was watching, I had a few of those gut issues myself, and watching my partner suffer a lot. And so kind of together, she was already on this journey in the beginning, and I sort of followed in conjunction with going on my own cancer research journey. And I just started experimenting with this, these ideas like of intermittent fasting and water fasting and not eating for multiple days. And all of these belief systems that Western medicine had in Western society had told me was bad or dangerous. Because once I started to understand that, behind a lot of those messages was corporate financial incentive and not human health and wellness. I started to question everything. And I was like, Okay, I'm going to try everything and see what happens. And so yeah, I tried fasting, I've you know, fasted for 10 days, I was totally fine, I didn't die.

Matty Lansdown  12:50  
You know, I've tried all the different types of diets I tried. You know, veganism for a while I've tried carnivore. You know, I started seeing traditional Chinese medical practitioners and trying acupuncture and doing all of these different things that were out there to see how it affected my body, how I felt, whether intellectually, my science brain could make sense of what they were telling me like trying to gauge the degree of woowoo. And like, there was some practitioners that I saw, and I was like, Oh, I don't think my brain can really comprehend this level of spirituality in regards to the bodies and its health. But most of it made a lot of sense. And then that led to me creating the podcast, and it's called How to not get sick and die, because it's actually really easy to not get sick and die. The most of the western world and the fact that most of us have family members and friends, and everyone we know that has some kind of illness syndrome, disease, sickness, body weight issue, like you would think that everybody just signs up to their disease. But it's only in the last two generations that we've converted to a world where literally every second person, like what's one in two will get cancer, one in four diabetes, one in seven heart disease. And when you stack up a lot of those statistics, it's basically everyone will get something. And so if you can simply look at a photo from the 70s of people at the beach, there's no overweight people like, and pretty much overweight people were just wealthy people, because it was a sign of, you know, their abundant wealth to be able to access volume of food, not necessarily, like stupid, more sugar than anybody else. But that was probably a part of it. And so, so yeah, it's happened really rapidly. This process. And so the podcast was born out of this idea that you actually have total control of your health for the most part. And there is yes, there is a very small percentage of people that have bad luck with their genetics, or the situations that happened in their life that lead to something permanent. And I know that some of my spiritual colleagues will disagree with the idea of permanent but, but there is some people that just have bad luck, you know, and we're a biological species and humans are meant to die and the those that aren't fit enough to survive life meant to die out. And that protects the species from propagating unhealthy genes, which, you know, if we're gonna go down the rabbit hole, that's one of the problems with Western medicine is that we're in a situation where we allow exceptionally unhealthy humans to procreate and give birth to even sicker, more unwell children that have all of these behavioural issues, all of these allergies, all of these in sensitivities. And it's literally setting up the next generation for catastrophic failure. Because another two generations of this seeing how far we've come in the last two generations from basically, most people healthy, healthy body weight, not really having any issues dying in their sleep, to now everybody will die before the age of expect life expectancy for painfully another two generations time is gonna be really scary, because a lot of those people had babies and created even more unhealthy babies. And I'm realise that that's probably a triggering topic for a lot of people out there that have got kids. But this is speaking, you know, from an evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology standpoint. So the podcast was created to help people get out of that unhealthy world that were that we're all a part of creating. And we start with inflammation, right? You don't know what you don't know. So I want to help people just know a bit more.

Agi Keramidas  16:18  
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Agi Keramidas  17:31  
You know, what you said about the small percentage of people that have the bad luck, as you call it. I remember reading a phrase somewhere that you're our DNA or our genetic code, or our predisposition, if you want can only load the gun, but it is the environment that will pull the trigger. So you might be having the metaphor of a loaded gun or bad genes. But that only tone is not enough, it will need a triggering factor, which I suppose the lifestyle and what you were talking earlier, would be it. And actually that's something I want to discuss because you said in the beginning you you looked at the definition the causes of cancer, and I suppose we could extend that to most chronic diseases. Again, it would be nutrition and lifestyle. And we will speak about nutrition as well. But I want to go first and discuss a bit of the lifestyle because I think for most people, the term of nutrition is more or less understood. So they know that what is good for them to eat and what is bad for them to it, even though they would make the wrong choice. Deep down, they have an awareness that knows this eating bacon or I don't know eating donuts. It's not good. But let's talk about the lifestyle first, because it is much more broad. And can you define that in the sense of what lifestyle is in relation to health? I mean, not generally in relation to health and sickness.

Matty Lansdown  19:22  
Yeah, totally. And I think you raised a really good point, which is something I realised along the journey too, which is like, I guess I'm a nutritionist, and yes, I run programmes that help people with nutrition. But what I learned is that, you know, I've never met someone and I've spoken in a bunch of different countries at wellness events and retreats and conferences. I've never met a single person that didn't No meat, vegetables, nuts, seeds, were a good idea. Everybody has an idea of what they should eat and what they shouldn't eat irrelevant of their class and their education status. I've never met someone that didn't know. And so it's like that deeper layer of like, well Why don't I do it, then that's the real question that needs to be answered. And lifestyle comes into that, because anyone that's done any kind of formal health education will have done the subject social determinants of health. And it's kind of in relation to the genetic code stuff that you were talking about argue, because what they say is that your postcode or your zip code is more influential on your health and the outcomes of your health than your genetic code. Because where you live will determine is more likely to determine the health outcomes you'll have than any genetic tests could ever predict. Because humans and monkeys and gorillas and Homo sapiens were, were tribe animals were pack animals. And so what that means is that we get our sense of self and our self of acceptance and belonging from an environment that contains other humans. And so what you might recognise that idea is like, you know, something happening and happening in a situation or going out and just looking around the room to make sure you're dressed appropriately. Because you're determining, did I choose the right clothes tonight, based on the type of clothes that everybody else are wearing, and you will tell your brain I'm underdressed, or overdressed and I should be concerned, or know the pack is gonna judge me. And and it's not until you start realising this little moment of assessment that you do every time you come interact into the space with your family members, or your friends, or anybody you know, at work, these social groups are people we identify with and get our sense of self from. So when it comes to health, if the people that we relate to and that we're connected to, and we get our sense of self from have habits like regular drinking, because that's the way that everybody connects, or fast food because it's easy and convenient. And other things a priority in life, like getting the kids to sport, or, you know, hanging out with the boys on the weekend, or, you know, whatever the thing is, that connects everybody. If those habits are ingrained into the family or the group, then when it's going to be very, very hard to go on any type of diet or lifestyle change. Because it's not necessarily about the information, just like we said about the nutrition, most people have an idea. They know what they probably should be doing or have a rough idea, but they fear not belonging to the people that they love and that love them. And that comes as a deep form of rejection of who you are. If you attend the tribe, or attend the pack, knowing that those people are going to judge you. And it's like that idea that we hurt the people we love because as soon as things get out of hand in a different direction to that which the group expects us to behave, there's a reaction, there's a judgement, that the group tries to keep you in order in the box that they expect you to be in, and anyone that's been on a personal development journey knows that a part of that journey is shedding some of your friends because they're not okay with the way that you're growing and changing. And you might start, you know, hanging out with a different group and a different tribe. And that's why group programmes are so effective as well, because instead of trying to change your health, following a YouTube video, or a YouTuber, or an Instagramer, and doing it at home by yourself, if you do a group programme, then you're actually you've already done step one, which is I need to find a new tribe that I identify with being a different version of myself. And so the way that this impacts health is not just food, but the way that you manage your emotions, the way that you deal with stress. And many, I can only speak for men, but I know many men, you know, looking up to their fathers, their fathers dealt with stress and emotion with aggression, violence, never talking about it ever suppressing it, you know, saying Don't cry, don't talk about your problems, you know, deal with your issues. And so then you grow up as a young man and into an adult doing the same thing. And so what that stress does, and stress is arguably the biggest lifestyle factor that causes disease in the modern world, is there then manifests in disease, because stress is it translates to dysfunction of the hormones, dysfunction of your neurotransmitters, which then causes dysfunction of your immune system and your gut health, your mental health, which leads to poor food choices, which just deteriorates the body from top to bottom, basically. So there's so many layers to the lifestyle aspect, but fundamentally, it comes down to the tribe that you spend time with and the actions that that tribe to take or engage with, in order to connect them to one another.

Agi Keramidas  24:26  
That's amazing. I will repeat the words a phrase that you said in the beginning that I hadn't heard of it before, but it makes complete sense, especially with the explanation that you gave afterwards that your your postcode or your zip code is more important than your genetic code. And it reminded me you know, the, there is that phrase that you are the average of the five people that you spend most of your time we send you this phrase that you said expands the to not just the five people that are around you, but all the community, the tribe, that you You are a part of. So it's something very fundamental, I believe, to look at when we evaluate our lifestyle, the the influences that we have from the people around us, the town around us, or the, you know, the neighbourhood or whatever else it is there. So that's a very important point to be made. And there was something else that you said that I want to ask you to go a bit deeper on. And you said about handling emotions and stress in particular. And let me ask you, so someone listening to this and realising that this all makes sense, what's something that they can do to improve their handling of their emotional state, and even more particularly the stress that is so prevalent in everyday life, at least in most western societies that we live in? So how can one approach stress in a different way and handle it in a different way than they have been up to now?

Matty Lansdown  26:13  
Yeah, it's a it's a big question. Because like shifting the way that your emotions work is not an overnight task, it's very much takes a long term commitment. But which can be overwhelming and lead to most people just being like, Oh, it's too much hard work, it's too difficult. But with any big change, or anything that needs to happen, you've just got to start small. And I'm a big believer in you can't change today or tomorrow, unless you understand why today exists. And what I mean by that is that unless you reflect on the past, and understand how you got to the current situation you're in, you'll never know which pieces to change. It's like having a flat tire, and never getting out of the car to look and look at all four tires and see which tire is flat. Because you can't do anything from inside the car, right? You need to get out and you need to locate the problem and change that specific part. Whereas some people might be like, I just need an entire new car. We can't even do that in this analogy, right? We can't just get a new mind, we can't get a new brain. And so the situation is basically yeah, reflect on your past, what is the repeated problems that keep happening over, it might be stress related relationship related, it might be a recurring argument that you've had with your partner for years, you know, or it might be a situation at work that's come up, or it might be an emotional state that you arrive at, over and over and over again. And you need to ascertain like, Why do I end up there, what happens before and what's happened before every time I end up in that emotional situation of feeling heavy or sad or angry, and or the the action that you take in that emotional state, like what leads to that. Because once we understand that, it's the same thing as identifying which tire on the car needs to be replaced, then we know where to actually fix things from. And the other thing is to, to accept that the way that you're living now serves a purpose and a benefit. And most people, when they hear that they get a bit reactionary, and they're like, Maddie, I don't get any benefit from this. I wish I could never do it again. And you know, otherwise, I just stopped doing it if I you know, if I could. And the reality is, most people are stuck in these loops, because it does serve some kind of benefit. If you actually look at the flaws about yourself, or the things about yourself you're not happy with or that are contributing to your health in a negative way. You'll you can actually say there's good and bad. So for instance, aggression, right? Aggression, in many instances, is not helpful, right? It's not very helpful. However, the emotion or the reaction of aggression is really useful in protecting you. Right, it's like the idea of having a knife, a knife in the kitchen, very useful. A knife in a dark alley at night. Very dangerous, right? So it's the same thing with our emotions is that when they're put into the right space, and expressed in the right way, there can be really healthy outcomes. But we have to understand the past how we got to the present. And then we also have to want to change. And that can be pretty confronting, too, because people like, Oh, this is the way I've done things my whole life I can I can't even imagine being different. How would I be different? And that might involve some just just visualisation of like, or planning, like, how would I handle this differently? What's a different way that this could go? So we've got to, like, Look retrospectively at the past, collect the data and information, decide, yes, I do want to change and then start putting a plan in place. Is that plan gonna go to plan? Probably not? Probably not at all. But the point is that if you start from nothing, you'll get nothing. Right? So if you've got a plan, that's like, I want to go from zero to 10. And you land at three, that's, you know, that's a 30% Better than you did before, basically, if you could even say it's 100% better than before because you went from nothing to something and that's the most difficult step. Zero to One is the most difficult step of anything. So I think they're the crucial elements of that kind of, you know, beginning to change the way that you deal with your emotions or react. Or you could listen to an amazing personal development podcast like this one.

Agi Keramidas  30:15  
Thank you for this. And you said that two things that come to mind now from what you said, was one that the situation that you are now or you have been up to now has a benefit, otherwise, you wouldn't be doing it. And that benefit is not always clear to us, especially when the situation around us is not one that we're happy with. But we always do remember this phrase always, which I read in a book many years ago that people always do the best they can with the information that they that they have. So the mindset we have leads us to, no one harms themselves, deliberately, in a way that that they don't see any benefit in doing that maybe they're doing it to get attention or for for other reasons. And he also said about someone wanting to change, and that is maybe a more difficult thing. And that reminded me, you know, when things are, let's say going alright, in one's life, many people will not have a desire to change, even though they might have some unhealthy, habitual, and non beneficial ways of dealing with stress or things like that. But if things seem to be going, alright, so far, there is not so much possibly desire to change. However, life has a tendency to bring the instincts in on the surface. And when something happens, like an illness or something like that, I think it's a great opportunity for someone to understand that this happened for a reason. It's not just a roll of the dice with some that's my opinion, and aware of some gods that wants to do random things to us, there has been a reason for this, there is a message behind our illness or condition or anything. And that I think presents a great opportunity to change and bigger motivation as well. Because you know, when when you flee health in Euro, right, you don't have the same motivation. But when you start going downwards, suddenly, there are lots of reasons to do the uncomfortable things to take the time to, you know, cook your food or deal with your emotions in a in a different way, or whatever it is that needs to be done to shift you away from your lifestyle factors that led to this situation that you are now.

Matty Lansdown  33:02  
Yeah, no, absolutely.

Agi Keramidas  33:04  
And we were talking about, before we started recording, I said, I wanted to ask you about the psychology of being healthy. And I think to some extent, these things that we'll discuss in now consist or create this psychology of being healthy. But would you in that term psychology of being healthy, which I like very much. That's them? Would you add some other elements that we haven't discussed so far?

Matty Lansdown  33:34  
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny too, because I think that's one of the downfalls of Western medicine. So it's good that we've kind of already talked in that space is that separating the mind and the body. And a lot of people listening have probably been to the doctor and been told, and my partner in my 20s, was told this all the time that it was just in her mind, or it was just in her head. These kinds of challenges. And I hear that with many of the women that I work with, with different health conditions, and diseases and issues. They're just told that it's in their mind. And so and the big message is that the human body is a biological machine. And that's the way that we're taught at university. It's simply a machine just like a car, and the hospital and the doctor and the nurse, just like mechanics. And that completely, it completely eliminates the idea that the mind or your thoughts or your psychology or mindset has anything to do with the state of the body. And so if you'd ask anybody, whereas the mind, were irrelevant of where on the body, they point, the point is, it's somewhere in the body, right? It might be in every cell, it might be in the brain. But the point is that the body and the mind are all contained in the skin. So it's all one system. It's all connected. And when we talk about the mind, and psychology, many people think of like this cloud in the sky, of this esoteric idea of feelings and emotions, and it's kind of over there, but it doesn't really They have much to do with like my health. But the reality is, it's all within you. And every one of those thoughts that you have is not there's nothing esoteric about the thought it's a an electrical impulse that that flies along a neuron, which is in your body and in your brain. And it's like it's a physical thing, which then influences the way that hormones are released, that a particular cocktail or cascade of hormones will give you a sensation in your body, that will lead to a particular feeling that you identify with a label that is happiness, sickness, sadness, tiredness, all of these different things, all of that comes from the mixture of the mind and the body. Because they're always one, they're always one. And there's a lot of scientific studies. And there's a lot of famous people out there, and one of the first doctors that I came across, because when I'm in the lab, I'm a molecular biologist, and I found Bruce Lipton. And he is a professor of microbe molecular biology. And he wrote the book Biology of Belief, which is the science of thinking, literally the science of thinking in the way that it directly impacts your genetic expression, the way that your body heals and recovers, even to the point of thinking yourself, well, which is a really out there idea. But if you think of the body, and thoughts all as biological and all as physiological, and sort of move away from the idea that thinking is not anything to do with the body, you start to make sense of like, Oh, my thoughts are like the software. And my physical body is the hardware. And both of them run with one another all of the time. And the thing is, we can actually measure most of the software in the body, in molecules and proteins in inflammation, in thoughts and neurotransmitters. So it's all scientific, it's just that we've been sort of sold this idea that the mind and the body is separate. So when it comes to psychology and health, the way you think about yourself, the state of health, that you're in the way that you heal from different things, it all is directly related. And like I just said, like if you read The Biology of Belief, a heavily scientific book, even though it sounds a bit woowoo, with lots and lots and lots of scientific research that's referenced and research that Bruce Lipton himself did. And now you've got guys like, you know, the next generation of the like, yeah, Gregg Braden is your Joe Dispenza, all of these amazing PhDs and professors and scientists that can prove that the way you use your mind directly impacts the body. And so yeah, I think if we just simply start from the idea that the mind and the body are all within the container of the skin, we start to open up the possibility that the way we think is a part of the biology and therefore is a part of our health.

Agi Keramidas  37:43  
I was about to mention the Biology of Belief, by Dr. Bruce Lipton earlier on, and you you got me to that, for me, it was one of the most influential books that I've ever read in terms of changing my paradigm about how health is influenced by what we think as you said, it's true, it's not a very easy book for the less person because the layman person because it has some very scientific details. But for me, it is a book that I recommend to anyone who's interested to find out more about and really be convinced because there are there is so much evidence in there that proves beyond any shred of doubt some of the things that we were talking earlier, for example, about how cancer, for example, is not about the genes that you might have inherited from your parents, like many people are constantly in fear that because I have a family history of cancer, that means that I'm doomed. I'm just walking time bomb went, it's going to happen any moment now. So it's a book that I personally will recommend 100% It's one of my favourite ones.

Matty Lansdown  39:07  
Yeah, me too. It's it was so impactful in it. That was like when I was going through that journey of kind of questioning what I was doing in the hospital and what we were doing and whether it made sense. And you know, learning about that, that was one of the first books that I found, and I was still extremely scientific then. So the fact that he was a professor of Molecular Biology, I was open to it, and many people have to go down that path. They'll start with the very medical medicalized natural health professionals, which I'd probably consider myself in. And then slowly they open up to less and less conventional medical professionals with naturopaths and traditional Chinese medicine healers and even getting all the way to shamanic energy, medicine, healing, which is like a whole, you know, the whole other end of the spectrum but literally has 1000s and 1000s of years of history and utility

Agi Keramidas  40:00  
Absolutely I remember there was an analogy that I read somewhere about that the health care system is is good when it there was the analogy of the human body or our health, like a train, you know, going on a train track. So once the train derails and you are it's goes down the hill because of what you've done. The modern medicine knows very well, things to do, maybe not a perfect things, but knows how to put the train back on the track to some extent. However, if you asked them, How can I maintain the track the train on the track in the first place, there is no clear answer to that field that healthcare does not deal mostly with health, it deals with sickness rather than health. And I think there is a very big difference than maintaining and fortifying health than treating disease, there are two different things. And for me, the whole point is to manage to maintain the health and not having to go back into sickness and go back into that it's better if you avoid that in the first place and have your your train running on the track. And it's, there is loads of information coming out there. And I will also recommend your podcast, Marty to the listener because you have some amazing topics like that. So for the listener who's interested to find out more rates, there is a wealth of information there where they will appreciate. No, I mean it and your podcast is, is very successful. Anyway, so eight people enjoy it. And I was telling you before we started recording that, you know, there were so many pathways that could lead this conversation. And I realise now that we haven't talked about nutrition at all. And in a way, you know, I'm not disappointed that we haven't because I believe we will go deeper into that lifestyle element or that elusive term of what what is it and the psychology and how our thoughts can influence our health. So I will maybe leave an open invitation to you to come back and do a part two at some point and discuss purely the nutritional elements of this because it is also fascinating. And in some ways, it's easier to deal with that than our handle and our emotional states. So both are, of course, equally important or very important. But so what I'm trying to say is that I will leave this point of the topic of nutrition out of the day, because simply we don't have time to go into some significant things that I would like to elicit from you for the listener that they can benefit from it. Having said that, will ask you to give to the listener based on the conversation we've had today, something actionable, one actionable step or something they can implement today or tomorrow morning to make an improvement in their life or in this case in their

Matty Lansdown  43:44  
health. Yeah, I think I think especially in context of the conversation that we've had, like one of the most important things you can do is literally start just begin taking stock. And what I mean by that is get a journal and just start thinking retrospectively about your day or your week, or particularly the problems that came up and just start assessing them. And it was kind of we kind of started giving an example of the things a little earlier. But step one for all health behaviour is that even if we're talking about weight gain, because it's funny that you said we didn't even talk about nutrition that literally happens with my clients all of the time, because they know what to eat. It's the it's the thinking about why don't I do it then Right? And step one for them to it's the same thing. We start by retrospectively looking back on the week. Okay, before I ate McDonald's or before I ate the chocolate or before I drank the wine. What led to that happening? How did I feel where was I what was going on? So I would literally say step one is retrospection, just write down what happened in the week before the day before. Particularly the difficult moments are particularly the things that you want to change, because it's not until you understand that that you can do anything about it, whether it be psychology Whether it be biology, whether it be relationships, you can't do anything if you don't understand the problem.

Agi Keramidas  45:05  
Thank you. That's, that's fantastic. It's what you said earlier, you have to step out of the car and look which wheel is which tire is flat. Marty, I have some quickfire questions to wrap up this conversation before I ask you, I will share with, with the listeners how they can connect with you and find out more about what you do.

Matty Lansdown  45:32  
Yeah, sure. So you can obviously come and check out the podcast. So how to not get sick and die. We've just we've just gone over 200 episodes. So that's pretty exciting. And if you listen to argue all of the time, he's on episode 196. So check out that episode because it's awesome. And second to that, my website, Matty lansdown.com. So just ma TT y l a n s down.com. Or, for anybody that's a mother, we have a Facebook group called the Healthy mums collective. So that's any, any mums or women really in general that want to let go of emotional eating and emotional binge overeating type stuff, and feel happy and confident in their bodies. So yeah, come and hang out.

Agi Keramidas  46:16  
Marty does some final quickfire questions then to wrap up this amazing conversation? I really enjoyed it. My first question always is the same. What does personal development mean to you?

Matty Lansdown  46:30  
It means forever moving forward, it doesn't matter how slow or how fast forward movement happens. But progress is better than perfection.

Agi Keramidas  46:42  
And let's say you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give him?

Matty Lansdown  46:52  
Be Less attached to your belief systems.

Agi Keramidas  46:58  
That's brilliant. Marty, I want to thank you very much. This was a fascinating conversation. I think there has there have been lots of aha moments that were for me when I was listening to you. And I believe that the listener will find depending on her or his circumstances, they will find different, you know, pieces of wisdom in there or something they can that clicks that say, aha, this makes sense. And I'm going to do that or, you know, reassess it in my behaviour or thoughts. So, thank you very much. I want to wish you all the best with the work that you do and with your podcast as well. last parting words from you?

Matty Lansdown  47:45  
Yeah, thanks again. I really appreciate that. And thanks for having me on. You're such a great host and obviously your shows growing amazingly. So keep up the good work.

Agi Keramidas  47:58  
Thank you for listening, and I hope you got great value from today's episode. And if you'd be so kind, please take a moment to leave me in Apple podcasts review sharing how personal development mastery has made a difference to the day and I will read the review in the podcast. Until next time, stand out don't fit in!

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