Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from you're in Virginia, right? What city are you in in Virginia?

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Alexandria, Virginia.

Greg Voisen
Alexandria, Virginia, is Dr. Wayne Jonas. And Dr. Jonas today is going to be speaking with all of us about his new book out. And it's a co-authored book and I'll give you the co-authors name in a minute, Healing and Cancer: A Guide to Whole Person Care. And Dr. Alyssa McManamon is also his copartner, or I should say, co-author, and you can actually find out more about them. They have a beautiful, beautiful website at healingandcancerbook.com and we'll put a link to that as well. There you can learn about the book, the authors, and there's a whole resource section. And this has been published by healing works foundation and wrote in books. So, the healing works foundation is your foundation. Is that correct? Dr. Jonas?

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Yes.

Greg Voisen
So I'm going to let my listeners know a tad bit about you before we take a deep dive into the book. And I'm going to also say from my listening audience, the predecessor book was how healing works, we're actually going to throw a few questions regarding that book. It's not a prerequisite that you read the first book before the second one. But if you are so inclined, we're going to put links to both of those. So, doctor, join it. Jonas is a widely published investigator practicing family physician and professor of medicine at Georgetown University, and at Uniformed Services University, a Health Sciences. He is also retired lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps of the United States Army. Dr. Jonas was the director of the Office of alternative medicine at the National Institutes of Health, from 1995 to 1999. And Laura led the World Health Organization's collaborative center for traditional medicine. Prior to that he served as the Director of Medical Research Fellowship at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, he now advises national and international organizations on ways to implement evidence based healing practices in their medical systems. He serves as the president of healing works Foundation. And this book, we're going to be talking about healing and cancer a guide the whole person, as I said, co authored with Alisa released in April. Well, Dr. John is thanks for being on the show. And spending some time and I think a really important time because not has cancer has been with us for a very, very long time. But there just seems to be this growing amount of it. And I want to talk about, you discuss the importance of the whole person care. And I recognize, you know, there's the pharmacist and there's the doctor, and there's the oncologist. And there's these people in our team and people that help us, but can you elaborate on what whole person care means and why it's crucial, and cancer treatment?

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Happy to do that. And thank you for having me on your show, Greg. And I'm honored to actually add to the tremendous portfolio of information and people that you've had about development. So appreciate that. Yeah, I've had the good fortune, just the luck, if you will, of being able to really get into the depths of basic hardcore science around healing at the NIH. I've had the opportunity when I ran a who center for traditional research, medicine research to go around the world looking at different approaches to healing from cultures all over the world. And then the Samueli foundation that also funded healing works foundation that we've spun off about a year and a half ago. I had the great fortune to work for them for many, many years, just exploring with many partners about the science of healing, how does healing happen? What are the underlying mechanisms of that? And so what I tried to describe in my first book and what No, we are applying and Dr. McMahon and I are playing in the area of cancer is the learnings of that effort about where healing comes from where health comes from. And let me just do a spoiler alert here to your audience. Only about 15 to 20% of it comes from walking in and seeing your doctor a very small amount actually comes from that 80% of health and healing, including the recovery sometimes for many chronic diseases comes from outside the doctor's office, it comes from you your environment where you're at. To accomplish that, however, you have to pay attention to who you are as a person, right, you can't ignore some of you and say, Oh, well, I won't pay attention to the social and emotional, I won't pay attention to the spiritual, I won't pay attention to what I eat or what I do during the day and then expect it to follow you right, you have to pay attention to the to that. And over the years, as we pulled together, some of the examples of what was being done all over the world, we realized it was very easy to capture this in sort of four areas. And if you just pay attention to those four areas, healing will be catalyzed your own inherent healing capacity will be catalyzed. And very often, it can sometimes even lead to cure, although we'll talk about the difference between healing and cure, which are there. And those four dimensions really are paying attention, obviously, to the external environment that you're in. If you're in an environment where you can't get good food, you can't have shelter, the basic Maslow's bottom of the pyramid hierarchy, then you're gonna have challenges and we see this now with a growing area of homelessness, social determinant problems. If your earth is toxic, you know, then you are immersed in pollution and other things that are going to impair your body's ability to heal. And it's going to actually stimulate disease. So you got to pay attention to the external environment that you're in. Obviously, that is getting more and more attention nowadays. The second one, which is about your behavior, got to take care of the body and the mind, right, you just got to do the basics. And there's not it's not all that difficult. Sometimes it's difficult to do on a day to day basis, if you're very, very busy. But the fundamentals are very easy. A healthy diet, which is very clearly been tested and shown. Okay, plant based, Mediterranean like diet with healthy oils and that type of thing. movement and activity doesn't have to be a huge amount of exercise. But getting out and walking, especially in nature, huge health benefits, sleep, absolutely essential for the function of all areas of your body and your mind in those areas. And stress and stress management are key in those areas. Well,

Greg Voisen
you kind of you, you obviously approach this from a functional medicine standpoint. Well, the general medicine

Dr. Wayne Jonas
parts, okay, the medicine parts, but as you'll see in both my first book and this book, those, if you limit yourself just to those, you're missing half the world, okay? You're missing half the world, because the other two dimensions are your social and emotional body. Everybody has a social and emotional body, that connectivity to the relationships, the love that you experience with others. And in fact, the largest longitudinal study of what are the factors that lead to a healthy and long life done, you know, by over three generations at Harvard Medical School, when they looked at all of the risk factors, the number one factor that kept people healthy and happy. Was their social connections. Okay. Yeah. The social I mean, it could be, I'm not advocating smoking, but smoking was not even first, right. Okay. It was the social and emotional connections. And beyond that, it had to be something that gave them joy. So it had to connect to something meaningful for them. And that means the mental and the spiritual components of it. So that's the fourth dimension, the deeper part, what really matters. Why are you here on this earth? And do you get up every day and saying, I'm gonna do something to express joy, happiness and health in the earth that I live in? Well,

Greg Voisen
it's so imperative what you're talking about. Not that long ago, Dan Buettner was on here. And you know, it's the Blue Zones, right. And all the studies that National Geographic I did with him and how people eat Mediterranean diet, which you just mentioned, or eat a diet, basic plant based diet was a big factor. But the bigger factors were what you just said, social connection, meaning, you know, who I'm linked with, and my spirituality, and I thought, what you just said is so important yet, you know, what we're talking about these days, Dr. Jonas, the loneliness epidemic, the numbers of people that are actually dying in their homes and people don't even know that they've passed away. Right until some neighbor calls and says, you know, this and they they're sitting there lonely. Do you have any comment about that because of the you you look at the psychological impact of loneliness. It's just so devastating, both for dementia for all kinds of things when it happens when you age. Right. So, a lot I'd love your comment on this. Because, you know, we haven't had too many authors on here talking specifically about loneliness, but the effects of loneliness. Yeah,

Dr. Wayne Jonas
well, you should get the Surgeon General, the current Surgeon General on your show about it, because he's talking about this all the time. Yeah. And it isn't just the mental effects. It is literally the physical effects and your very mortality, your very survival is dependent upon that I mentioned the Harvard study that showed that social connection, the opposite of loneliness actually was the biggest factor in that. I'll give you an example. My mother died a few months ago at 97. Okay. She had no major health problems, okay. And she died peacefully with her family all around her. She had huge social connections when the COVID pandemic came along. And they started isolating, you know, people and in assisted living homes, which is where she was, she started to decline, absolutely decline. And we said, this is no, this is the end of it, she is going to die. We had to move her to a place where she could get that social connection. You know, the word social isolation they used was the wrong word. It should have been physical isolation and social connection. Okay. And so we moved her to a place where she had companionship, her family could actually come and visit her be part of that. And she just took off, she was losing weight before then she started gaining gaining weight, she got COVID. And she survived it. She got through it at 97 in those areas. And she lived for many years after, you know, a couple of years, several years after that. And And finally, she just decided, Okay, I'm done. And she stopped eating, the family gathered around her, they sang to her, they gave her love, they interacted and then she stopped breathing. She had what's called a good death. And that is the that's the that's, you know, we always talk about having a good life. But we don't talk about having a good death. Right? We should plan for a good death. And it's the social component that allows for that to happen.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I had a lady on here from New York, a doctor who wrote a book called The Art of dying. Oh, that was fantastic. Because you know, 80% of people, I think that was the number die in a hospital. Yeah. In other words, they're dying someplace where they don't really want to die. Yeah, right. Most people's wish would be to be at home or be someplace peaceful, like your mom. But that was interesting. Now you emphasize the concept of healing over curing. You just mentioned that about five minutes ago. How do you differentiate between healing and curing in the context of cancer care? Because it's, it's one thing to say healing. It's another thing to say, Oh, I'm in 100% remission at this point. Right?

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Yeah, well, we'll talk about cancer specifically in a minute. But let me just correct you here. I don't emphasize healing over curing, I say we need to rebalance healing, and curing together, we need to integrate them there is an intimate relationship between healing and curing. And we have lost the healing part of it. Because we have focused so much on waiting until the disease occurs. And then throwing a lot of technologies and science and treatments at it usually very costly. And we neglect the part of recovery, reintegration. Risk Factor, mitigation, prevention, etc. We pay attention, we don't pay attention to the, the wholeness, that brings the quality of our life back into alignment. So we need to balance this we need to rebalance this and integrate healing and caring, you know, the, the root word of healing actually comes from the same word. That means wholeness being whole mind body spirit, which I just described these dimensions of that, and holy, which fundamentally means connected to everything, right, connected to everything, meaning purpose and transformation, what really matters to you and your life. And so he he emerges out of finding that holiness, that connection, that wholeness Okay, in your relationships, in your work in your other efforts in those areas, and sometimes that and your behavior and your lifestyle, and sometimes that actually leads to a cure. Okay? If you only focus on the cure, sometimes you get better, okay. But I have had many patients that have been cured of their disease, but have not been healed and are suffering tremendously. They're isolated, they're lonely, they're miserable, etc. Even And when their disease goes away, they live in fear. And this happens in cancer all the time. Okay? There's no evidence of a disease we treated you and went away. But now I sit in fear as I go in every month or every six months and get screened and tested and everything, and how am I living my life in between? Okay, I've been given some extra life, but is it life? Or is it actually, you know, a towering under the fear of death. So we need to actually put the healing component of it, the well being cover and the wholeness, the holiness part of it, what matters most to you in your life back into routine health care. And that's the goal of the healing works foundation that I run right now make this routine and standard integrated in with medical treatment, healing and curing. Well,

Greg Voisen
what you've just said, I think most listeners out there can relate to, you know, that we've always heard this fear as the false expectation appearing real, you know, if you're waiting for that test to come back, and you're thinking, Oh, my gosh, you know, it could could come back positive, and you don't live your life in between, it's really a shame that you haven't psychologically looked at that pattern, and tried to shift that pattern that you've created around the fear associated with that. I mean, my wife and I were making a comment, and this is just an off the wall comment. But, you know, we have this great walkway by the beach, where you can walk your dogs, and it's a big long walk path. And we still see people today, and I'm just, this is just a comment, you're out in this beautiful environment, and they're wearing masks and gloves. And I'm like, Really, you're gonna have that kind of fear to move around. And society still today, after COVID Isn't hardly even being mentioned anymore, you know, let alone anything, and still have masks and gloves on. So, you know, just because that probably

Dr. Wayne Jonas
a good chunk of them are looking at their phones to they're not even they're not even present.

Greg Voisen
That's, that's true. So, you know, I'd like to know, and I think our listeners would what inspired you to shift your focus toward this whole person care in oncology. And what personal experience influenced this approach, because I'm gonna make a sub statement here, the La Jolla Institute of immunology, I've actually gone to many of their meetings, and they've asked me to sit on the board. And there used to be this approach, you can cut it out, you can radiate it, or now you can have an infusion therapy. So I asked this question, because I am a little bit well versed on this because I have spoken with the doctors of the LOI Institute of immunology and other places. And it's fascinating the progression that's being made through infusion. It can you comment on this oncology, because, you know, when you think of oncology, what you think about as well, the first thing they're gonna do is radiate me to death, you know it and it's in, it's one of the fears, I think people have just a side note, my son got chronic myelogenous leukemia, and he's 21. He's now 42, Chad at 21 years. And the first thing they want to do at City of Hope was to do the oncology routine. But a drug had come along called Gleevec. And he said, Dad, I'm gonna go ahead and take leave back, right. And I'm not gonna go do the oncology route, which I'm so glad he didn't. Because today, he's still alive and surviving on a drug called Spry cell and doing wonderfully well and have had two kids, which they said he would never have, either. So there's a great example of something that there's so many places we can go these days to find new ways to heal.

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Yeah, that is a great example. And you have alluded to some breakthroughs that are now going on in in cancer and oncology, that have are resulting from our investments in the war on cancer, you know, for so many years, which, you know, has resulted in a huge advance in understanding what cancer is, you know, people used to think cancer is different, right? Okay. You know, it's, it's that rogue tumor, and it starts growing. And the main thing you need to do is cut it or kill it or burn it or something like that. Just get rid of that cell and that you're fine. We now know from extensive research that I described in the book, actually, that actually cancer is not a rogue cell by itself, it actually occurs within a very complex environment, of the immune system of inflammation, even the microbiome, metabolism, etcetera. It's called a tumor microenvironment and there's now 10 or 12 hallmarks of that biology that show how the body is an integral part of the cancer. development, and the macro environment, then surrounding that influences all of those areas. And so really to take care of cancer using good science nowadays, you have to pay attention to the macro environment, not just killing the tumor, yes, gotta get rid of the tumor, it's not behaving the way it's supposed to, but then change the environment around it. So the immune system is paying attention to it instead of ignoring it, so that the inflammatory processes are less so that your microbiome and your health is, is improved. And this is where both the science and the evidence, the clinical evidence showing that behavior, lifestyle, social support, huge issue, people that have high social support, have a 20 with cancer have a 25% greater chance of living five years and no have low social support to get back to our discussion on that. Pay attention to you as a whole person increased your health and well being and integrate that into to the cancer treatment. And that's what this book is about.

Greg Voisen
And you do a great job, because I saw many of the charts and diagrams in here. In particular, what you were talking about were the hallmarks. And I would point out to my listeners, at the end of each chapter is also the summary points. And and he does an excellent job, or both authors do an excellent job of not only outlining this, but allowing you to really understand it easily because this is a book, that's actually as much for the layperson, as it would be for a doctor wanting to learn more about doing this, and I think that's important to state is that healing and cancer, this book is for anybody. It's not just written for physicians, although there's a lot of physicians that should reread this book, because they're not practicing that particular way. Now, let me switch gears for a second, because we said we'd explore both books, but in the how healing works, which is the predecessor of subrack, you explore the science behind healing, could you share some of the key scientific findings that support and the FSK see around the whole person care in cancer treatment, because there actually is, as you said, you've you've done a lot of studies, you used to work in NIH, this is the place where lots of millions of dollars go each year and grants go back out again to other people. Because the government funds this to as matter of fact, Illinois Institute of immunology gets 60 million a year from NIH. So that's a big part of their funding. So it's important that this work is being done, because it's actually advancing new techniques and diagnostics. And in helping to find healing and cures for cancer.

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Now be happy to do that, in the how healing works book, we take a deep dive into sort of the four dimensions of, of healing and the human being and, and have whole sections on on the science of that. And what we did in the cancer book is that we took that and we pulled out the research of both in the basic science and in the clinical research in where it applies specifically to cancer in those areas. And so there's there's a number of examples of that. So if we summarize the science, but then we pull it together in terms of an implementation tool. So the first part is a description of why this is important. The second part of the book is about the science and its application, and how it's done. The third part are practical tools. Okay? What do you do? If you're a patient? What do you do? If you're an oncologist? What do you do if you're in a cancer team that's taking care of people? What do you do if your family members in those areas? And then also what do you do if you are running a cancer center on a system, a hospital, etc? How do you make sure this is part of, of what is embedded into the culture in those areas? And so that third part is the practical tools and we can talk about that. There's some great examples of, of in the cancer area where the evidence is very clear. Okay. We've already mentioned one of those and that's social support. Okay. And the the huge advantage than having high social support, being embedded in love, okay, actually keeps you living better and keeps your living longer. Even if the cancer doesn't get cured. A second one that I think is is equally important and has extensive research is the importance of being active. Okay, physically active exercise. It's amazing if you go into your doctor's office, and they tell you oh, you should rest. Okay. Go to bed and just rest and sleep. Sleep is important. But if you're not active, then you know your body actually can't fight the cancer and there's chemical So now that are secreted by the muscles when you're active, that inhibit cancer progression and growth, they've actually shown that and as little as 30 minutes of walking a day can significantly reduce the likelihood for example of recurrence in breast cancer, you know, after it's been treated, so that's important. The third area is the diet. And, you know, it used to be that all that was quackery, right, you know, cure your cancer with diet and the Gerson diet and all that kind of stuff. They didn't know the science back then. But now it's beginning to emerge. And the way it's emerging is the combination of immuno oncology how the immune system interacts with cancer, and the microbiome, which is in your gut, the bacteria that are in your gut, which are intimately related to how well the immune system functions. And there's now research showing that an individual that was not responding to an immunotherapy drug, okay, and their cancer was advancing, change their microbiome, okay. And now they started to respond to the drug, okay, and actually now worked in those areas. This is a new area, it's it's an expanding area, but it's going to become extremely important that we pay attention to to this, you know, most oncologists, you go, and they just say, well eat whatever you want. And we now know, that's probably not good advice, there's probably good, you know, good dietary advice that not only can help cancer, but it also can help with your moods, can help with your energy can help reduce other risk factors, you know, huge number of cancer patients, most of them will die of something besides their cancer, because we're now able to treat these cancers and people are living longer, right. And so Hey, pay attention to cardiovascular problems, pay attention to diabetes, pay attention to the other risk factors, you know, which which are also can prevent a long and healthy life. And many of those we now know, can be addressed through behavior, social support, lifestyle, sleep, and meaning and purpose in life.

Greg Voisen
I would say you hit it right on because all of those factors, if somebody was to look at the matrix, you know, of, or the tapestry, you know, their life. And if social is a big area, because we recognize that the brain chemistry changes, the more social you are, the more interaction you have, the better that the brain chemistry, the release of the oxytocin's, the release of the serotonin, your psychological health is better, you actually make better decisions for yourself. When you're that way, you're also keeping your brain active and away from deterioration of something like Alzheimer's. They know that when people are socially, having more connection with people, there's less and less Alzheimer's. So all these things you point out are there. Now if somebody is in the middle, and we have listeners, I'm sure of dealing with some diagnosis around cancer. And you're talking about the role of the care team? How can the care teams be trained to integrate the whole person principles into their daily routines? And what would you recommend because, you know, Steve Berman, Dr. Berman recommended me to you. And his is healing beyond pills and potions. And you guys are friends. And I, I personally have dove into this in a big way as a result of Steve and many others. And I think that the way a doctor communicates the way a team communicates to the person who's dealing with this is so extremely important. And I want you to address this as part of how I would find a team, find a team that's whole person centered. Do you have any places where people can go on the internet and search this out? What would you tell folks are listening?

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Yeah, no, I think that is essential to do to do that, and find that kind of a team. We give examples. So a lot of the information in this book emerged out of a two year program, that healing works foundation ran with cancer leaders all over the country. There were 13 different cancer Leaders Summit, major academic centers, some in community oncology centers, others out there, you know, providing primary care support for cancer care, nurses, patients, social workers. We had a whole group of team members, and we had successfully put in concepts, tools, practice transformation components for whole person care into primary care into general medicine and we're still supporting that process. But that's going on that is left the barn it's in the definitions from the National Academy of Medicine, HHS, Health and Human Services of a DA optogenetic cetera, that's moving forward. And we realized that it wasn't happening as effectively in cancer care. And so we needed to do more than that. And that's really where a huge amount of suffering was, was occurring. And so we worked with this leadership group over two years, to develop tools and examples of how to do this in practice, how to create it out of fine teams and develop teams that provide this type of care. And so the book is just one element. But if you go on our website, you will see the results of this leadership groups work. And we do briefly describe some examples from these different centers around the country at the end of the book, but you'll see a case examples of how it's happening. We provide tools for practice improvement. So if you have a team member that says, Hey, I'd like to do more of this, there's a step by step way to do that practice improvement in there and embedded into your practice. If you're a solo practitioner, or even a patient working with a an oncologist or working with a oncology team, there are tools in there that allow them to do that. One of that, for example, is the personal health inventory. It's a simple two page questionnaire that allows the cancer team and the patient to talk to talk together and find out what's important for the patient in their cancer care. incorporate that into the management plan, in the for the treatment of the cancer, enhance their part of that the patient's part of that and then support that process. One of the first questions

Greg Voisen
might I might ask you, Dr. Jonas, I'm sorry to interrupt you. But what's coming up for me is when you work in a team, you've got to define roles, and you got to know what direction you're headed in. And there usually is a champion, who who is the champion for you know, let's say somebody out there listening is like, Okay, I got diagnostic data, I got diagnosed with cancer. They say I have to go to the oncologist. Now, that's where all the questions start coming in. And I think a lot of these people have a lot of fear and anxiety around that diagnosis. And I think frequently, they just take the path that was given to them by somebody without them, not a lot of people will go get second opinions, I get that. But a lot of people are just afraid by the diagnosis itself. So what would you say to get a good team? To what strategies would you recommend that patients engage in in their own care to mitigate not only these feelings? Because I think they need to take control? I don't know if this is what you believe, but I think it is, I think you're your own best advocate. And the reality is, you have to kind of take control of what's going on here. Would that be true?

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Well, it is true, and it's not true. Okay. Yes, you do have to do that. But the way you do that cannot depend on you only as a cancer patient, okay? Because when you get cancer boy, as you say, it's fear. It's like, what do I do? You know, the whole discussion coming from the from the oncologist and the cancer team, you know, makes no sense. What is it, you know, you don't understand the language. So you have to go in to this with an advocate. Okay, this is where the social support comes in. You have to some have someone that's going to be your champion that will accompany you and be part of your journey. In other words, you have to have your own team, okay? Your own team that's paying attention to what you need, even when you can't see it. Okay? And make sure that's brought in. So yes, you do need to have be, you know, your own advocate, okay. But if you don't have a companion advocate, it becomes extremely difficult to do. So make sure you have a champion that comes along with you. One of the one of the senators that we worked with, embrace this so much that they actually created an entire patient champion unit, okay. So that every patient that walked into their cancer center would meet with a navigator someone that would help them in the system, an advocate and a patient appear representative, somebody who had been through the journey before, knew what was going to come because you didn't know what was going to come and could help advise you and support you in that process. That patient champion view visit then was integrated with the oncology team team to provide well person in person centered care. So pay attention to that, find your own team, find your advocate, and make sure you use that and that's the best way to start being empowered. Now as you get more experienced more involved in that. You can take some of those things on yourself and as you get into the, to the cancer journey itself personally. But but that would be my number one recommendation for patients.

Greg Voisen
Good. That's good advice. And, and I, I know in the book, there's, you know, we could probably talk all day on this particular question, but the whole integrative and complementary therapies in cancer care. You know, today, there are a lot of alternatives, there's ways to go. Can you provide some examples of the various therapies and their benefits, and I know, look, we're not talking about a specific cancer, we're just talking about things like Tai Chi, Yoga, meditation, many of the very proven simple techniques that if people started a practice of it, as you said, the bodies moving a practice of yoga would help, a practice of meditation can be extremely spiritual, can help you make a connection to a higher source, whatever it is, is you're going to work through the chakras in the body, all this functional medicine, and integrative medicine is really the role of it, is to integrate this in along with the other practices, correct. That

Dr. Wayne Jonas
is correct. And we actually talk about that extensively in the book, the best way to approach this and to work with your, the oncology teams is to go to the guidelines that are now out, and more to come that have been put together by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, ASCO, and the Society for Integrative oncology jointly, si Oh, so the sandy Wiley Foundation funded five guidelines development healing works is then supported that further. And there's there's three or four of them that are out right now. And they synthesize the science, the research evidence to show what actually works. And these are things that should be implemented in you can ask for, and, and very often are already available in many of these cancer centers. But oftentimes, the oncology team doesn't even know about, okay, they're actually there. So they just need to they need to get connected here within their own environment, okay, within their own hospital. Examples of our of those are for pain, for example, good evidence now showing that acupuncture works for pain, it's very helpful for pain. Okay. It's helpful for different types of cancer related pain, including peripheral neuropathy that some of the chemo therapies will produce. It's useful for joint pain that's produced from what are called AI inhibitors. aromatase inhibitors for their home hormone blockers, often used in breast cancer, people get joint pain for that acupuncture works really well for that. So integrating acupuncture as a modality, when those are implemented are key. A guideline just came out on on a

Greg Voisen
night I mentioned, besides the acupuncture, I'm going to be a big advocate for people because I have a massage therapist that comes to the house here a couple times a month, there's nothing better than a good massage every so often, to move not only the muscles, but also in your Olympic lands. You know, you've got all kinds of things going on. And I think that I would just speak up for the massage therapists they'd

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Well, the massage was actually on their guidelines list, it didn't have the same level of evidence as acupuncture hair was still there. So absolutely. Take a look at the guidelines. There's lots of good information there. A recent guideline just came out on anxiety and depression. All right, the mitigation of the fear and that people often get into in those areas, and very good evidence, a plus evidence for Mind Body practices, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness based cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, heart rate variability, training, biofeedback, a lot of the stuff that Steve Berman you just mentioned to us hypnosis, etc. Those those types of practices are extremely helpful in helping to mitigate anxiety and depression. You can't you don't have to just throw a drug attack, okay, you can actually build the person's ability to be resilient, and manage that on their own. So take these guidelines, there's a new one out just out on fatigue, for example, that has lots of recommendations of those kinds of complementary and alternative types of practices that now have sufficient evidence that they should be part of routine care.

Greg Voisen
Well, you read this book, and again, I'm going to hold it up for my listeners, healing and cancer is the book that you want to go get, whether you have cancer or not. I think it's also great knowledge to know, to be able to talk with others in an intelligent manner about what's available, because I've had this discussion with friends, right. And people who've been recently diagnosed And this is one of those books that gives you a way to talk about the whole person model. And really, to provide some very practical advice. And I'm going to recommend to my listeners to advise to go to the healing and cancer website, a healing and cancer book.com that Dr. Jonas is put up, he also has his healing works Foundation, dot O R G website, which I can highly recommend that you go to. But Dr. Jonas in the time remaining, looking into the future, what changes would you like to see and oncology practices to ensure that the whole person care becomes a standard approach in cancer treatment versus something that right now is maybe not a standard approach, it's really, you know, you're right now leading the charge, you're, you're the head of the forefront at the tip of the spear, as they say, to make more awareness about what's available. And like you just said, sometimes in their own practices, they don't even know that this, these things exist, because they're not being communicated. So as the great communicator that you are, what would you like to see happen and change for this to be a standard approach. So

Dr. Wayne Jonas
I think there's three main challenges in this area that needs to need to happen in order to make this routine and regular. The first one actually is our mindset. We, we put 80%, or plus of our resources into a disease treatment model, where we study what I learned in medical school pathogenesis, okay, the creation of pathology of disease, and in that we wait till disease occurs, and then we throw a bunch of stuff in it that cost a lot of money that's expensive. That only partially works. And it doesn't really reverse the disease processes. In those areas, it doesn't produce saluto Genesis, the generation of health, which is going on in parallel, so we need to create a salutogenic process, just like the disease treatment process, we haven't put them together, okay, so that's shifting our mindset to saluted Genesis. The second thing is that we need to actually have the tools to do that in practice. And this means we have to teach it in medical school, the University of California, Irvine has an entire program for medical students on this goes through all four years that teaches them how to do this from ground one, many other medical schools are developing that nursing schools have been ahead of the game for a long time in this area, in those arrows. So we need to teach that we have CME courses, and continuing education courses that that have been produced with some of our funding out of Tufts University that are available free to focus on whole person care and pain and primary care and now in cancer. So go get those you can educate yourself in those areas, then we need the tools in practice. So the hope tools are a set of tools you can implement into practice you can do and into your everyday interaction with patients and the electronic medical record. Actually, there's ways to embed that into that. So it becomes something tractable and trackable and manageable. And then the third thing I would say is that we need to support it with resources, we need to pay for it. Okay. The Veterans Administration has built an entire program called Hole health and dumped a ton of resources into building these healing oriented kind of practices and making it available for veterans throughout their system. We need that kind of investment in health care for the whole country. And I

Greg Voisen
think that not to interrupt you, but the reality is that our governmental levels and our insurance company levels, actuaries and statisticians are beginning to correlate to the fact that they understand that if you implement these practices, that the cost to the system reduces tremendously as a result of premiums that are being paid by individuals these days in the area of of Medicare, which we know needs to get under control, because of the amount of use by people these days. Fortunately, we've got a good system like that. But my point is, it all comes down to statistics, you know, so much money in so much money out. How do we reduce the amount of time people are spending at the doctor and or the care they need? We we've heard the statistic and many people out there know that the bulk of Medicare claims come from page I think it's age 75 or something to age 90. So I think it's pretty close to 80% of the medical claims costs are coming in. But imagine what we could do. Like Dr. Jonas said, to your mother or your father, or you live to 97 and just have a peaceful death. That's what we really want without too much cost and drag on the system. And that's really kind of where this is all going. Right? Is what I say that true?

Dr. Wayne Jonas
No, that's absolutely right. If you want to have whole person care, you have to pay for whole person care, right? If you're paying, if you're making money, and you're paying for a pill and a procedure, you're gonna get a lot of pills and procedures, right? Don't you bundle that into something that truly addresses the underlying drivers of health, these inherent things that create health, you save money in that entire package, a lot of money, actually a lot of money, the solution to reducing our health care costs is actually to shift to a whole person payment model.

Greg Voisen
Go get this book, everybody. And Dr. Jonas, it's been a pleasure having you on inside personal growth, you really have provided a wealth of knowledge, wisdom, expertise in this arena. That was really great for my listeners, I appreciate you being on the show. And thank you, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Well, thank you, Greg, for having me and for all the stuff that you do to help advance healing and personal growth.

Greg Voisen
Thanks again, Dr. Jonas for being on the show.

Dr. Wayne Jonas
Thank you, Greg. My pleasure.