Your Brain Isn’t Broken – The Fastest Way to Rewire Anxiety and Hormones
What if the key to healing your hormones has been hidden in your thought patterns all along?
In this transformational episode, Dr. Cassie Smith sits down with renowned clinical neuroscientist and communication pathologist Dr. Caroline Leaf to explore how mental health and hormonal health are deeply intertwined. They dive into the science of neuroplasticity—our brain’s ability to rewire itself—and how harnessing this power can help women break free from anxiety, depression, and hormonal imbalances.
Dr. Leaf introduces her 5-step Neurocycle™ process, explains why anxiety and depression are not diseases but signals, and shows how rewiring our thought patterns can improve everything from thyroid function to weight loss. If you’ve ever struggled with chronic stress, burnout, mood swings, or stubborn hormone issues, this episode offers hope, science, and practical tools to help you heal from the inside out.
Cassie info and links:
Check out the website
Follow Cassie on Instagram
Follow Cassie on Facebook
Follow Cassie on YouTube
Follow Cassie on TikTok
Guest info and links:
Dr. Caroline Leaf is a clinical neuroscientist, communication pathologist, bestselling author of 19 books, and host of the award-winning podcast Cleaning Up the Mental Mess. With over 50 million downloads and a global following, Dr. Leaf is a pioneer in the field of mind-brain research and mental health. Her work bridges neuroscience, mental wellness, and functional healing through a holistic lens.
Blog/Transcription:
0:00 [Music]
0:06 Welcome back to this week’s episode of Hormones Metabolism and You. I’m your host, Dr. Cassie Smith. I’m a functional
0:12 medicine endocrinologist based out of Oklahoma City. Today, I have a fascinating episode for you on rewiring
0:19 your brain to overcome anxiety, depression, and hormonal imbalance. I
0:24 have an amazing guest, Dr. Caroline Leaf. She is a clinical neuroscientist
0:30 and a communication pathologist who is just amazing. So, I’m going to teach you
0:35 on this episode, we are going to teach you how to rewire your brain to overcome anxiety and depression, which will
0:42 ultimately help you heal your hormones by using the power of your mind. Dr. Leaf, like I said, is a neuroscientist
0:48 and a communication pathologist. She has 19 bestselling books. One of them was
0:53 released this year called Help in a Hurry. and she is also the podcast host
0:59 of Cleaning Up the Mental Mess with over 50,000 downloads. Now, this episode, you guys, this is an amazing episode. What
1:06 we talked about in this episode was the critical difference between your mind and your brain. Okay? So, why
1:14 understanding that difference will help change the way you heal yourself and ultimately help heal your hormones. We
1:19 talked about what is neuroplasticity. So, your brain is changing whether you want it to or not. So, how do we direct
1:26 those changes to be impactful and help our hormones and our health as opposed to hurting it? She talked about the
1:32 fivestep neuroscycle process so that you can understand what is going on and how to rewire toxic thought patterns in just
1:40 15 minutes a day. We also talked about the 63-day rule for breaking bad habits,
1:45 why 21 days is not enough, and what happens at day 36 that causes depression to actually spike and a lot of times
1:52 causes people to fall off the bandwagon. the truth about anxiety and depression. They’re not diseases, they’re messengers, and their messages that it’s
2:00 not a Prozac deficiency, but there’s actually a wiring issue in your brain. And I believe it’s tied to your gut. So,
2:06 we talk all about that and how your thoughts directly affect your hormones. There’s a mind gut hormone connection
2:12 that most doctors miss, which I think is so important. So, if you want to break free from anxiety, if you want to
2:18 balance your hormones naturally, if you want to understand why you show up the way you do in life, this episode is a
2:24 must listen to. What you’re going to learn will empower you to take control of your health, your mental health, your
2:31 physical health. It’ll transform you physically after you fix your mental health, and it will help you do the same
2:36 for the people that you love. Stick around until the end to learn about Dr. leaves powerful research showing how
2:42 mind management improves everything from thyroid function to weight loss and why fixing your mind is the key to fixing
2:49 your hormones. I hope that you all enjoyed this me this episode as much as I did recording it. And we’ll put all
2:55 the information on how to connect with Dr. Carolina with Dr. Caroline Leaf in the show notes. And if you have not
3:00 gotten her book that came out this year recently, you need to do it. It will be
3:06 life-changing. So, here we go. Hello. Welcome to this Summit episode, Hormones and Mental Health: Overcoming
3:13 Anxiety, Depression, and ADHD. I’m your host, Dr. Cassie Smith, and I
3:19 have with me today Dr. Caroline Leaf. She is a communication pathologist, and
3:25 she’s going to talk to us about how anxiety and depression can play into our hormone issues. She’s actually an
3:32 aiologist, a pathologist, or she’s a communication pathologist, an aiologist, and a clinical neuroscientist
3:38 specializing in research in psycho neurobiology. She’s published 19 best-selling books in
3:45 24 languages, has over 50 million downloads on her award-winning podcast,
3:50 Cleaning Up the Mental Mess, and over 9 million downloads on YouTube. She runs research trials in mental health and
3:56 publishes in scientific journals. She speaks to diverse audiences around the world including neuroscience
4:03 around the world about neuroscience and medical conferences and also talks on TEDex. So thank you for joining us on
4:11 this hormone summit. Uh I’m very excited to have you. There’s so much chatter
4:17 currently just in the world about, you know, mindset and how mindset is so
4:23 important for our health and how, you know, mindset leads or or helps with
4:28 anxiety and depression. So, it’ll either, you know, lead you to anxiety and depression if your mindset’s bad or
4:33 it can help prevent anxiety and depression. So, can you kind of tell us, I guess, maybe start with like what got
4:40 you interested in in this space that you’re in? Well, Cassie, that’s so long. I’ve been
4:45 in that field 40 years now and I’ve been doing research and clinical trials. I practiced for 25 years. And what
4:51 interested me most got me in the field was the fact that we need to understand
4:56 more about the mind. And when I was trained in the 80s, there was a lot of emphasis on the mind and the brain and
5:02 understanding that these were separate things. They’re not the same thing. And then that changed in the mid 90s with
5:08 the advent of MRI technology. And for the last 40 years there’s been a huge emphasis on well 35 40 years a huge
5:15 emphasis on brain brain brain and brain and mind being the same thing. So my interest was very much in helping people
5:21 to understand the mind understand what thoughts are to understand that the mind and brain and body are separate but work
5:27 together as a unit but run by the mind. The mind is our energy and aliveness.
5:32 And if we understand mind which is 99% of who we are that’s what actually drive
5:38 the body for the fact that your heart’s beating your hormones are working all of that is if you’re dead nothing happening
5:43 and your mind is basically incorporating your aliveness. So the way you manage your mind is going to have a massive
5:49 influence on how the brain functions how the body functions and by the same token how hormones function which specifically
5:56 you know this summit. So that that interest has been fascinating. That’s been that’s a that flow and that
6:03 interest in the mind brain body connecting has been around for thousands of years. It’s nothing new but we did go
6:08 through a period in the last 40 40 years or so where there’s been less understanding of mind and more focused
6:13 on brain and body more focused on the physical and so you’ve been very it’s been my big area of interest to try and
6:20 reconnect that and help people understand more about the mind. Yeah. No, I completely agree. So what is
6:28 so can you explain to people what neuroplasticity like what does that mean? Absolutely. So neuro stands for brain
6:36 and plasticity means to change and so everyone thinks when you hear the word neuroplasticity
6:41 and there’s so much in the media about it as well now people think well it’s the brain changing itself but the brain
6:47 can’t change itself. The brain is changed by something else and the thing that changes the brain is also going to
6:54 change the body. So neuroplasticity is the ability that we have as humans with
6:59 our thinking, our thought lives, how we think and feel and choose that generates an energy that goes into the brain and
7:05 the body and changes the brain and the body. Now when we’re alive from the moment we wake up in the morning to the
7:10 moment we go to sleep and while we’re asleep we are processing life through our mind into our brain and our body and
7:17 that processing of life mean that energy is being put into the brain and the body and that stimulates changes in our genes
7:24 and our chemistry the biochemistry of the brain and the body and that then makes structural changes in the brain
7:29 and the body. The neuroplasticity is the result of the mind changing the brain
7:34 and the body constantly. And that neuroplasticity, it’s called the neuroplastic paradox can go in both
7:40 directions because all day long we’re experiencing life. And all day long we are having all these things happening.
7:47 And whether you like it or not, your mind is changing, your brain is changing, your body’s changing. That’s
7:52 psycho neurobiology. But what we can do which is really great in terms of mental health and so on and hormones and just
7:59 being a human is that we can learn to direct neuroplasticity. So we can learn to influence the change. Why would we
8:07 want to do it? Well, whatever you experience becomes built into the network of the mind brain body and
8:13 whatever becomes established in that network as a habit that’s what drives how you function and it also influences
8:19 how your body functions. So if we’ve got a lot of um things that we’re not managing, a lot of stressors, a lot of
8:25 issues, a lot of traumas, a lot of habits, bad habits that we develop, if we’re not managing those, we’re
8:30 constantly feeding into strengthening networks in our mind and body connection
8:36 that are driving us in a way that is going to affect our mental health that it’s going to that feeds back into the
8:42 body and affects our hormones and our physical functioning.
8:47 Okay. So, there’s this like fivestep process. Is
8:53 that right? With like a neurosycle, there’s a five-step process and how that works. Is that correct?
8:59 Yes. So, what I developed um Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. No. So, so explain to me, explain to us
9:06 like that five-step process. Absolutely. So about 38 years ago, I was working a lot with traumatic brain
9:12 injured patients and people with Parkinson’s and autism and learning disabilities and and I soon discovered
9:18 that there we were trained to help people to compensate. So they were bad
9:23 things to take people that had had strokes basing all these different kinds of things and the kind of therapy
9:29 techniques and the kinds of things that we were trained to help with didn’t they they were simulating neuroplasticity but
9:35 it wasn’t making the changes and empowering people to make the changes I
9:40 would like to have seen it was more the brain damage there’s nothing we can do
9:46 which we know now is not the truth I mean that was back in the 80s from the mid 90s that whatever you do with your
9:52 mind is directing changes in the brain and your brain is always changing your body is always changing as I was saying in in good or bad direction. So what I
9:59 wanted to do is to understand how does a thought form because thoughts are the
10:05 encapsulation of our experiences. So we have life life happening around us and
10:10 all these experiences of life become pro processed through our mind and become
10:15 thoughts. Those thoughts wire into the mind and body connection and those are the things that are driving us. So
10:22 essentially um I wanted to understand the process of how that happens because
10:27 it is a neuroplastic paradox which means that if we are always changing whether
10:32 we like it or not if our mind and body networks always changing and if we don’t control that change our change can go in the wrong direction so we can then
10:39 develop bad habits and mental health can get worse and that kind of thing I wanted to understand how does this
10:44 process occur and can we intervene is there a way of us stepping in and managing this process and reversing And
10:51 that’s what the neurosycle is. It’s gone through various different names, but the current the name for the last five
10:56 years, we’ve called it the neurosycle because it’s cycles that you go through in helping to identify the patterns in
11:03 your life. How are you showing up in your life? You know, what are your emotions and behaviors and perspectives
11:09 and bodily sensations, that combination of signals, how are you showing up? What is and where is that coming from?
11:15 Because how you show up isn’t who you are. Depression isn’t a disease. It isn’t who you are. It is a signal that
11:22 something’s going on. It’s an emotional signal that something’s going on. If there’s something going on in your body when you feel those sensations that
11:28 telling us information. So I wanted to understand how can we look at how we
11:33 show up as humans and then reverse engineer that according to the process of how it got there in the first place.
11:39 And that’s what the neuroscycle is. And from very complex science simplified it down into the it’s like a five-step
11:46 process that we go through as information experience comes into our mind brain body connection and how it
11:53 becomes a network that drives us. In other words, how it turns into a habit and then how we can reverse that and
11:58 that’s what the nearest. So it’s basically a system for how we can find
12:03 out what’s how we’re showing up becomes very obvious and self-regulated then change that. You can’t change what’s
12:10 happened to you, but you can change what it looks like inside those networks and therefore what’s driving you. And
12:16 therefore, you can whatever’s happened in your past, whatever happening in the present, whatever experience have all
12:22 the uncertainty of life that affects us, we can actually identify how that is
12:28 affecting us, track it back to the thought behind it, which is the experience, deconstruct that,
12:33 reconstruct that, and change how it plays out into our future. And that’s a lot of mind work that actually changes
12:39 the way that the body functions and then also influences things like health and that’s basically what the fivestep
12:44 neurospheric process does. So is there there’s a way to go back and
12:50 change how your mind will process that. Yes. Yes. So neuroplasticity is
12:55 essentially um how your mind is processing life into your networks. And
13:01 the more you think about something, the more you process it into the networks and the stronger the network becomes. So
13:07 for every experience that we have and just think of it, we have trillions of experiences through our lifetime. Those
13:13 experiences that we focus on become these networks. Those networks when they are stabilized over time into habits,
13:20 they drive us. So what we can do is reverse that process. Because if we have
13:25 a negative experience like a trauma for example in childhood or adulthood or whatever or you have a bad habit that
13:31 you just get into which we all do those become toxic networks. Those networks are not as they’re not as health they’re
13:37 not healthy networks and if you’ve done them a lot and they’re a habit it means that you practice them. It means that
13:43 they’re very strong and that means that means that they’re driving you. Now if our whole you know as a as a medical
13:49 practitioner that our mind brain body connection or body is wired for survival. We’re not wired to, you know,
13:55 to die. We’re wired to try and survive. Um, in in the neuroscience world, we call it being wired for love. So,
14:02 essentially, our bodies, mind, brain, body trying to do is identify those
14:07 patterns of behavior that have become habits that are disruptive to our mental functioning and therefore our physical
14:13 function, what those are, and then rewire those. And that’s what you’re able to do. So you’ll never forget the
14:20 trauma but you can take the strength and energy and power out of the trauma for example. Therefore change how it plays
14:26 out into. And in doing that that’s where the psycho and neurobiology comes in
14:32 mind which is the psychop part for 99% of who we are. As you work on the mind
14:37 that then changes how the structures and energy get in the mind brain and body connection and therefore how it plays
14:44 out in our life. And that’s why we can go to go through therapy go through different processes and we can then see
14:50 oh I was like that now I’m like this. So the neuroscycle empowering people to do it yourself because I’m all for therapy
14:57 and counseling. We need that. But you live with yourself 24/7. You are the one that’s driving your life. And so you
15:04 can’t burn up a therapist with counsel in the middle of the night or when you’re in the shower and having a panic attack or in the middle of a meeting and
15:09 you’re really anxious. You’ve got to know how to manage your mind in the moment. You’ve got to improve your self-regulation skills. And that doesn’t
15:16 mean you’re going to solve all problems immediately. But if you recognize the signals, you can then get up handle by
15:21 using the neurosycle on how you react in that moment. And then you can take time at a later next day or something like
15:28 that to work on. If you recognize, hey, I keep reacting in the same way. This is a pattern in my life. Then you can spend
15:33 time deconstructing that. And that does take time. You can use the neuroscycle in the moment very quickly to help you
15:39 calm down in a meeting or calm down in in a fiery relationship situation or
15:45 deal with something that life throws at you which it does every day. But then in order to really change those networks,
15:52 it takes at least 63 days. We often have 21 days to break a habit. But it
15:57 actually takes consistent taps, consistent working daily for around 63 days, three cycles of 21 to really
16:04 rewire that those neuroplastic networks into a healthy version. Otherwise, it’s
16:10 half done and then we get frustrated. So, so you kind of talked about the
16:18 brain and the mind and how they’re a little different. So you’re saying so so
16:26 explain that again. So the mind is how you perceive everything else and the
16:33 brain is Yep. It’s perceiving the world around you. Is that kind of what you’re
16:39 saying? Sort of. Okay. So the brain is a physical organ as we know and the body is physical. The mind also has a level
16:46 of equality to it but it’s energy. Okay. So it’s an energy force that that goes and you know an EKG or an ECG or an EEG
16:54 or sonogram. You’re picking up the energy picking up very different things that we can do in the body. We can pick
17:00 up the different energy forces in the body. Okay. So mind is an energy force that drives the the mental part of us
17:07 and it drives the physiological part of us. So when someone dies that energy force goes and people’s heart stops and
17:13 their brain stops and their body dies and their body disintegrates. So the mind is a life force and it incorporates
17:19 consciousness and all those big words consciousness and emotions and thoughts and all those things. It’s got different
17:25 levels etc etc but it’s basically an a field of energy that is unique to each
17:30 person and every experience we have think of it like the mind like a thought field like a a thought field a field
17:37 around you and through you and every experience that you have is forming like if you think of the sky how cloud think
17:43 of clouds in the sky think of every experience become growing into like a cloud in the thought field and those so
17:51 as you experience something like this conversation It’s the mind energy that then first
17:57 processes what I’m saying and build that into this into a a mind network an
18:02 energy cluster and then that gets put into the brain and the body simultaneously and that then changes the
18:09 networks build network into the brain and builds networks into the cells of the body which is why if you’re stressed
18:14 you feel that stress in your body if you record a trauma you can feel your heart there’s a whole connection
18:20 between the mind brain and body so the mind is the energy force The brain is a is a receiver, a transmitter, a storage
18:27 unit literally of and all the different parts of the brain are are designed to
18:33 respond to the mind in different ways. So we often hear about the amygdala and the fear response in the amydala. The
18:39 amydala can’t do anything. But when we feel fear in our mind then the amygdala
18:44 is activated to um w with the front part of the brain and different parts of the brain and the different parts of the
18:50 brain are activated by the mind and that’s how we are able to then respond in life to things. So the brain is a
18:57 physical um filter and the body is like a physical filter. The mind is the force
19:02 that keeps the filter and the heart and the endocrine system and everything working.
19:09 It’s quite a bit to process. But if you just think of it, mind is your aliveness. That’s probably the easiest
19:15 way. It’s who you are. It’s how you think, feel, and choose. It’s you. It’s Cassie. It’s Caroline. It’s whoever’s
19:21 listening. That’s who you are. How you think, feel, choose. That energy. When you die, your body just disintegrates.
19:26 So it’s that energy of life that incorporates consciousness and the nonscious mind and thoughts and energy
19:32 and responses and emotions and all that stuff with mind but it’s an energy that
19:37 we can use things like quantum physics and classical Newtonian physics to explain and then that’s what makes the
19:43 brain work. So the brain is not a not generating or doing anything. It’s responding. The brain is a responder to
19:49 the mind. The body is a responder to the mind. So really a lot of these things that
19:55 women struggle with that we’re kind of talking about in the summit, the anxiety, the depression, the ADHD, all
20:01 these things that happen when our hormones change or for whatever reason is really more a mind issue then
20:08 probably than a brain issue. The brain just kind of processing what’s happening, but it’s the sometimes maybe
20:14 the toxic or negative things that we say to ourselves or that we see or just the environments that we’re in. Obviously,
20:20 some of it’s a hormonal change, but a lot of these issues are probably a mind
20:25 issue then. Absolutely. And yeah, absolutely. And and what we we’re in a in a sort of
20:31 world view or zeitgeist where we feel that we have to have a biological cause
20:36 for something like anxiety depression valid. And that’s so unfortunate because your mind is as physical. It’s a
20:42 physical thing. It’s a different type of physicality, but your mind is what’s developing the brain in the body. So
20:48 yes, a lot of what we experiencing is in the mind that does obviously if you have certain medications, that’s a biological
20:55 change. If you have a traumatic brain injury, if you have a neurological some sort of neurological damage, if there’s some genetic disorder like Huntington or
21:01 something that’s passed through the bloodline, but that’s only around about 1 to 5% um of the reason why we have
21:09 obviously food. Whatever you ingest, if we ingest foods and things, medications that range of biologically chemical our
21:16 body and then that feeds back into the mind. But even your mind what the research has shown is that even um
21:23 example um I work with quite a few um endocrinologists and one of my one of
21:28 the people on my team what she’s found is that um if someone’s got for example thyroid issues she’ll have someone with
21:34 a really just a simple example and I’m using a endocrinologist so this could probably something you can relate to but
21:41 what she how she explains it so well and I’m going to quote her is that she has two patients in front of her one is both
21:47 with thyroid issues one with a really major problem. The other one with a mind problem, the one with a major problem
21:54 because their attitude and their understanding and their mind management is so much more developed and their
22:01 mindsets there all that kind of the mind is working so much more efficiently. Then the patient works better.
22:07 Everything about the healing works better. So they heal better. The one with a lesser problem but a negative
22:12 attitude, they’ll do worse than the one with a worse problem. And this is something that’s quite well documented
22:17 in not just the world of endocrinology but in the world of medicine where and there’s a lot lot of research in fact
22:23 cancer all that kind of thing and I’m not saying it’s people’s fault. I’m not we it’s life as human what we need is an
22:30 awareness of this is not a blame game. This is not oh you can’t manage your mind. Your mind we all need to manage
22:36 our mind because our mind is the driving force. So when we recognize the power of we know how to then look after our
22:42 physical bodies and so that’s what I’m what I’m saying. So we need to give you know much more
22:49 weight to not just trying to look for a biological cause but look at there’s a combination because whatever we go
22:55 through change your brain it’s going to change your body. So if you’re having a lot of trauma in your life it will
23:00 affect your hormones. There’s no ways it won’t there’s no way that constantly um not dealing with stuff and not even part
23:08 of stuck with people that have got histories of abuse in maybe a marriage or something like that where there’s a
23:14 lot of abuse and they can’t get out of it that’s very they’re stuck in a situation that constant abuse is being
23:20 processed by the mind into the body and you will see changes in body in the body’s biological function the way that
23:26 the structure of the brain that is wired into the brain in imbalanced ways we even see that the proteins fold
23:32 incorrectly there’s an imbalance in those networks a biochemical imbalance as soon as you got an imbalance in the
23:38 networks of the brain, you’re going to have imbalance in the body and that’s going to create right through the
23:43 hypothalamus all the way through that entire endocrine system is going to be affected. So it’s more it’s one of
23:48 educating people to understand that my mind does impact my brain and my body.
23:53 But if I can work on my mind, you still have to deal with the damage occurred in the brain and the body. We still have to
23:59 we need medicine. I’m all for medicine to help that because we inevitably as humans we we don’t know how to manage
24:06 everything all the time. So we inevitably are going to damage ourselves without even realizing. So that’s why we
24:12 have need to work with with medicine but we also need to work with our mind um to
24:17 the combination and we don’t pay attention to our mind. We’re really really good at dealing with the
24:22 biological but we don’t spend enough time working on our mind and we need both.
24:29 Okay. So then tell me about habit formation, right? So like where do we go
24:37 wrong when we’re forming habits? like what part of this is gets I guess
24:44 deranged or um you know when we’re trying to make habits and we end up making bad habits and maybe can you talk
24:51 to us about like that neurosychological work and give us an example as to how
24:56 somebody could like rewire a habit or make a new habit if they’re very anxious or depressed.
25:02 Absolutely. So um the just okay so the big thing is that
25:09 when you when you have an experience like just for example the first time you just said something once the chances of
25:15 you remembering it are not really good because your brain brain your not your brain will be led by your mind to
25:22 certain memories and memories together to form thoughts. So for something to
25:27 stick and become a habit that drives you because habits are the things that drive us whatever you’re doing all the time is
25:34 a habit. Every any behavior pattern that we have whether it is going to the gym, cleaning your teeth, um responding to
25:40 your spouse in a certain way, doing your work in a certain way, the whole lot the way you run your life is based on
25:48 habits. So habits are experiences that we practiced. And so what we see from um
25:54 the the research is that the more you practice something which is ethological the more you’re going to make it
26:01 stronger. So we see that the networks then change. You think of the first in
26:06 the in the the realm of the mind. If you think of the first time that you do something, it being a tiny little flimsy
26:12 cloud and a tiny little weak little network like a tiny little tree that
26:18 will seed that’s just been planted and it’s just tiny little plant that you could easily just squash and in your
26:24 body just these tiny little plants that are weak. But as you water the plant
26:29 where it grows and gets bigger. So if we use the plant analogy perhaps it’s kind of what’s happening with the mind brain
26:35 body connection. So a habit forms by us constantly feeding at this energy keeping you keep thinking about
26:41 something. You keep ruminating on something. You keep thinking about what that person said, what they did, how it
26:46 happened. You create the scenarios in your mind of doing this and then you don’t even know if they’re doing that
26:51 but you be really good at thinking well they said this mean this. They’re going to do that. And then you make and as you do this over time you are feeding that’s
26:59 energy pouring it onto the network and it’s growing bigger and bigger and bigger and in a negative direction it’s
27:04 negative has just be happening and that network becomes toxic and in the brain and it also builds out of the body and
27:11 we have 37 to 100 trillion cells of the body. Okay. So over what we’ve seen is that there’s three phases that we go
27:17 through in building a habit. The first 21 days which everyone’s so familiar with is where we are very into this
27:24 thing. we’re very aware, very like practicing and experiencing and if it’s um if it’s something that we’re trying
27:30 to work on, it’s very hard. It’s very hard facing stuff and it’s like feels like so much work takes longer. Then you
27:37 reach a point around about 21 to 28 days where you think, hey, no, I think I’m getting I think I can see where I want
27:44 to be. I think I can see the change. I can see like I can start feeling that I’m doing this more often in any
27:49 direction. Whether it’s detoxing something or whether it’s building something, breaking down a habit around
27:54 21 to 28 days, we start feeling that it’s okay. It’s a whole healing journey
28:00 that we go through. And if we stop around 21 days, it’s a danger zone because between 21 and 28 days, there’s
28:06 a massive flip that happens where it’s like watered your prong to a point, but now you stop watering your plant. It
28:12 just dies. And so you have to keep going. And as you keep going there and
28:18 you there’s ups and downs. So some days you’ll feel better and other days you won’t. But if you know that they are and
28:24 this is what I’ve tracked with my work the neurosycle of 63 days you can literally be worked on studies where you
28:31 can show that around four days you’ll feel like this 14 days like this around
28:36 21 like this but point around 36 days we suddenly if you’re working on something
28:42 that’s toxic around 36 to 42 days there’s this massive insight that
28:47 occurred but it’s the insight that actually will generally increase depression and anxiet those emotions um
28:54 because you’re suddenly seeing wow look at what I missed. You get this scope you’re getting a massive insight into
29:00 the scope of what has happened in your life because of that tragedy or that habit or that toxic trauma. And so but
29:08 because you at that point it’s a it’s a it’s a grief. It’s a grieving that is
29:14 very wise. It’s one of a learning situation. It’s a one of an awareness. And so you carry on. You get through the
29:20 dip and you carry on. Then you hit the point of around 60 59 to 63 days where
29:25 you see okay I’ve got this depression and anxiety are not bad things. They’re giving me information. I see now where
29:32 I’m borrowing. I’ I’ve got a plan and action in place. Then I’m triggered again. This is my new behavior and I’m
29:37 now seeing more areas that disaffected and then you start another cycle. This is an ongoing thing. Um, and if you cut
29:44 the healing journey short at any one of those any points, any day along that 63 day, um, you actually will then be
29:51 frustrated because you’ll remember what you did and you’ll think, “Now, what’s wrong with me? I did all of this. I did all of that. I followed this, but I’m
29:58 still back at that point. I can see where I want to be, but I can’t get there.” And then people go kind of round and round and they get more depressed
30:04 and that kind of thing. And so, we want to try and avoid that. We want people to understand that depression, anxiety, these things, they they’re messengers.
30:11 they’re giving us information and the healing journey as we all know the hero’s journey it’s an up and down journey we’ve tracked our research and
30:16 that I built into the neo cycle is this healing journey because if you know what’s coming up like if I know I’m
30:23 working on something really hard and I know at 21 days I could potentially think I’m okay but I’m not I know at 30
30:30 day 36 I’m going to get this huge grief explosion of insight that’s kind of overwhelming I can put some you know
30:36 things in place like make sure I see my therapist that day or make sure I have a a loved one that I can go out for coffee
30:42 with and talk to to that day. So you you know you plan for these things and this is an ongoing thing because not only do
30:48 we have one issue you’re working on, we have numerous issues. We never stop working on issues plus new issues are
30:54 coming all the time. And the beauty of the neurosycle is that you can you always working on something. So you work
31:00 on one thought and a thought is made up of a lot of details. Like a raincloud is made up of a lot of drops of water.
31:06 thought is made up of a lot of details which is all the memories of the experience. So you work on one thought
31:12 with all its details for three days and then you start another thought related or unrelated depending on where you’re
31:18 at. But you can also use the mirror cycle in the moment which I mentioned earlier on. So you can literally let’s
31:23 say for example that you’re in a meeting and I mean let’s let’s take our example we were batting with the sound. The
31:29 sound was going crazy. We were batting to get the sound going and that’s quite a tone of the situation because we needed to do this interview. So I did a
31:36 quick mirror in my mind where I the first step is gathering awareness where
31:41 you basically gathering awareness very unemotionally of what unemotionally is
31:47 in a self-regulated um very compassionate way of how are you feeling okay there’s a level of concern because
31:54 this interview is about to happen what’s going on confusion maybe a little bit of worry um so you just acknowledge it I
32:01 feel those emotions where am I feeling in my body and my shoulders were tensing up Where am I? And what are my what is
32:07 my um my behaviors? I’m trying everything that I can to try and solve
32:12 the problem. So were you um what is my perspective? Oh, Riverside for me. Well,
32:17 Riverside’s doing it again, you know, but we solve this problem. And then immediately you reflect on that. So, okay, I’m feeling a little worked up
32:23 because this is important. You need to get this interview done. That’s the reflect step. Why? The who, the what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what the, the when,
32:28 the where, the why. So you first gather awareness of the emotions, of the behaviors, of the perspectives, of the
32:34 body sensations. Four little sentences. Then you say, why am I feeling this? You’d ask the WA questions. Then you do
32:40 a bit of a mindstorm that you can do mentally if it’s a quick one. Um, and that mindstorm could be, you know, what
32:46 are all the problems? Troubleshooting. For me, it was troubleshooting. What did I do in the past to try and solve this problem? And then the fourth step is
32:52 what you call a recheck step where you say, okay, how can I keep it? What could we do differently? You and I discuss an
32:57 option. take it work. That’s why finding a micro didn’t make. So we look at this
33:04 differently and then action was we made it work. We actually followed through on those thoughts. You did something your
33:10 time I did something nice to action. That’s a silly example but in that covered the whole process of what
33:16 happened and I forgive myself in a place of calmness. I could whip through that in a minute. So the neurosycle is
33:22 getting order out of chaos in your mind. Because if we allow our mind to go all over the place, we are in any situation,
33:30 whether it’s something as simple as what we’ve just discussed now, whether it’s someone who, you know, maybe a family
33:35 member who triggers you and you love them, but there’s a maybe a relationship issue and they say something and there’s
33:41 fireworks. How do you keep yourself in a state of calmness so you can have wisdom so that that doesn’t escalate into an
33:48 ongoing relationship problem? And so you can do a quick neuroscycle in the moment of quickly acknowledging you can be
33:53 looking straight ahead at the person and you can quickly go whip through the gathering awareness of the of the four
33:59 signals reflecting quickly on them doing a little mindstormally
34:04 then rechecking and we active reach when you do it daily you sit down for about
34:10 15 minutes and I’ve got an app the neuroscycle app that’s on iTunes at Google Play and um there’s a web version
34:16 I’ve also got books cleaning up a mental mess my most recent that explains the process. But when you do it daily to
34:22 work on let’s say a pattern. So what I just described was how you use it in the moment. If there’s a pattern in your
34:28 life like maybe you’re always having the same issue with your partner or you find that you always get anxious in meetings
34:36 when certain situations arise. You see this is happening on a regular basis. There’s a pattern here. Then you want to
34:42 sit down for 63 days. Pattern says you’ve got a and you now need to daily
34:48 work through the five steps for about minutes a day for the first 21 days. And then the balance of the 63 days, the
34:54 other 42 it’s just five minutes a day. Then you just whip through the five steps. Don’t solve it in one day but a
35:00 little bit each day. That’s how habits work. You break it down and build each day. A little bit of breaking down, a little bit of building up little bit
35:05 each day and you get into a flow and then that after 63 days changes. Now
35:11 people might be thinking I don’t have 63 days. Let me say this. Your brain is changing all the time. Your mind by your
35:17 mind. Your mind is forever changing your brain and your body which is the plastic paradox. The thing is is you can direct
35:23 the change. So if you’re not directing the change, it’s still changing but in the wrong direction. So you’re actually
35:28 getting worse. So it whether you like it or not, you’re changing. So you may as well direct the change. And that’s
35:34 essentially what the neurosycle is doing. It’s directing change. Now the less chaos in your mind, the less chaos
35:40 in your body, the less chaos in things like your hormones. It’s essentially the flow. So we’ve shown that in our
35:45 research, how hormones, I mean there’s a lot of different things, but we’re talking quite a lot about hormones in this particular summit. We’ve shown
35:51 evidence of hormones changing with mind management in these periods of nine week cycles.
35:58 Yeah, I think that’s that’s so helpful for people to hear. You know, we at modern endocrine, we have this like 10step approach we do for ultimate
36:05 health and you know, we start with cell membranes and we start with, you know, gut health and things like that. But I
36:10 do tell people after you get through simple things like that and nutrition and exercise and light like mindfulness,
36:16 mindset, meditation is so important. And I, you know, I’m actually working on a
36:21 book right now and the whole book’s concept is how all of our hormones go
36:26 together. And I have this whole section on how stress affects your gut and a lot
36:33 of it comes from your mind and how when your gut is affected by stress, it affects your vag nerve and then that
36:39 ultimately can cause leaky gut which can cause hormone issues and yeah. So I mean I I do think that and I think that you
36:45 know I have I have a health coach and she does give people like a lot of tips and advice on stress. to some of the
36:51 things you were talking about and just ways to mitigate stress and ways to reform habits and ways to get out of bad
36:57 habits. And I and I think that this is, you know, mental health in general is something that in the United States we
37:02 don’t focus enough on. And so I think that’s probably why, you know, you’ve
37:07 written all like you have this very successful podcast. People want to learn about this because to your point, there are things you can do to kind of rewire
37:15 that, right? like this system we have and once you fix your mind so many
37:20 things start to fall in place your sleep that’s what I tell my patients all the time like people come to me and they want to lose 30 lbs you know this I want
37:26 to lose 30 lbs I want to lose 30 lbs but they want to just starve themselves and not do the work it’s like well no why
37:32 did we gain the 30 lbs to begin with like let’s think about this are we mindlessly eating are we eating to
37:37 comfort ourselves are we eating because we have trauma are we eating you know because we’re anxious like you have to
37:42 work through all of that and then once you start fixing that you start rewiring habits in your brain. You fix your gut,
37:49 you know, you fix your hormones, you fix your mind, you fix your sleep. Then, you
37:55 know, I had a I had a lady who came in this this last week and, you know, we had been working together for 6 months
38:01 and she was so mad at me at the last visit. She was crying and she was, I’ve been with you for 4 months and I’ve lost 2 lbs and this is such a weight. And I
38:07 was like, you are right there. Like, give me one more month, you know? And she came back 6 weeks later and she had lost like 14 lbs. It was just like we
38:14 had to get her over that. Like she had some she was seeing a therapist. She was working on her gut. We had gotten her
38:20 hormones fixed. It just like it doesn’t all happen at once. You know
38:26 that’s what you’re saying all about the different techniques. This is what what I found is that alliques that you’ve
38:31 described and and there’s so many meditation all these things meditation in terms of where does it what is the
38:37 neuroscycle? How does it fit into all of that? The neuroscych is the system into which you put the techniques. So all the techniques that there’s amazing
38:44 techniques out there you’ve seen in my app and my book and everything working on your gut working on those are all
38:50 different um the point I’m trying to make is that it’s the vehicle the nearest vehicle if you don’t follow the
38:56 system of how the mind brain body changes you they can sit in front of you
39:01 get all this fantastic advice from you but if you don’t put it into a system where you rewire it into mind body
39:07 network you won’t apply it and your body won’t benefit as So all the techniques if they’re going
39:14 to discipline themselves to follow the techniques you’re teaching them they need to gather awareness. What are the
39:19 things that you taught me today that what did you tell me today? Gather awareness of those those facts
39:24 literally. What are those behaviors that you talk? You’re going to work on your gut. You’re going to work on this. Those are behaviors. What’s your perspective?
39:29 You’re going to perspective your mind. How does that make you feel? How does
39:35 that what do you say? What do you body? Why do you think we should do the second
39:41 thing? Okay, let’s put down a list. What are you going to do for you physically all the things you’re telling them? So
39:46 you put it into that system, then give them a flow that they can then follow each day and then apply it and then wire
39:53 it into the brain. You won’t have a bunch of facts. It’s actual knowledge that they’re going to wire in and it’s
39:59 going to become part of them and they apply what you teach them. What So I completely agree. What
40:05 percentage of people do you think in the like United States that have anxiety and
40:10 depression? What percentage of that is really like refractory and like really
40:18 needs to be medicated versus people who just need a reset in their mind and like
40:23 some mindfulness work like this? What would you what would you say? So that’s a big a great question and a
40:29 big question. So the first thing is that I don’t see depression and the research actually confirms what I’m saying. there’s more research confirming this
40:35 than than the biomedical model approach. So the biomedical model says that depression is an illness and that it
40:42 needs to be treated with medication. So it’s kind of like the same approach that medicine uses. Now it works for
40:47 medicine, it doesn’t work for the mind. And what research has shown is that if you see depression as an illness and you
40:53 look for a biological cause which has been disproved, it isn’t there is not one biological cause for depression. It’s not that depression is caused by um
41:00 an imbalance of hormones. You can have an imbalance of hormones which can have a symptom of depression but that’s not
41:05 the cause. The cause of depression is something going on in your life and the impact is in your hormones. And so when
41:12 we shift that the very first thing to do is to shift that perspective otherwise we’re going to go to the traditional or
41:17 not even traditional we’re going to go to the biomedical model statistics which say x amount of people have the illness
41:23 of depression. Here’s what I believe is the correct way of approaching this. Everyone battles with depression.
41:29 Depression is good. anxiety is good. They are not bad illnesses. They’re not
41:35 like cancer or something wrong with your thyroid. They are signals telling us
41:40 that something’s there because of going on in your life. Something is happening in your life and it’s a signal
41:47 calling you to pay attention and work through the the why behind it. parallel to that because you are showing up with
41:55 this anxiety or depression at certain levels you need to then um work on the biological too. So it’s really important
42:01 to deal with your gut to deal with your hormones all that stuff because whatever you’re going through is changing your hormones in the wrong direction and your
42:08 gut etc etc. You have to deal with both. But if you just deal with the biological and just deal with your gut, then the
42:14 depression actually will never go away because the source of the hormone issues is in the symptom of depression, the
42:20 signal of depression, which is in something going on in your life. If you don’t remove the cause, if you don’t remove the hand from the hot stove, no
42:27 matter how many opioids and bandages you put on, it’s still going to burn. And so in terms of percentages, all of us
42:34 battle with depression. What happens is that we in a society where there’s so many contributing factors where we are
42:42 things more social media all these things which are seemingly showing that
42:48 more people battle with depression that is um really bad. Now when depression
42:54 gets really bad it so all of us there’s normal depression is normal when depression can move out of the normal
43:00 range and fall into that range where it’s unhelpful it’s kind of now boomeranging back like stress is good for us but bad stress is good for us
43:08 depression is good for us but depression that’s gone into the toxic zone. So what is that shift? So kind of like what puts
43:15 us into that bracket of shifting from non-toxic into toxic depression. Well the answer to that is an unmanaged mind.
43:22 If we not manage our mind, which doesn’t just mean looking at my stress, it’s looking at the factors of how I’m
43:29 showing up with the stress, how I’m showing up, what is my life look like, what am I doing on every aspect, how am
43:34 I reacting to things, how am I eating, the whole aspect, we’ve got to stand back and we’ve got to manage our entire
43:39 lifestyle. And we got to stand back and take a big long look at that and then work in a plan of action on every level,
43:47 mental and biological, um, to help manage that. If we don’t do that then it
43:52 accumulates and our minds start basically the conscious mind is very vulnerable and um we have another part
44:00 of our mind which is the non-concious N O N and that is invincible and but
44:05 there’s a thing between it called the subconscious and the subconscious is like the waiting room and the nonscious
44:11 is forever giving advice on how to find it’s all in listen to Dr. cassing. Get
44:17 your gut right. Eat like this. Do this exercise. Watch those. Manage that stress. Watch how you relaxation. Get
44:24 your mindset that is constantly feeding from nonscious wisdom. But it’s got to
44:30 get through the subconscious and it’s got to get into our conscious mind. Our conscious mind can get really messy. And
44:36 we can get so messy that we go into this loop of just getting stuck in the messiness. And the longer we and then we
44:41 don’t listen to the wisdom. If we can train ourselves to stand back, observe the messy mind, tap into the wisdom of
44:47 the unconscious mind, we can pick up the messy mind. If we don’t do that and we stay stuck in this, that’s when we tip
44:53 over into the toxic state. And that’s and then that creates so much disintegration in getting stuck in the
44:59 messy mind is devastating. that where the anxiety and depression levels go through the roof and actually see the
45:05 addictions and the um into whatever the addictions and the alcoholism and the
45:10 extreme states and the suicidal ideation and all that kind of happening and that’s why it’s so important that we
45:16 educate people to understand how to recognize where I’m taking what to do and get it not just doing it in the
45:23 moment of crisis but getting people to practice any practice it with a small
45:28 argument with someone so that you get a hang of managing your mind in the small things that you can then be build up the
45:34 resilience and have the internal network to when the big stuff hits. It’s going to be hard, but you know how to reach
45:40 out for help. You know how to start yourself. Yeah, I think those are all wonderful
45:47 points. And to your point, you know, I tell my patients this all the time. I don’t truly think that there’s a Zoloft
45:53 or a Prozac or a sataloprag deficiency, right? I think depression is your body
46:02 telling you that your mind and your bodily wants are not on the same page,
46:08 right? So like what you truly want in your mind and what your body is doing and what your what you want and what
46:14 you’re doing are disconnected and so you need to figure out why like what I’ve always told my patients. So, you know,
46:21 and to your point David, sorry I interrupted you to say to your point I always say to
46:27 people ask about medication those if you look at the chemical classification of
46:33 psychotropic drugs they’re not drugs they’re medic they’re not medications they’re drugs and medication is targeted
46:38 to a specific problem like insulin or diabetes are not targeted specifically to to a we
46:46 hear about serotonin and sinaxes it isn’t actually what’s happening They are basically numb. They have a psychoactive
46:52 effect. So they’re numb in the brain. So what they do is they provide temporary relief. ibuprofen. If you’ve got a headache, you’re not lacking ibuprofen.
46:59 But when you take an ibuprofen, it’ll a headache, but you don’t live on ibuprofen the rest of your life. So people can see those drugs in that sense
47:08 as opposed to fixing the problem. we wouldn’t get all the it’s this another
47:14 whole conversation but essentially when you take all those drugs know that as an endocrinologist you are disrupting the
47:20 chemistry of the brain and the body not in the right direction. So long-term use of those isn’t is disruptive and not
47:26 constructive unfortunately which can come off and we can rewire the brain and body which is good to know.
47:34 Yeah. Well thank you Dr. Dr. Caroline Leaf for explaining to us like what is
47:40 neuroplasticity and explaining to us this you know neuro cycle and this
47:46 process that we have and how we can maybe you know how our mind and brain are actually different and what we can
47:51 do to kind of help break habits reform habits things like that I think that that’s very beneficial for for people to
47:58 know and then you know just briefly do you want to tell people where they can find out more information about you and
48:06 all the you all the great books that you’ve done and and the different ways that they want to learn from you.
48:11 Absolutely. Thanks so much. The talk to Caroline is my website. My social media handle, Dr. Caroline Me. I actually got
48:19 a new book coming out in August called help in a hurry, which is like what do I do in those moments of crisis like help
48:25 I need you know in that. So that’s coming out soon as well which is really really great sort of things for what do
48:32 I do when I’m in a crisis when I’m having a panic attack. It’s absolutely healthy in the moment. So, Dr. Caroline
48:37 Lee on my Dr. Caroline Lee is my social media handles. Dr. Caroline Lee, Dr.
48:42 Caroline Lee is also the web page and then my podcast is called Cleaning Up and my neuros the app is called
48:49 Neuroscycle and that’s available on iTunes, Google Play and the
48:54 All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us on this summit episode and um
49:00 we will see you guys in the next episode. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Great chatting for you. Thank you for your
49:06 great questions. So that episode was packed full of so many educational things. I love love
49:11 love Dr. Leaf. I hope that now you understand the mind brain body
49:16 connection so much better. You can tell me the difference between your mind which is the energy of who we are and
49:22 your brain which is the actual organ that responds to things and the relationship between those two. I hope
49:28 you understand neuroplasticity better. the five-step approach to actually, you
49:34 know, making yourself feel better and getting rid of these toxic thoughts and traits. Also, you know, the 63day
49:41 rewiring process, super important and reframing the narrative around anxiety
49:46 and depression. I think that we did a great job talking about this. I hope this gives you more insight and helps you feel better, helps you want to find
49:53 functional medicine providers that can help you incorporate all this into your healing process because it is a holistic
50:00 approach. If you’re looking for somebody to help you do that, Modern Endocrine has a license in 43 states. We see
50:06 virtual people. We are happy to help you in this process. Fix your hormones, fix your thyroid, fix your metabolism, fix
50:13 your gut. So check us out. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, you know somebody who’s struggling with anxiety,
50:19 depression, this is something they need to hear or they need to get Dr. Leaf’s book, please, please, please share this
50:24 episode with them. That is how we help educate others. If you like what we talked about, please leave us a review.
50:31 Drop anything that you would like for me to talk about on my social media. Let me know who do you want me to interview.
50:36 What else do you want to learn? And please join me next week for our next episode of Hormones, Metabolism, and
50:43 You. Have a lovely week. [Music] The information presented, including any
50:48 materials discussed, referenced or linked within this podcast, are for general educational purposes only, not
50:56 the practice of medicine. No doctor patient relationship is formed from you listening to this podcast or utilizing
51:02 any of the information provided. I am a doctor, but I am not talking to you as your doctor. The information provided is
51:10 not intended to diagnose or treat health problems or take the place of the professional medical care provided by
51:16 your doctor. If you are experiencing any health problems, including problems you believe have been touched upon in any
51:23 respect within this podcast, you should consult your doctor about the problems without delay. You may ask your doctor
51:30 whether he or she believes the information I have provided would be helpful to you, but you should still
51:35 consult your doctor immediately and follow his or her medical advice as your treating physician. I’m just here to
51:42 provide you basic knowledge about the issues we discuss so you are more aware of them and can better discuss them with
51:48 your doctor. That’s why we call it back to the basics. Join me on the next episode as we continue our journey.
51:56 [Music]
Disclaimer:
The information presented including any materials discussed, referenced, or linked within this podcast are for general educational purposes only, not the practice of medicine.
No doctor-patient relationship is formed from you listening to this podcast or utilizing any of the information provided.
I am a doctor, but I am not talking to you as your doctor. The information provided is not intended to diagnose or treat health problems or take the place of the professional medical care provided by your doctor.
If you are experiencing any health problems, including problems you believe have been touched upon in any respect within this podcast, you should consult your doctor about the problems without delay. You may ask your doctor whether he or she believes the information I have provided would be helpful to you, but you should still consult your doctor immediately and follow his or her medical advice as your treating physician.
I’m just here to provide you with basic knowledge about the issues we discuss so you are more aware of them and can better discuss them with your doctor.
That’s why we call it Back to the Basics. Join me on the next episode as we continue our journey.